Social media and sales lead generation

Where B2B lead generation has traditionally been driven by broadcast marketing activities – ads, telemarketing, email etc – today's marketers are increasingly embracing social media and the attendant benefits of one-to-one communication in their quest for new prospects.

Few marketers would dismiss social media's emerging importance as a marketing channel, and most now recognise that 'inbound' conversations and content can help to attract, engage and nurture new clients.

Social media and cost efficiency

While stopping short of its most ardent evangelists' claims that social media is a cheaper way of sourcing leads, there's little doubt that in some cases it does provide large and small companies with a more level playing field. Smaller web-savvy organisations can leverage social media to their advantage through effective engagement and creative content without having to break the bank. Larger corporations meanwhile, now risk losing a slice of the prospect pie if they fail to engage to the same degree.

When looking to generate leads through social media the first step is to get heard by cutting through the noise. This is where social media brand outposts, such as Twitter, Linked In and blogs, all play a key role. They are the launch pads for creating conversation and interest.

Your conversations and content should be promoted through seeding, sharing and optimisation, thereby ensuring that their easily found, and improving the chances of prospects engaging with it and spreading it further through their own social networks.

Adapting traditional methods of prospecting for sales leads

Social media tools offer a useful update to more traditional methods of 'cold' prospecting. For example, using RSS readers to pool feeds from trade publications and competitor websites can reduce time spent trawling through traditional printed media, keeping up to date on industry news. Their 'shorthand' nature often also serves to quickly highlight useful announcements and potential opportunities.

Whatever the method, it is essential that you have a 'listening strategy' in place to enable you to monitor conversations within blogs, forums and – most importantly – Twitter. This is not only to ensure that you don't miss out on opportunities, but also to hear what others are saying about your brand so that you may respond directly. Remember that social media's strength lies not its ability to broadcast or receive messages, but rather its efficiency as a medium for two-way conversation. To that end, ensure that you always balance content with conversation. Don't attempt to convert it into a one-way street.

Back-up and budgets

Once your conversations and content have been discovered your goal should be to funnel the reader/viewer towards your own target destination, ideally a bespoke landing page where they will want to leave their details. Once they do they have become a prospect.

Social media activity inevitably requires investment, both in time and money. It therefore needs to generate as many leads as possible that eventually convert into in sales. Adding value is one of the most effective tactics in achieving this. Creating blog posts that offer advice on how to solve a problem, particularly where the solution involves using one or more of your own products, is a common tactic. The quality of the lead will always be determined by the quality of the content however, so don't try to shoe-horn in your own solution if it patently isn't appropriate. There have been a number of high-profile instances where this has backfired spectacularly.

Finally, and as with all marketing activity: measure, test, and measure again. Use multivariate testing within your communications, and analyse the data to track visitors, leads and customers across every channel. This information will help inform where future budgets are best invested and what content works.

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