Social media leads gen is a topic that widely explored not only by merchants, but also publishers that promote advertisers’ offers. B2B leads can be quite costly, so to those with a very tight advertising budget we suggest social media as one of the main vehicles for driving leads. The good thing is that it is a window of opportunities for companies of all sizes.

For those who are sure that all that social media marketing is good for is for building brand awareness and nurturing relationships with existing users/customers, let’s look at few articles that might be handy in this conversations.

from “Leads for Less with Social Media” recently published in eMarketer.

Social media, blogs and search engine optimization more cost-effective for lead gen

Pull marketing tactics such as search, blog and social media generate cheaper leads than more traditional outbound efforts, according to data from inbound online marketing platform HubSpot.

The “2010 State of Inbound Marketing” report indicates that spending on lead generation is 60% less among companies that devote at least one-half of their budget to inbound marketing, compared with companies spending at least one-half of lead generation dollars on outbound tactics.

The average cost per lead from inbound marketing was also significantly less.

In both 2009 and 2010, companies in North America tended to rate all the inbound tactics studied as below average in cost per lead. Respondents rated direct mail most cost-effective among outbound strategies. Still, only 37% said it generated leads for less than average.

The gap in cost-effectiveness is leading to a gap in spending, the report said. Inbound tactics are seeing a slight increase in share of lead generation budgets, while outbound tactics are decreasing. Usage of mixed tactics such as e-mail—which can be used for both push and pull marketing—is also on the rise. And businesses rated every inbound channel more important than any outbound channel for their lead generation efforts.

HubSpot also noted that more than two-fifths of companies using various social media marketing channels had acquired a customer from those channels.

Unsurprisingly, for business-to-business firms, LinkedIn was most effective for customer acquisition. Business-to-consumer companies did better on each of the other sites, with the best results coming from Facebook, where nearly seven in 10 had found a new customer.

Now, if our old good friends Linkedin and Facebook are indeed to be used for lead generation, what you might not be using? There are various tools and tactics that we can discuss but once again, I point to a few articles that provide valid advices.

A few simple but useful for beginners advises on “Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation: 6 Lessons” from Marketing Sherpa.

Lesson #1. Target groups by activity level, not just size

Rushin began his LinkedIn experiment by searching for groups related to his company’s key target industries:
o Retail
o Business intelligence
o Web analytics

The search turned up dozens of groups to explore. To winnow the list, he first eliminated any groups that were more geared toward job opportunities, rather than discussing business concerns.

Then, he examined the size of the groups, but had to actually join groups to assess each one’s typical activity level. His goal was to find a highly engaged audience, rather than simply the largest audience.

“Some groups had 15,000 members, but every discussion had received only one or two comments.”

For each group, Rushin spent 15 or 20 minutes reading through recent posts to assess group members’ interest areas, and how much activity each post generated. In the end, he identified 17 groups that matched his needs.

Lesson #2. Join groups under an individual name, not a company identity

Social media is a two-way channel, which makes it especially important to assign a point-person to oversee your social media initiatives, establish themselves as a community member, and respond to feedback.

Rushin joined LinkedIn groups under his own name and title, to establish a presence within the industry audiences the company targets. Joining under a personal name also helps avoid the temptation to simply push company marketing into a community discussion group.

“These are people who are potentially important in our industry, and I don’t want to horn my way into a networking group and just start selling.”

Lesson #3. Place collateral in the context of a conversation

Every time the team had a new piece of collateral to promote — such as a webinar or a white paper — Rushin looked for opportunities to share that information with the team’s LinkedIn groups.

Rather than just posting a message that promoted the team’s marketing content, Rushin created messages that invited a conversation with group members.

- For example, when promoting a white paper, he would write a message to the group announcing the new title, sharing a link, and asking group members to provide feedback on the white paper itself.

“Just from a pure marketing improvement point of view, it’s almost like a blog where people can comment,” says Rushin. “Now I have a place where people can comment on my white papers, and that’s good feedback for me.”

- Rushin also monitored ongoing conversations to find opportunities to comment on other people’s topics. He would include a link to marketing collateral when appropriate, but often would just share an opinion or give feedback on other group members’ comments.

“That’s totally a conversation, not necessarily a marketing thing,” he says. “People see my name as an actual contributor to the conversation.”

Lesson #4. Response rate is highly variable

By participating in several groups, Rushin quickly saw that response to his lead-generation offers (in the form of landing page registrations) was highly variable. Each group has its own characteristics and dynamics, which make some white paper or webinar offers highly successful and others relative duds.

