Lead generation at the top of everyone’s mind. How do you generate leads? Does content marketing through social media really work? How do you effectively use a CRM system? How is the bottom line affected? I recently read an article, “Content drives sales enablement,” discussing how businesses are combining CRM technology with content marketing to capture leads.
Brian Chertok, marketing director at Kronos Inc. (specializes in workforce management technology solutions) said “The question is, how to reach prospects by function and vertical, and also find the business issues that bring them to my salespeople.” Chertok relies on marketing technology tools such as Eloqua to study prospects online behaviors and to deliver the Web visitors with the business issues they’re interested in, either through white paper downloads or connecting with sales. Find out more on Eloqua here.
I think a lot of us can agree that you might as well be in the Stone Age carving messages in a cave if your business is ignoring the marketing opportunities social media holds. However, I’ve found that a lot of people don’t agree on the relevance of certain social media networks. Twitter and Facebook seem to be readily accepted by most companies but I’ve noticed a cloud of uncertainty around LinkedIn. Questions like: Isn’t it just for job seekers? Does anyone really check it? Is my target audience really there? While some companies are hesitating, others are tapping into the potential and seeing results.
Ferris Stith, PR and social media manager at a direct mail and fulfillment company PostcardMania successfully used implemented LinkedIn to reach her target audience. Stith shifted her tactics on LinkedIn from simply listening and responding to instead using it as an educational outreach tool. Now PostcardMania offers free articles, case studies and white papers to specifically targeted LinkedIn members. Leads jumped tenfold, Stith said. “Last week, I brought in 33 leads; the week before that, 21,” Stith said. Three or four leads a week previously was the norm from this channel, she said. “It seems to be increasing every week as I’m finding new ways to connect and engage prospects, and turn them into leads.”
Companies are always looking for new ways to connect and engage prospects. We are seeing that the driver is content and the vehicles are social media and the web. Today, sales enablement has gone far beyond CRM solutions that merely help sales personnel be more efficient. The key sales enablement solution is marketing and its main driver is content. For example, Fifth Third Bank has developed its own content portal for prospects (www.53.com), targeting business customers, with activities carefully tracked to inform the company’s CRM database. Dianne Hardin reported: “From that first program, we directly attributed $3 million in closed revenue and $18 million in new pipeline in the first nine months. Our marketing automation investment was less than $100,000.”
As you can see, it’s working. Through relevant content placed on the right media channel and in front of the right people. More leads are being generated, pipelines are growing, and more sales are closing. Companies are using, to borrow the term, “lead bait.” This could include white papers, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc. They serve as conversation starters around solutions that actutally drill down to the product. It gives something for prospects to experience and a reason to be online, on your company’s website or Facebook.
If you don’t watch anything else today– watch this video of Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, discussing the impact of social media. He boldly states that “Facebook is becoming a vision, and certainly an execution, of what the next consumer operating system is.” He points out that Facebook is eating web time, more people spend time on Facebook than other internet sites. He believes companies must build presence on social networking sites because that’s where our customers are. Not only is it where our customers are going, it’s how employees are being trained on collaboration, how we’re learning to communicate and share. This is just accelerating and with that comes mounds of data. Questions circulate about what to do with it, how to access it, manipulate it, and make it actionable. In the last 2 minutes of the video, Marc Benioff is asked to respond to one word: Data. His response– “We are on the threshold of a new industry with data.” I’m anxious to see how salesforce and social media will lead the way.
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