7 ways to increase roi of your lead gen efforts with social media
DESCRIPTION
Today, consumers are ignoring traditional marketing channels and effectively finding ways to block them. How is this affecting your lead generation efforts? Are you connecting with your target audience or just gathering a large quantity of poor quality leads? Social Media has opened up a new channel for marketers. You now have the ability to have conversations directly with potential customers. Are you ready to join the discussion and build awareness for your products? Do you know how to quickly identify those that are specifically interested in your products/services? Do you know how to avoid social media pitfalls that can hurt your lead generation? Let’s Talk! about how social media monitoring can impact your sales prospecting and lead generation. Filling the sales funnel with high quality leads while reducing time can only increase your organization’s bottom line. Written by Connie Bensen, the Director of Community Strategy at Alterian, whose blog was recently named one of Forbes 20 Best Marketing and Social Media Blogs.TRANSCRIPT
Increasing the Quantity & Quality of Leads with Social Media Monitoring
Seven Ways to Increase the ROI of Your Lead Generation Efforts
Full Whitepaper Available
This is an excerpt from the whitepaper:‘Increasing the Quantity & Quality of Leads with Social Media Monitoring’ by Connie Bensen, Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian.
To download the whitepaper in its entirety, please go to:
http://bit.ly/LeadGenROI
Use the web to utilize social media for marketing efforts
The new social web is about trust and relationships. Sales has always been about that, but now the internet offers a new venue that disregards the boundaries of geography.
Use the web to utilize social media for marketing efforts
Companies don’t buy, people do! And for products with a long buying process that translates into a longer time spent researching the web for solutions. So the precepts are just as applicable for B2B marketers as well as B2C.
The Biggest Challenge is that the Web is a Vast Place
Searching for a specific topic realizes a staggering number of search results. The trick is how to deal with information overload and efficiently pinpoint what specifically applies to your marketing needs.
Social Media Monitoring Makes it Possible
Use social media monitoring to identify those that are specifically interested in your products / services. And it is also possible to efficiently bring their conversations to you. This makes it easy to join their discussions and build awareness for your products. As you build brand presence and relationships are established your business will soon realize high quality leads.
The Internet has Become a New Marketing Channel
The good news is that the web has created a channel that is opt-in and has changed marketing forever. Brands have realized that they are now able to participate in the conversations but the task of monitoring these conversations and knowing where to begin seems overwhelming. A social media monitoring tool allows a marketer to gather all of theconversations over the past given period of time.
Engaging in Social Media is about Building Relationships
• Everyone will welcome your presence if you provide value and information. But if you spam them with pushy marketing messages you will be ignored or even asked to leave.
• The prospecting will happen indirectly. You are going to encounter conversations that range from people expressing a need for your type of products to those seeking customer service.
Main Types of Social Media Interactions
• Inform • Thank • Share • Apologize • Redirect
7 Ways to Use Social Media Monitoring for Lead Generation
1. Identify people expressing a need for your product / service
2. Create a Customer Profile3. Reduce cold calling4. Lower acquisition costs5. Increase revenue due to cross selling and upselling6. Reduce marketing costs and spend on Google Adwords7. Align sales efforts with marketing
1. Identify People Expressing a Need for Your Product or Service
Search for specific words and phrases you can identify conversations where people are expressing a need for your product or service. This allows you to find pockets of online communities where your potential customers are located and is a great way to find new markets.
Best practice is to listen for a while and ease into the conversation.
2. Create Customer Profiles
Use a social media monitoring tool to analyze all the conversations and create word clouds that visually depict the most frequently used words. It will also create word clouds of words or phrases that authors have tagged their content with. These word clouds provide valuable insight into the words and phrases that are of the highest importance to your consumer group (specific to your search terms). These words should also be used as SEO keywords (outlined in the first whitepaper of the ROI series).
3. Reduce Cold Calling
Listen to what the needs of your industry are. Once you have a strategy, you can then join the conversations and provide links to your content when appropriate. Best practice is to make sure that it is applicable to the topic at hand. If the community finds value in your content they will share it with others. They will click through to your site, explore your information and express an interest in moreinformation.
These warms leads are qualified and essential targets!
4. Lower Acquisition Costs & Shorten the Length of the Cycle
The creation of informative content also results in reduced spending on marketing and advertising. Prospects and customers will share the information and the resulting word of mouth is far better than any marketing or advertising that you can buy, because people trust their peers far more.
5. Increase Revenue Due to Cross- and Up-Selling
Answering your customers quickly allows you to build brand confidence and reinforces that your company cares. It also provides opportunities to discuss their business needs and allows you to suggest other products that would meet their needs. Or maybe there is an opportunity to up-sell to a higher level? This high level of customer care will be noticed by your customers and will result in increased loyalty as well as positive word of mouth.
6. Reduce marketing Costs and Google Adwords
Publishing content which others find valuable builds SEO organically. It is also the most highly regarded by search engines. Many are finding that it provides more than enough value to discontinue or refine their spend on Google Adwords. It’s much easier to measure the effects of a social media engagement using social media monitoring than it is to identify the gain from Adwords.
7. Align Sales Efforts with Marketing
Together, the sales and marketing teams can interact in social networks to jointly build relationships with prospects and customers toward the same goal of increased sales.
Next Steps
1. Try the Freemium version of Alterian SM2 (a professional social media monitoring tool)
2. Explore resources on social media monitoring www.alteriansm2.com
3. Request a Little Book on some BIG marketing topics www.alterian.com/resources/littlebooks
4. Email [email protected]. Call +1 312 884 5321
Thank You!
Phone: 312-704-1700Fax: 312-704-1701Email: [email protected]: @AlterianYouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EngagingTimesLiveuStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/alterian-s-engaging-times-liveLinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1823072SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/AlterianiTunes: Alterian Leadership SeriesBlogs: www.EngagingTimes.com
www.TheMarketingMojo.comwww.ConnieBensen.com