Instigator Blog - Latest Comments in How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Rebekah "Red" Donaldson — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:06:07 -0000

Sure thing... I hesitate to give links that point off your site/blog but hope the content at those pages is worth it. -- Red

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:21:27 -0000

Rebekah - Thank you for this detailed response and information. Very valuable stuff.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Rebekah "Red" Donaldson — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:07:09 -0000

@ Benjamin I couldn't agree more. As you said in the original article, "increasing lead generation won’t completely make up for a poorly converting site; it’s like trying to fill a straw with a waterfall, what’s the point? Better to find out how to make the straw bigger, then invest in the waterfall."

@ greatdealguru check out these charts showing visits and conversions by source for www.b2bcommunications.com

http://bit.ly/blog-ROI
http://bit.ly/leads-by-source

For us, folks coming from social media sources have a far higher visit -> lead conversion rate than the next highest converting group.

Also, check out the latest MarketingSherpa data about efficacy of social media:

http://bit.ly/sm-for-leads

- Red

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Tom Nuheat floors — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:40:43 -0000

I agree with you that Without leads no one can’t run a business, because no one can’t sell anything.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:50:50 -0000

I'm glad social media is working for you - but incidentally, I don't think luck has anything to do with (or at least not a lot to do) with trial and error testing to find the right target market. If I implied that, my mistake...

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:49:29 -0000

Carmen - I completely agree. It's not about accumulating followers and then being able to auto-magically convert them into leads / sales. It takes a lot more than that.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Carmen Bennett — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:28:56 -0000

I agree that social media can improve lead conversion but take note that having lots of friends/followers doesn't result to leads at all, you must have good content and must attract their attention to lead them to your site first and thats the hardest part.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

shoespreviews — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:30:13 -0000

Its a complete opposite for me, I'm enjoying higher conversion rates due to Social Media.

About luck, I agree with Benjamin, You have to go through lot of trial and error to find the right target market.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Heryrhey — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:36:16 -0000

product manager very essential in a company. them make a company be better to go moved.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

boostani — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:15:08 -0000

hello.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

managedforexaccounts — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:30:46 -0000

yeah interesting post. Social media definitely has it's place in online marketing campaigns nowadays, and has definitely become a popular bolt-on to SEO campaigns that I do for my clients. I'd have to agree that it's no use ploughing money into something without analyzing things first, tweaking and refining is the name of the game. Often people get too excited if their website is ranking top 10 for keywords, but their conversions may not have changed that much, indicating something is amiss onsite.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

thomas — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:19:51 -0000

We are looking into social media as our website has had great success! I believe personal interaction is key to conversions!

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

jorgeblanco — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 07:28:18 -0000

I like social media, not only for its marketing value, but as a communication method as well. However, the two big trends, massive spamming and pointless (junk) chit-chat drive me away sometimes and might make a severe negative impact in the long run.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:30:17 -0000

Rebekah - Thank you for the comment. I'm OK with the process being iterative, in terms of analyzing what's working, testing things out, tweaking, etc. But tackling lead generation and then optimizing too serially is a problem in the sense that it's "easier" to work on lead generation (often I hear people say, "Just buy more Google AdWords"). So it's a "throw money at the problem strategy". That's much harder to try when it comes to optimization of existing leads.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:28:53 -0000

I don't think it's bad luck - luck, in my experience, has very little to do with it. But it could be a question of misaligned goals / business objectives and tactics. For example if you invest all your energy on Twitter only to find that your target customer isn't on Twitter, that would lead to poor conversion numbers.

Not all social media is created equal. It takes research, testing, analysis, and more.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:27:40 -0000

An opt-in email list could be a part of a social media campaign, used as a conversion tool, and then a marketing tool thereafter. But social media marketing is much broader than that.

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

jennifert — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:08:56 -0000

Isn't social media basically like like an opt in email list?

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

greatdealguru — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:20:12 -0000

Hi Ben,
Nice blog. From my personnel experience I have found that social media marketing leads are not very good converters. Maybe I just have bad luck lol

Re: How Social Media Improves Lead Conversion

rebekah donaldson — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:00:50 -0000

I agree - the company and its site need to be ready to be helpful and effective -- so the bottom on the 'funnel' is open and leads that go in the top can convert. Usually I see companies tackle that concurrently vs serially... or, I should say, usually it's an iterative process that's never done.