The social media program that this case study is based upon was a joint effort between ShipServ and Velocity Partners, a London-based B2B Marketing agency specializing in technology markets.

So what works for a B2B company? Let’s start by taking a look at a campaign that’s been pretty successful so far. This campaign was driven by John Watton, the VP of Marketing for ShipServ, an internet trading platform for the shipping industry. ShipServ has a global audience and a dispersed community of purchasers who are, believe it or not, quite eager to network.

Goals of the campaign:

• Raise the awareness of the ShipServ brand amongst our target audience
• Increase traffic to shipserv.com by 50% in three months
• Engage with the audience and start to build community

Challenges faced:

• Limited budget
• Conservative target audience, late to adopting the internet and Web2.0 technologies

ShipServ’s Strategy:

• Build an online community of advocates
• Move communications from broadcast to discussion, engaging the audience in ongoing,open dialogue
• Nurture prospects through drip feed of relevant content
• Establish key themes on a quarterly basis, and develop rolling thunder of editorial content

Tactics Used:

• Launch of the ShipServ Maritime Trading Network Group on LinkedIn in December 2008
• Joined five other maritime groups on LinkedIn
• Launch of the ShipServ blog as a container for opinion pieces
• Opened up a twitter account, taking direct feeds from the website
• Undertook keyword planning, optimized the website and developed landing pages for SEO
• Revamped company newsletter to be more point-of-view oriented
• Distributed humorous viral video

• Underpinned site with lead nurturing system (marketo) to track visitor behaviour and nurture leads
• Developed six themes, each of which manifested itself in:
  • A discussion posting on the LinkedIn groups
  • A social media release, distributed via PitchEngine
  • A blog posting

Results:

Building the community

• Built a community of nearly 400 on LinkedIn
• Attracted nearly 300 visitors to blog postings
• Attracted over 50 relevant followers on Twitter
• Over 600 views of the viral video, 62% of which came via email distribution and 18% via shipserv.com/linkedin distribution

Web site stats:

• Visitors went up by 59% (increase in quantity)
• Page views went up by 70% (increase in quality)
• Average time on site went up by 25% (increase in quality)
• Linkedin and Twitter went from zero to being in top 20 traffic sources
• Number of leads passed to sales increased by 400%

This is a great example of using social media as a low cost way to build brand awareness and encourage engagement in a B2B space. Ship Serv, and John Watton, are instituting pioneering strategies with social media in a what is usually considered a pretty conservative industry.

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