Testing content offerings among different groups is essential. Beyond that, Rushin also saw two factors that affected response rate:

- Placement in the weekly or daily update newsletters

LinkedIn group members receive either daily or weekly email dispatches that highlight recent discussion activity within that group. Rushin discovered that placement on those email lists is akin to your placement on a search engine results page: The higher you are in the dispatch, the more views your topic will receive and the more registrations you’re likely to capture.

Because there’s no way to control the amount of activity within a group, there’s no way to guarantee a topic you post will be among the top discussions listed in the email dispatch.

- White paper or webinar topic

Not surprisingly, discussion group members are more interested in white papers or webinars that address industry trends, operational issues, and other educational topics. Product-focused white papers tend to receive a lackluster response.

“Even with webinars, you want to use as little salesmanship as possible,” says Rushin. “Our white papers now contain almost no Quantivo messaging in there, except for some boilerplate at the end.”

Lesson #5. Create social media-specific landing pages

Rather than taking LinkedIn members to a standard landing page, Rushin created landing pages that specifically addressed the LinkedIn audience.

The tactic did not require a complete landing page redesign. Instead, the team modified the landing page text to create continuity for visitors arriving from LinkedIn, using phrases such as:
o “Thank you for your interest in this discussion”

Lesson #6. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn

Rushin’s team noticed a trend when they began qualifying leads generated through LinkedIn: Many responses came from job seekers and independent consultants looking for work.

Career networking is a major component of LinkedIn, so response from job-seekers is to be expected. However, minimizing response from these non-qualified leads can be tricky.

To discourage job-seekers, the team changed its registration form to require prospects to use an email address from a company domain — forbidding the use of free email accounts such as Yahoo! or Gmail. The technique backfired, though, when LinkedIn members began complaining to Rushin (and sometimes to their Twitter followers) that the company was preventing unemployed people or independent consultants from viewing their thought-leadership content.

Rather than risk alienating LinkedIn members, you may have to rely on inside sales follow-up or further nurturing to eliminate non-qualified leads from your marketing funnel.

… and a few good advises on Facebook lead gen.

from “3 ways B2B companies should be using Facebook for lead generation” by By Kipp Bodnar, SocialmediaB2B.

The discussion of the value of Facebook for many B2B companies is a valid one. The truth is that it is not the best engagement platform for all B2B companies. However, it is a great fit for some. The problem is that most B2B companies are only using Facebook for a small fraction of what it can really do. Today I wanted to share three lead generation tips for Facebook that many companies seem to be ignoring.

1. Generate Leads through E-mail subscriptions – Blue Sky Factory does a great job of this, granted the should since they are an e-mail marketing company. However, most B2B companies simply settle for out of the box options that Facebook provides instead of thinking about how they can best maximize their network on Facebook. By including an e-mail subscription form in the side bar of their Facebook page Blue Sky Factory creates another possible way to build its e-mail newsletter distribution and leverage that newsletter to generate sales.

2. Provide a Special Offer or Link to Customer Support – Sure conversations happen on Facebook, but if someone is checking out the fan page for your business odds are they are interested in your product or at worst interested in the knowledge that you are sharing. Give them a reason to find out more about your product. Make a special offer or a free trail (see Hubspot example above) or make it very easy for them to start a live chat or call with a customer service representative that is able to answer their questions. Both of these levels of customer contacts can help generate quality leads that could pontential transition into sales.

3. Mix Paid Content with Free Content – Forrester Research publishes over 20 blogs and many of the posts are linked or republished on their Facebook Fan Page. This consolidation of free content draws fans’ attention to Forrester’s thought leadership on a variety of topics. Forrester is in the business of selling research reports, planning a variety of real world and online events, and consulting with clients. By mixing sales offers for full research reports and paid event listings with loads of free content, which by the way demonstrates the value of their research, Forrester primes fans to take that first step to make a purchase. While those purchases, or event registrations, generate income, they have more value as leads to develop new client business. So Forrester is actually using the freemium model, giving something away and knowing that some people will pay to upgrade or get more, as a lead generation tool for a much large business relationship.
So these are three simple examples of B2B companies generating real leads with their Facebook fan pages. All three of these companies are engaging with their fans and providing value over the Facebook platform, but it is also driving business.

There is more to add to these lists of advises, but this is another story for another day.
Stay tuned.
…
by Olga Kostrova, CEO of IdeaMama Group:




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