My notes from the MarketingProfs B2B panel “Driving and Measuring B2B Conversations, Leads and Sales with Social Media.”
Presented by Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing Manager, HubSpot; Kyle Flaherty, Director, Marketing, BreakingPoint Systems
Kyle started out by promising that, since this session had the longest title, it would be the best. This was an information-packed session and the ideas came fast and furious. It’s well worth downloading the slide deck from http://bit.ly/smlead.
Why are we here, Kipp asked? Because we love leads and because we hate big complicated slides that try to explain the social media ecosystem and ignore social media’s role in generating leads.
Kipp offered a controversial statement: “If you plan to use social media for branding, just buy a freakin’ print ad.” Kyle disagreed, and they compromised on the idea that branding should not be the sole mission of social media.
Google Webmaster Tools are vital for marketers. “The more pages you have indexed in Google, the more leads you drive.”
You need to be in the top five search results on Google to really drive key data, but Kyle has noticed that the quality of leads goes up based on how deep in the results they are found. People who get to the second page of search are really feeling the pain and searching for deeper levels of information.
An audience member asked about Bing, and Kyle actually admitted that he is known in Austin as the Bing King. They’ve noticed a huge uptick in search results from Bing, and Kipp added they’ve seen better lead quality from Bing search hits.
Blogs influence search as well. Companies that blog get more search engine results and better lead conversion opportunities, due to better SEO and more indexed pages.
“You can have a blog, but if you don’t have anything on it, it has no benefit.
Don’t think of yourself as a blogger, think of yourself as a Vertically Integrated Publisher. B2B companies can fulfill the same purposes on their own sites that trade publications have traditionally done.
Corporate blogs should strive to be the best trade magazine in your industry, and connect posts with your SEO strategy. Invite everyone inside and outside your company to contribute.
“In my industry, trade magazines have mostly gone away,” Kyle said, “so our blog has become a resource.” They’ve created an editorial calendar and have taken on the role of a journalist.
HubSpot added calls to action at the end of their blog posts and tripled the leads those posts brought in. The call to action Kipp referenced was a link to download a free video.
BreakingPoint just rolled out a new website and added a call to action to every page, integrated into the design.
Google Ad Manager is a tool that allows you to serve your own ads for free.
Be sure to use keywords in tweets where it makes sense, because tweets are being indexed now. Participate in industry chats on Twitter. If there isn’t one in your industry, start it. Monitor customer and prospect questions on Twitter.
Kyle reminded us to use a unique URL that is trackable on Twitter. And if you’re using Google Buzz, notice that the first seven words becomes part of the URL. Make sure you put those keywords up front, in the first seven words.
You don’t have to be everywhere. You need to manage your time in social media based on where your leads come from. Participate in the channels that are meaningful to your audience, track where your leads come from and then focus on the three or four channels that are working for you.
And then we had a fire alarm and everybody went outside.
The next section of the presentation was devoted to tools that Kyle uses at BreakingPoint.
Acton is a tool that sits between their webinars and salesforce.com, and manages a number of other functions. He can see what’s being successful and also how the leads move through the funnel from Webex to Acton to Salesforce.
BreakingPoint includes a list of keywords in the left-hand column of their website, which not only shows visitors what topics the site covers, but gives an SEO benefit.
LinkedIn is not a resume, it’s a resource. Use your actual name in the URL for your profile. In your title and name, use the keywords you want to be associated with. Kyle’s reads, “Director of Marketing at BreakingPoint, a cybersecurity company.” Don’t include a summary of yourself and your own experience, put the information people want to know about your company.
Link your corporate SlideShare account to your employees’ LinkedIn pages, so that when you update the corporate presentations, they are populated automatically to each employee’s LinkedIn page.
BreakingPoint created open LinkedIn groups as a way to share information and their company and their industry. They conduct surveys through the groups to see what people are interested in.
Use individual URLs in LinkedIn, as in other social media channels, so you can track where people come from and where they go.
If there are active LinkedIn groups in your industry, participate in them rather than creating competing groups and trying to make them successful.
23 Comments
I'm in Real Estate, and since about 90% of all home buyers start their search for a new home on the internet, a good web presence is key to survival (well it will be in a couple of years - there are still old timers who can get by without it for now).
