Social Media is a major lever to amplify and generate inbound enquiry. In a recent post the “Social Media and the 3 New Pillars of Marketing“, I outlined how the following elements were crucial in growing your business in the “Digital” and “Internet” generation.
These provide your company and brand with the technology and platforms to get your content and “Thought Leadership” out to your market niche efficiently that a decade ago was only imagined.
- Content: The home base your “Blog”.. plus other media such as online video that you can integrate with your blog
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of Website’s, Blogs and Social Media Channels
- Social Media (such as Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube)
These elements correctly planned and executed, enable you to drive traffic to your website and generate inbound marketing inquiries that have been initiated through months and maybe years of engagement through reading your blogs, viewing your videos, that displays you and your companies expertise. It is not a “Zero Sum” game.
Your potential clients get to the stage where say, “They understand my issues and problems and have answers for them, so I need to take the next step and call or email them”
A Study by Marketing Sherpa of the company BreakingPoint, showed success using a wide-ranging social media strategy to generate leads. An update on their tactics — with a focus on integrating email and social media highlighted the original case study that first demonstrated how the team tested and measured activity from several social media channels. The results included
The case study outlined 6 Social Media steps to help fill the sales funnel:
- 55% of all leads coming from inbound Web visits, and
- 75% of marketing-influenced pipeline coming from inbound Web leads
#1 Create a blog to start and join online conversation
#2 Establish an active Twitter account
#3 Create a LinkedIn Group (or Facebook page depending on your demographic)
#4 Modify your press release strategy for blogger coverage
#5 Promote social media channels on your company website and in email signatures
#6 Measure growth of social media accounts and web traffic
Results:
Results of the researched company’s social media campaign showed that there was a dramatic correlation between the use of social media channels and the growth of the company’s web traffic and leads.
After only six months, their campaign resulted in:
Note :The most important thing is that the increased web traffic contributed to the majority of the teams leads.
- 10,230 unique blog page views in Q3
- 280 Twitter followers
- 141 members of their LinkedIn Group
- 155% increase in unique web visitors
Leads by source:
Marketing-influenced pipeline by source:
- 55% inbound web
- 23% trade shows
- 20.5% email
- 1.5% seminars
The following image shows the growth rate of new lead generation (blue), unique web visits (red), Twitter followers (yellow), LinkedIn group members (green) and blog views (purple) through Q1, Q2 and Q3.
- 75% inbound web
- 17% email
- 4% seminars
- 4% trade shows
Using social media as a marketing strategy is obviously still very young compared to more traditional marketing concepts however, as it evolves it is becoming less and less complicated to track its affect on your brand and your bottom line.
Social media is an incredible way to create strong relationships with hard-to-find prospects, on a limited budget – but don’t be fooled, it’s not easy and it’s a major commitment.
Is your Blog, Social Media and your SEO creating inbound enquiries for your company?
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via jeffbullas.com
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