• by Scott Gillum , Op-Ed Contributor, June 12, 2013

This time of year, America’s third or fourth (depending on where you live) most popular sport gets its moment in the sun. The Stanley Cup finals begin this week and the nation’s attention turns to ice, hockey sticks, pucks and maybe mullets.  

For business marketers, the holy grail, or, in this case, the Stanley Cup has been trying to demonstrate the business impact of social media, which is not defined by adoption, usage or engagement, but by influence. It proves that social media and/or social networks can influence buyer behavior. New insight suggests that it might be time to lace up the skates and put on the pads.  

Word of mouth (WOM), defined by person-to-person communication, be that in person or over the phone, is and has always been the most used and most influential channel for business buyers. Also described and measured as NPS (Net Promoter Score), it is the Wayne Gretzky of driving influence among decision-makers, both in new acquisition and for renewal.

Unlike WOM, social media has struggled with demonstrating influence. Adoption and usage rates continue to grow, but the impact on B-to-B decision-makers has been difficult to nearly impossible to measure, not unlike other, more established media channels.  

Research from Buyersphere may give us a clue as to how social media could influence decision-makers in the near future, and it has given us a couple of veritable hockey sticks and a puck to play with. 

According to Buyersphere’s Annual Survey of B2B Buyer Behavior, even though buyers mention social media (and providers such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) when asked to rate their usage and the usefulness of channels when searching for vendors, they fall off the grid when asked to evaluate their influence. As you would expect, word of mouth came out on top. 

Diving deeper into the research, it revealed a few game-changing findings: 20- to 30-year-olds (Gen Y), act like no other previous generations. The first “hockey stick” is somewhat known: 20something business buyers are roughly twice as likely to seek information or advice from social media as the generation before them (31- to 40-year-olds) and almost four times more likely to than the baby boomers (51- to 60-year-olds).

The second hockey stick, and the one that may end up being somewhat problematic for marketers, is that 49& of Millennials stated that they wanted to create and publish their own professional content. They want not only your content, but also to be able to disassemble it and repackage it with their own point of view. 

Finally, the puck to play with is that buyers under 30 are the only group that describe word of mouth as social media first, and then phone or in person. Close to 50% of Gen-Y buyers defined WOM as any social media, in person or phone, mentioned by only 33%of the respondents. Buyers aged 40 to 50, by contrast, define WOM as in person or phone 60% of the time with any social media platform only 23%.  

Game On

Marketers’ most powerful and influential channel is now being redefined, and this presents the best opportunity to date to demonstrate the impact of social media on buyer behavior. “To skate to where the puck is going to be,” as Gretzky used to say, we need to plan now.  

To define the approach, we need to understand the components of social media that are often lumped together—social networks and social media. Social networks refer to the connection among users and their social structure (friend, business acquaintance, etc.)

Social media is defined as the online channel used to generate, access and distribute content. The distinction is important because of the way different generations of business buyers use and value them. This differentiation is key to unlocking influence.

We know that the social network of these business buyers heavily influences Gen Y more than any other generation. For Enterprise accounts, where Gen Y is five to 10 years from occupying the C-suite, take a lesson from McDonald’s and “grow your own customers.” Get Gen Y hooked on your content by involving them in your brand and making your content modular so it’s easy to repackage and share. The route to influence is through  cause marketing efforts delivered via mobile devices. 37% of millennials say they are drawn to products with co-branded campaigns.

For small businesses, which Gen Y owns close to one out of three, according to the Enterprise Council on Small Business (ECSB), the goal should be to make them advocates for your brand, product or services to their network. To do that, focus on issue resolution, the number one loyalty driver. For prospects, provide information that is useful.  The No. 1 pain point for all small-business owners, especially being twice as prevalent among Gen-Y owners, is sales and customer acquisition. Specifically, lead generation and successfully competing with other small-business owners are of particular challenge. Help them understand how your products and services can help grow their business.