Social media has become the most talked-about subject in the industry. Seminar after seminar and media guru after media guru are all telling Realtors to hop on the youtube/twitter/faceook/yelp/blogosphere/etc.etc. Almost every real estate agent has a blog, and the amount of useless information, bad repetitive writing, and tripe that is starting to choke up the internet is phenomenal. I can actually see the day coming that we will start to trend away from this type of internet "personal branding" and back towards trusted names dominating he market place. There is only so much mediocrity the public can take (well, maybe not).
Everyone is told to get onto these sites and let their presence be known, the problem is most people don't know how to do it well, and for most people no leads are going to come of it.
I trade financial markets and I've noticed a similar trend: when everyone starts jumping on the "buy" bandwagon, it's time to sell. The same thing applies here. Once everyone buys into the social media frenzy, there will be something new sprouting that only early adopters will see and capitalize on.
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We should leave some space in our tweets, should not utilize all 140 characters. This will help other users in adding their views while retweeting the same.
Financial market has a similar trend and applied into media frenzy
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I am always encouraged to use social media to promote my Dental business on line. Joining groups, writing a blog...etc. is all so overwhelming to me. I'm not sure it is worth the time. I guess we'll see. I just created a linked in profile.
I've used Linkedln in the past. It is a very handy tool. I've actually made quite a few contacts from there. Social media has been a mixed bag for me with twitter etc. There must be a unique twist to it such as been stated in many places on the internet to get it noticed in any meaningful way. Keep trying as they say.
We use a combination of social media to try generate leads and unfortunately no one of them is significantly better than the next one so it is very difficult to know where to concentrate you firepower. In addition most social media users are 24 year old males that live in California. There are just so few of the other kind that most social media dont generate significant volumes of leads.....i guess if you are trying to target the 24 year old ...it is the perfect place to do it.
We have a pretty sophisticated setup on Linked in with groups of 200+ users but again it rarely generates any leads that we can make money on .....Social Media has a lot of potential but .....it will be 2 years before it joins the mainstream.
Our realtor clients are finding that there are scores of great leads captured by interested buyers that are never followed up. The Internet allows the traditional "driveby" buyers to now, be contacted, followed up, narrowed and supplied with expertise-generated comps. You must have the "right" website and process in place as well. Don't let social media get in the way of you experise - make sure it accelerates and complements it!
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You mentioned "You need to be in the top five search results on Google to really drive key data".
Statistics are that the number organic site gets 60% of clicks %30 for the second click, so it is more like the top 2.
well said.very great idea it will be very accessible.
As a small business internet marketing consultant it is difficult to explain to small business owners the importance of social media in their marketing mix.
Yes branding is important, but people must also engage in the conversation. It is a like a big party and you need to talk to people without blasting out your sales pitch.
Facebook ads are fantastic for really targeting your audience with pinpoint precision.
Branding is infact very important in marketing these days. It is the only way the people can remember about the product.
It's amazing the number of realtor's that use the same "template" websites with the same articles on Buying a Home, Selling a Home. You'd think with the comissions they make, they could afford a unique website. My mother is a realtor, so she is lucky to have someone in the family that can provide that extra "edge" in website design & personal branding.
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I think that the main problem that small business and some medium business folks fail to realize is the time that it takes to effectively use social media and blogs.
They start off big and slowly peter out.
For my clients, I have always looked at social media not as a way to create more clients, but rather a way to keep your existing client base interested in you. In some areas I can almost see Facebook and Twitter replacing email marketing. Why? Because it appeals to our passive mode of thought.
If your sale message pops up in my stream or wall, I'll read it. If it shows up in my email I always promise to read it later then never do.
Social networks used an hour a day keep your existing customer base informed and connected.
My 2 cents? A brand ad on Facebook will bring you more customers than 40 hours a week of social marketing.
Very interesting comment about popping up on your wall... but then how does one get messages to "pop up" on the walls?
Social Media is a tool that I use all the time in order to appear at the top of the Search Engines, either for my own blogs / websites, as well as for my clients websites when I am working some SEO jobs