Given your business can never get too much exposure, stop for a minute and ask yourself where the social media tool Google+ ranks in your B2B marketing plans for 2012.

According to recent research by BtoB Magazine, 93% of all B2B marketers are involved in social media marketing, with the majority placing their focus on the most popular channels (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter). No Google+? Well, not so fast there.

Unveiled earlier this year, Google’s new social network tool (reports indicate there are more than 40 million members) and its recently released business pages are a great instrument for constructing relationships with your company’s clients, potential clients, and referral sources online. Google’s “+1” button, the precursor to Google Plus, was unveiled months ahead of the actual social platform.

Building Marketing Plans around Google+

No matter what your B2B market is, there are potential clients waiting on Google+ to hear from you. According to the VP of Product for Google+, he expects brands will notice this (creating pages and using them to construct relationships) and will build marketing plans around it.”

If you have yet to create a Google+ page for your business, then make that one of your important New Year’s resolutions, especially given the simplicity of it.

All you have to do is:

• Make a business gmail account that all of your business development team can access;
• Go to: http://plus.google.com/pages/create, and choose the option to create a Google+ Page. Follow the wizard, and select the closest option to label your business. Once there, you can select from options like local business or place, brand or product, company or organization, and so on;
• Provide the basic details regarding your company name, business Web site URL, classification of page’s content and so on;
• Next, customize your profile;
• You then promote your business page;
• Run some tests on your page and give it some content and feel before you put it out in front of the entire world to see.

Among the different benefits of Google+ for the B2B marketer are:

• Circles – These give a marketer the ability to hyper segment. Marketers can communicate with groups which are segmented into leads, prospects, sales and lastly follow-ups;
• Sparks – These are blog postings, videos and other forms of content crafted to an individual’s focused interests. This is a great way for the marketer to open a line of communication with other marketers and prospective customers;
• Hangouts – This is essentially an online place for individuals to convene and chat about an array of topics. A company can place its sales team together nationwide in order to produce quality face-to-face time with sales leads;

The bottom line for your marketing efforts is pulling the different Google tools together with Google+ to leverage all at one time.

Having another tool to promote your product/s and interact with customers is something you do not have to Google when asking the best way to land more business.

Tell us how you’ve incorporated Google+ into your B2B marketing plan.

Photo credit: androidspin.com