B2B marketers use, on average, 6 different social networking platforms. The most popular are LinkedIn at 91%, Twitter at 85%, Facebook at 81% and YouTube at 73% - Newbreedmarketing
As social media has continued to grow and develop over the years, marketers have been quick to use it for many purposes. As mentioned below, increasing web traffic, branding and target audience research are just three popular reasons for companies to use social media. It has also been said that sites such as Facebook are a great way to show your company’s personality by posting ‘social’ photographs and videos (within reason of course!). So what’s the right answer? Why should you be using social media for your business? The answer is that any of these purposes are fine as long as you can measure the ROI. If you can’t, then you’ll be unable to prove its worth.
83% of B2B marketers invest in social media to increase brand exposure; 69% to increase web traffic; and 65% to gain market insights – Social Media Today
So what’s the best and most measurable reason to use social media? The answer is demand generation.
Just like the blogging which we discussed in the last post of this series, social media is an excellent way to turn strangers into prospects and prospects into leads. Once a person has converted to lead status they can be nurtured towards a sale and through the funnel, but getting them to become a lead in the first place is the important bit. And this is where social media can pay off.
Utilise the social media channels which your prospects use most and engage with regularly. Immerse yourself in groups and discussions until you begin to recognise the key pain points and issues. Once you’ve established yourself among these groups, begin to post thought leadership information (and not necessarily just your own). By sharing valuable and varied information in this forum, you can begin to earn the trust of the prospects around you. Having achieved this, it’s time to start using social media for demand generation.
Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound methods – ADG Creative
In a modern multi-channel marketing campaign, one of the best ways to convert a prospect to a lead is to exchange highly relevant content for their contact details. This means that the best way to use social media for demand generation is to post engaging and teaser-style posts on the most popular channels (amongst your prospects) and provide a link to your landing pages. By targeting your prospects with relevant posts and directing them to relevant content, you are likely to generate a higher conversion to lead rate than if you were to simply post messages widespread across all social media channels.
Once prospects have clicked through from your social media posts, your landing page design, copy and call to action will be responsible for converting the prospect to a lead, but getting them here was entirely the work of social media – that’s demand generation in action.
To find out as much as possible about social media in a multi-channel marketing campaign…
