Social is still a priority channel for B2B marketing, but, as with all channels, it is under the microscope more than ever.
According to Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey, social media accounts for 12.2% of digital spend, a top-three investment alongside search and display. This stands to reason - with a bit of thinking, you can identify, reach, engage your target ICP, getting closer to them. It can also be used as a hotbed of business intelligence.
But there’s a problem.
Over half of CMOs say their campaigns aren’t justifying the budget. And with marketing budgets decreasing from 9% of revenue to 7.7% of revenue this year, marketing and comms teams must do more with less. In B2B tech, where the step from awareness to opportunity is long and complex, social can no longer coast on engagement metrics.
The key isn’t just posting more. The key isn't just turning to carousels to improve engagement metrics. it’s implementing purposeful storytelling, measuring the right outcomes, and testing iteratively against your target audience.
Simplify, focus, measure, iterate.
Storytelling That Moves the Needle
Social isn’t a billboard, it’s your real-time story testbed.
According to Hootsuite’s 2025 Social Trends report, over 60% of organisations are now using social media to entertain, educate or inform. For 25% of brands, 100% of their social content activation is creative-first, because storytelling drives business results. And that includes B2B tech. It doesn’t have to be boring and predictable. You can use social to test your positioning among your audience - letting stories, not specs, get you cut-through,
Know Your ICP and Test Your Messaging
Generalised campaigns won’t cut it. According to Sprout Social, users are spending an average of 141 minutes daily across nearly 7 platforms. Understanding your Ideal Customer Profile, and testing messages purposefully on the platforms they turn to is critical. Bite-sized video thrives on TikTok, while LinkedIn demand authority-led storytelling. Over time, you refine messaging, formats, and CTAs that resonate, just as you would use data from Hubspot or another CRM.
B2B buyers are busy, and your ICP isn’t on every platform equally. Understanding where they spend time and what they’re paying attention to. Social is ideal for pressure-testing early messaging and seeing what cuts through.
Remember: it’s not about vanity engagement. It’s about figuring out what resonates with the people you need to get in front of before scaling.
Treat social like your MVP testing lab, A/B test tone, hook, CTA and visual form.
Measure Beyond Vanity Metrics
Clicks and impressions are table stakes, but they’re not proof of impact and too many programmes stop there, selling themselves short. You need to tie social to real outcomes:
CMOs want evidence, not effort. Hootsuite’s report shows that brands using social listening and structured analytics are significantly more confident in their ROI. Yet let’s go back to that Gartner research in the opening paragraph: 55% of CMOs say their campaigns still fail to justify investment.
Track full-funnel outcomes: awareness lift, site engagement, share of voice, backlinks, sentiment shifts, not just likes.
Use Social Insight to Inform Strategy
Social is rich with signals. Signals about what your audience cares about, how they respond to ideas, and where your brand fits. But most teams treat organic and paid as separate efforts. In reality, aligning them makes both smarter. Organic builds authenticity. Paid extends reach. But only if the insights are fed back into the loop and only if the paid is something your audience actually cares about.
Proactive engagement also pays off. Brands that engage (e.g., replying to creators or commenting on posts) see 1.6× more engagement, especially when done authentically (ie without ChatGPT). (Hootsuite, 2025)
Build a feedback loop from engagement into content strategy and even product insight.
Top Tips for Action
In the “social media ROI era,” value is earned, not assumed. The B2B brands that win on social in 2025 will be those who combine sharp storytelling, strategic measurement, and tight feedback loops, with AI and automation as enablers, not distractions.
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