Today I give a speech at the B2B integrated marketing forum in Shanghai. If you follow my blog for long, you have been reading a lot for this topic.

B2B marketing in China is always supplier-driven and buyer-centric. Suppliers who advertise to engage buyers and aim for a sales conversion. This is a typical B2B goal.  At the forum, a lot of marketers are interested to explore how social marketing works for B2B.  We have been seeing some marketers are following the trend closely and they launch marketing campaigns on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter.  My opinion is that I don’t see the effectiveness, in terms of sales acquisition, is going to happen anytime soon on SNS. If your marketing objective is about starting a conversion funnel by cultivating aggregated prospects, then SNS is considerably effective or at least no harm doing that. Otherwise, social networking sites are just contextually unfitted for sales conversion.

I am not a trend follower when practicing marketing.  I like to look into the basic parameters such as demographic concentration, media consumption behavior, etc. In China, adult SNS users are only 20% out of the total Internet population. The top online media usage in China are still news portal, email, and instant messaging.

Here is a thought. If Facebook is a living room, Myspace is a bar, and Linkedin is an office, what about the BBS in China? There are millions and millions of users on BBS. The power of influence is huge. Ok, let’s call the China BBS “the water cooler,” where the word of mouth begins.

ps.: For those who I’ve met today, I love to connect with you. Feel free to add me in your Facebook or Linkedin. Let’s socialize.

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