The marketing industry has witnessed the evolution of social media through the years and it is the most effective lead generation tool today. As many as 82% of businesses use LinkedIn exclusively for branding and lead generation. Social media has quickly shifted gears from business-centered to consumer-centered, the reasons being its reach and interactive nature. Today, consumers turn to social media for answers and product comparisons before they choose a product. Businesses that do not include social media in their marketing strategy are losing out compared to those that are leveraging it.
Why social CRM for lead generation?
Most marketing executives list ‘lead quality’ as a top priority. Generating high-quality leads is a big challenge (An IDG study says 61% of marketers report that their biggest challenge is to generate high-quality leads). Quality of lead or a verified SQL (Sales Quality Lead) is a measure of accuracy for conversion and the challenge of accumulating those is a humongous one.
What is a Social CRM?
Social CRM is customer relationship management and engagement with customers or prospects using social networking sites. It is an effective tool to address the quality social lead generation challenge, using a highly defined automated process. Social CRM helps to;
- Improve the quality of leads – Compared to outbound marketing, social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close ratio
- Decrease costs – Social media marketing has reduced marketing costs for 45% of businesses
- Enhance brand exposure – 83% of marketers invest in social media to increase brand exposure
- Increase web traffic – 69% of marketers invest in social media to increase web traffic
Despite the perceived risk of productivity loss, businesses should encourage employees [marketing and sales] to use social media with a pre-defined strategy. If you chose not to, you may be losing out on a major chunk of leads.
Let us look at some of the social CRM lead generation tips for B2B companies.
1. Consider different channels and identify your target channel
There are multiple social platforms where a product or service can be marketed – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, Tumblr, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram etc. Though it’s good to be present everywhere, a business needs to identify those channels that fit its needs, i.e consider the buyer persona of a business. For example, if you are in the restaurant business, LinkedIn may not be the right platform to advertise your menu. Identify channels which are ideal for buyer personas critical to create a workable social media.
However, if you are offering business services or selling a front-end business tool, LinkedIn is a great social media platform for such businesses and 44% of B2B marketers claim to have generated leads from this platform. If you are not sure on which channel to zero-in on, you can run tests to identify:
- Which channel produces a high number of leads per campaign – Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or a combination of two or more.
- Time involved per conversion – How much time did a ‘follower’ take to convert to ‘lead’
- Clickbait – Which offers got the most interest – free trial, a webinar, white paper, product demo or any others.
2. Post your ads on social media
Paid advertising can generate a significant amount of high-quality leads. Facebook ads are budget-friendly, especially when compared to other networks like Google AdWords. Facebook ads are also known to work well if you have a well-defined strategy in deploying them. If you have chosen Twitter to advertise, you can choose between promoted tweets, promoted trends or promoted accounts.
LinkedIn offers an all-in-one advertising platform through its Campaign Manager. Here, you can manage and optimize your advertising. It supports sponsored content, sponsored InMail, and text ad formats. You can also place exclusive and highly-visible ads to premium audiences through dynamic ads.
- Use web forms on the social networks
You may be getting many clicks on the social media ads, but your job doesn’t end there. You have to collect lead information to pass onto sales, how would you do that? To convert followers to leads, you have to collect lead information through landing pages and web forms.
Social CRM collects the information of leads from landing pages and gives out an entire list of leads. It can analyze and report on – which campaigns worked better, which social network generated better-qualified leads, a number of new leads generated, etc – so that you are empowered on social selling.
You can leverage social marketing by:
- Embedding a landing page on the Facebook page/Ad, LinkedIn page/Ad, where prospects can easily view the offer and fill out the form.
- Create a web form through Twitter ads, that circulates among Twitter followers so that you can send it directly to social CRM tool.
Every social platform has its own techniques of lead capturing, and you will need to leverage them to make the most of the exercise.
4. Run contests on various platforms
Facebook and Twitter are good platforms to run contests. But it’s important to consider these two points before running contests,
- The offer should be lucrative enough for the prospects to respond
- It should be aimed specifically at a potential segmented audience to convert to customers and not generalized
If the contest is not interesting enough, prospects may refrain from participating. Generalization brings a huge number of participants and it will be difficult to pick out qualified leads.
Depending on your business, including offers like – free trial of the product, extension to premium accounts, or even extend the trial of the product through retweeting/ sharing/ liking/ following or click through to a landing page.
5. Enhance social media listening
Social media listening is nothing but keeping an ear out for brand mentions, competitor mentions or industry-related conversations. Social CRM identifies all of these easily. It gives direct access to potential leads who are looking for a solution just like the ones you offer. CSO and Seismic together surveyed and found that one in three B2B professionals mentioned that social selling tools increased the number of leads they had to work with.
Though social listening generates potential leads, it’s primarily used to establish and build relationships with prospects. By leveraging search streams to monitor industry keywords, one can discover conversations with people about relevant products and services. Businesses can reach out to people from these conversations to establish a relationship by offering a demo of the product. By doing this, you are positioning your brand as the resource for the prospect to approach when he is ready to make a purchase decision.
6. Cross-promote the social media channels
Promote one channel on the other social media channels. You website should have links to your social media channels. Cross promotion on social channels doesn’t involve investment and can successfully expand brand’s reach because you enhance your reach. Cross-promotion also provides a credible introduction to the new audience, unlike traditional one-on-one social media promotion.
Facebook allows third-party app integrations. You can add a tab for LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Users can click on tabs to check posts from other social channels. You can also partner with a non-competition brand to cross promote across social channels. Choose from influencers, businesses outside your niche or non-profit organizations. Also, try including social sharing buttons on all pages and blog posts they can potentially enhance click-through rates by over 150%.
7. Improve the SEO
Lead generation through SEO is the primary driver for generating new leads. Why SEO? Let’s look at some interesting facts:
- Globally, internet users make 4 billion searches every day
- 61% of internet users research products online
- 75% of users look at only the first 3 results when searching for something online
- There are over 10.3 billion Google searches monthly
- 44% of online shoppers begin with a search engine, usually Google.
So, it’s not just important to be online, it is also important to be at the top of Google search. Lead generation through SEO needs user intent research – both inform (when someone is looking to learn about a product) and purchase (when someone is shopping for keyword description).
8. Connect more with your audience
Social media is more than a lead generation technique – it’s primarily used to create a positive impact about the brand since you want your brand to resonate with your audience. When REI closed on Black Friday or when Patagonia accused the President of stealing land – they gained a huge favor in terms of likes and follows, for standing for the right cause. It did not stop there – REI amassed huge sales on the opening Saturday and Patagonia gained a huge loyal customer base.
With increasing competition, it is tough to crack prospects through cold calling. 90% of top customers (decision-makers) say that they never respond to cold calls and 76% of buyers are ready to have a conversation on social media. Social CRM leverages social selling and is a big bang for your buck. Social CRM helps marketing and sales teams to find unique and creative opportunities to engage with prospects. Let us know which other social media tips do you use for lead generation.
