Use Social Media to Fill the Sales Funnel
At last week’s Business Marketing Association International GROW! Conference in Chicago, I heard from Kipp Bodnar, an inbound marketing strategist at HubSpot, and Jeffrey Cohen, a social strategist for Radian6. Over the course of an hour, these two showed us the value of social media in lead generation and provided three tips on how to make social media work for you. Many companies use social media to engage and entertain prospects and customers, but Kipp and Jeff have written a book, The B2B Social Media Book: Become a Marketing Superstar by Generating Leads with Blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Email, and More to teach marketers what social media can do for their B2B businesses.
They asserted that 60% of the sales cycle is over when the potential buyer talks to your salesperson, so we must make our presence known during that first part of the sales cycle. People buy from people that they know, like and trust and social media can provide those feelings. So now that you’re hooked, here are the three keys to social media lead-gen success for building product marketers:
- Build a network of strong ties
- Strong ties online mean you are interacting, driving affection and doing both over a period of time (not just once)
- The half life of a social media link is only 3 hours, so post often and use the 10-4-1 rule. For every 15 posts:
- 10: Share 10 links
- Create 4 original posts
- Utilize 1 link to a company landing page
- Publishing and sharing content online is best way to generate leads
- Influence connections for content sharing
- Use SlideShare or Scribd to make sharing information easy
- Encourage your followers to share what they find valuable and reward them for doing so
- Master social conversion
- Make sure you are encouraging your ties to take action. Whether it’s downloading a white paper or calling a sales person, don’t make them guess what they’re supposed to do next
- Know where your customers share – don’t use a ShareThis plug-in with unlimited options – simply show the networks where your customers already live and make it easy for them
Get into the social conversation today – create connections, make it easy to share and ensure there is always a call to action for your prospects and customers and you will be on the road to generating more leads.
