Inbound marketing: how social media can be your startup’s strongest and cheapest lead generation machine

In recent years, inbound marketing has proven to the more popular choice over the traditional outbound marketing strategy, which usually consists of buying ad space on media and waiting for queries to come in. A 2013 study by inbound marketing experts Hubspot shows that 58 percent of marketers have embraced inbound marketing, and more importantly, 34 percent of leads are generated through inbound marketing; only 22 percent of leads are produced through outbound marketing.

This does not even consider the extra cost required for outbound marketing. The study shows that inbound marketing saves marketers about 12 percent the cost per lead and about five percent the cost per customer:

And ultimately, does inbound marketing actually generate considerable enough return-on-investment (ROI) to warrant a change in marketing strategy (if your startup hasn’t already embraced inbound marketing?)

Here’s your answer:

 

Nearly half the marketers testified that inbound marketing generated actual results, notwithstanding the 34 percent of marketers who could not or did not calculate their ROI.

So where does social media come in?

Now that we’ve established the importance of the inbound marketing strategy, let’s discuss why social media is such a powerful inbound marketing tool. Here are three reasons why your startup should use social media to pull in leads:

The ability to create specific content

Every audience has its own needs and wants, and your startup will need to be properly positioned so you can answer their queries or address their issues. And the best way for you to do that flexibly and with immediacy is social media. Traditional marketing platforms are largely one-sided in communication and not nearly adaptable to suit your audience. For example, social media can be used to create content that propagates your brand values, while also providing the latest news on your industry. There are so many ways for you to give value to your audience through social media, and with the instantaneousness that other marketing platforms cannot provide. Your content can be adjusted, skewed, and targeted to directly appeal to your audience. And when your audience sees the value in your highly specific content, that is where qualified leads come in.

Automated nurturing of leads

Many a time, high quality leads do not just appear in front of you. You have to create them. You will have to nurture them individually, making sure any leads with even just a hint of potential will be properly cultivated and convinced of your product’s or service’s benefit. Social media allows just that. You can now support your potential leads by answering their queries on your social media platforms in real-time, increasing their level of confidence in your startup and cementing them as a high-potential lead. Furthermore, most of your leads will probably not be convinced enough to immediately buy from you. You will have to be present throughout their thought processes, which is a perfect time for your social media platforms, because they can…

Help your leads along their buying process

 At different stages of the buying cycle, your potential customers will have growing, changing concerns. And it is very crucial that your startup remains on top of their mental recall by answering them, assuring them, and finally persuading them that your product or service is the best thing for them. What better way for you, as a startup, to utilize social media for that? It all boils back down to the immediacy of social media. Your responses to potential leads on social media can be specifically tailored to make each and every one of them feel like their worries about your product or service are being put to rest. When you’ve guided them through the mental buying process, you’ll not only be seen as a reliable source of information and help, but also close the lead as a customer. If there’s anything you can take away from this article, let it be this: using social media is a highly effective and cheap solution to your inbound marketing strategy. Social media may not be the only tool you can use to create strong inbound marketing for your product or service, but it is certainly the most cost-effective. It’s really a no-brainer if you want to market your startup on a lean budget.

Original written by by Marcus Ho

Marcus Ho is a social media strategist to best-in-class businesses in Asia. Marcus has helped over 200 corporations ranging from MNCs to fast-emerging startups to increase sales through social and digital campaigns. He is also the author of Social Payoff.

Original article read more: http://www.techinasia.com/inbound-marketing-on-social-media-is-strongest-cheapest-lead-generation-machine-for-startups/

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The Future of Social Marketing Automation is Here (And Improving)

A 2013 study of marketing professionals identified “social media marketing” as the second-most powerful trend contributing to the formation of the “modern marketer” — after the ability to track marketing ROI with technology. Yet even the most advanced modern marketing teams have struggled to effectively incorporate social media into their marketing automation workflows, let alone track the ROI on those communications. The hold up has been partly cultural and partly technological.

On the cultural side, this is part and parcel of the larger paradigm shift from “blast” to “triggered” (personalized) communications. It’s not an easy transition, especially when the ROI on blast emails is still 4300%, according to a 2013 DMA study. Impressive. So why fix what’s not broken? If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably already drunk the Kool-Aid (or read dozens of supporting studies showing the effectiveness) of personalized marketing.

Social media has a naturally conversational structure and is not particularly effective as a “blast” medium — so companies have dragged their feet implementing effective one-to-one response mechanisms, just as they have on the email side of the house. 

That means businesses are leaving money on the table. American Express reported in 2012 that its research found social media users are willing for pay a 21% price premium to do business with companies that provide exceptional service. As a result, social-based customer service improved markedly in 2013, more than doubling their response rate (62%) to questions posed directly to (or about) them.

So we’re halfway there when it comes to “social customer care” — but what about tracking and responding to those vast majority of mentions that don’t include your brand (or product) name? The natural next step is to link that “social listening” data to your marketing automation system — so that you (the modern marketer) can combine that “listening” data with what you already know about that individual — for real-time multi-channel response.

For example, let's say you are Apple tracking a customer segment that has purchased a computer from you in the last 12 months, and they complain about "my computer" — you'll know it's highly likely it's the Apple computer you sold them that has the problem. If you're tracking that complaint in your marketing automation system, you can fire off a warrantee reminder via email or have your social team DM that individual with an offer of support. If s/he mentions Apple directly, you can respond publicly.

Moreover, that social listening data, when linked to individuals’ profiles, can provide much more data for segmentation and scoring to fuel your marketing campaigns. Customers spend an average of 3 hours/day on social media, but likely just a few minutes on your site (if they make it there). By tracking what customers and prospects are talking about, modern marketers can build out automations that take social posts into account when tracking customers' "digital body language" to drive trigger-based marketing. For example, the New York Times could target foodies (commenting on recipes or restaurants) with their "Food" content and wine advertisements. Travelocity could send Austin hotel discounts to customers mentioning #SXSW.

Last October, Oracle’s Roland Smart presented a vision of "The Future of Social Marketing Automation" at #EE13 where companies could set up rules-based responses to customers' social posts based on natural language analysis. At the time, "social listening" and "marketing automation" were still largely held in separate buckets, so that was a vision not a reality. Today, we're many steps closer. Eloqua’s Social Behavior Sparkplug allows marketers to listen to their customers and marketing leads on social media — and trigger smart multi-channel responses (emails, ads, direct social responses, segmentation, and scoring) based on those social signals.

What's still "future" is on the technology-side: the ability to trigger those responses instantly, which is of course what makes those public social interactions, in particular, human-feeling. The good news is that vision is not too far in the future — we'll be there in 2014. In the meantime, modern marketers can take advantage of a huge new opportunity that has just opened up to (1) never miss a brand-mention on social media (even when it’s hidden), and (2) using all that rich social behavior data to direct the right message to the right person at the right time — all with trackable ROI thanks to today’s modern marketing automation tools.

For Read original article here

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