مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد جهت گیری بازاریابی الکترونیکی و رسانه اجتماعی در بازاریابی B2B – امرالد 2015

The potential benefits and opportunities that can be obtained from social media make successful social media implementation essential to effective marketing strategy (Barnes, 2010). Specific benefits to B2B (Business to Business) organisations have been identified in a recent study which found that social media addressed lead generation, which is a significant issue for B2B marketers (Schulze, 2013). Social media also has the capability to reinforce brand images over time in different contexts to B2B purchase decision-making targets (Rindell and Strandvik, 2010). The most commonly cited B2B applications of social media include: posting content on a company blog, building relationships with bloggers, community moderators and social influencers and uploading content to social sharing sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and SlideShare (Schulze, 2013). Nevertheless, despite the apparent use of social media by B2B marketers, the academic literature reports that B2B marketers are lagging behind Business to Consumer (B2C) marketers in both use and the level of sophistication of social media (Adiele, 2011, Bruhn et al., 2014, Simmons et al., 2010). These findings have been supported in a recent B2B study on social media. Marx (2013) summarised the findings by saying: “Amazingly, many B2B marketers still don’t get social media”. Director of the study, Christine Moorman, attributes this to B2B marketers having an inappropriate tactical perspective regarding social media, noting that, “the biggest challenge is that many (B2B) companies see social media as a cute promotional activity when it can be a strategic marketing activity” (Marx, 2013). Despite the fact that social media presents a significant opportunity for B2B organisations, the quality of implementation throughout the sector itself also varies substantially. According to Brian Kardon, CMO at Lattice Engines, “social media is becoming a real competitive advantage for the (B2B) companies that do it well; the gap is widening between the companies that have been organizing around social media and those that have not” (Marx, 2013). The lack of implementation guidelines for B2B managers suggests that an organisational orientation framework should be considered. An appropriate organisational orientation model is likely to help B2B managers to bridge the gap between B2B and B2C social media regarding usage and sophistication. Unlike traditional market orientation models (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, Narver and Slater, 1990, Callaghan et al., 1995), the electronic marketing orientation (EMO) has been specifically developed to address electronic and digital marketing and hence is appropriate for the implementation of social media in B2B marketing.