b2b lead generation for social media: tips for generating and tracking phone leads
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white paper
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
white paper
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads 2
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
Executive SummarySocial media marketing is now a way of life for B2B
marketers. With new platforms emerging constantly and
more business owners looking to leverage these networks
than ever before, social media has become an essential
vehicle for engaging with customers, building brands,
establishing thought leadership, and generating leads
and business. A study by Chief Marketer on Social Media
Marketing1 found that:
• 65% of B2B marketers have acquired a customer
through LinkedIn
• 66% of monthly bloggers acquired a customer through
blogging
• 40% of B2B marketers acquired a customer through
Yet according to the same study, 65% of marketers are not
tracking how their social media efforts are generating leads.
If you’re not tracking how your social media strategies are
generating leads, you can’t tell what’s working – and what
isn’t – in order to make informed adjustments. Finally, you
can’t prove to your executives how social media marketing
is impacting the one metric they truly care about: revenue.
This white paper provides tips for how B2B marketers can
increase engagement and generate leads via social media. It
also explains why it’s so important to track leads from social
media, and the technologies that can help you do it.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
Original, useful content crafted with your target audience
in mind is at the core of every successful social media
strategy. If you have good content, you can use social
media marketing and lead generation strategies to expand
the reach of your content and generate leads.
To generate leads from social media, follow these basic
principles:
• Drive social media visitors to landing pages with a
clear call to action to download your content. Be sure
this content is gated behind a registration form that
requires people to provide their contact information.
• You don’t necessarily have to use content. Depending
on your business, you can use calls to action such as
‘request a demo’ or ‘contact us’ or ’start a free trial’.
• Lastly, always be sure to include a prominent phone
number on your web pages. You may be surprised to
find out how often marketers forget to do this simple
thing, but including a phone number is a great way to
generate high-value phone leads.
Of course, in order to generate more leads through social
media, you need to grow your social media influence and
presence. That means using every strategy you can to build
your social media following and to help your content go
viral. Below are some tips on how to increase engagement
and generate leads from your social media channels.
Tips for Increasing Engagement and Generating Leads from Social Media
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
LinkedIn is the largest social network of professionals on the
Internet – with more than 160 million users who are active
professionals seeking jobs, networking opportunities, and
expertise. Since LinkedIn is the largest professional social
network, it’s also an excellent medium for sharing content,
having discussions, and generating leads. Optimizing your
activity in LinkedIn groups, company pages, and advertising
will help you effectively generate more leads.
LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups provide users with a way to share content
and have discussions around specific topics. Here are some
tips for using groups:
• Join groups to expand your reach. LinkedIn has more
than one million user groups covering hundreds of
different industries.
• Start a group with a topic that is niche to your business.
Invite colleagues, former coworkers, and peers in your
industry to join and actively participate in your group.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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To Gate or Not to Gate?
Do you ever wonder which content you should be requiring people to register for and what you should be giving away for free? A good rule of thumb is that if the content is too sales-y or brief, you should give it away for free. Below are some suggestions on what to get and what not to gate.
Gated Content:
• White papers and eBooks that provide actionable tips and best practices
• Information that can help people do their jobs and grow their business without purchasing a product or service from your company
• Webinars
• In-depth research reports
Free Content:
• Sales content such as product one-pagers and brochures
• Case studies (unless it is an in-depth discussion of how-to’s and best practices)
• Infographics
• Blog posts
• Short videos and product demos
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
• Once you’ve joined groups and started some of your
own, you can participate in ongoing discussions within
these pages. Discussions should include links to related
content where participants can learn more about the
topic being explored.
• Links that you post in discussions can either go directly
to landing pages that have gated content (so you can
collect lead information), or else to other content (like a
blog post) that then links to that landing page. Be sure
to include a phone number for leads to call you.
• Ask questions and answer those from other LinkedIn
members to establish thought leadership and industry
expertise. This trust will make people more likely to click
on links you share in the future.
• You can even generate leads from comments left in
LinkedIn groups. Sometimes people will ask questions
about your product/service and you can either respond
publicly in the discussion, or trace the lead back to their
profile and use that as a jumping off point for contact.
ds 3 Times More Likely to
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Become Accounts Ifbyphone’s marketing team uses our own call tracking technology to monitor the source of all our phone leads, including Google PPC. We used that data to compare conversion rates of PPC web form downloads to phone calls:
PPC Lead Type Conversion RateWeb Form Download 3.17%Phone Call 5.28%Total: 8.45%
We learned that our PPC landing pages drive nearly twice as many phone leads as web downloads. This is important because LinkedIn Company Pages
Businesses often take advantage of LinkedIn company
pages for recruiting, but these pages can also be a
valuable asset for engaging with customers, informing
prospects of the products and services your business
provides, and generating leads.
Also, if we only measured web form downloads, we might see the 3.17% conversion rate and panic. We might spend time and resources testing new messaging, calls to action, and landing variations to improve it. But when you include phone calls, you get a conversion rate of 8.45%, which is
Figure 1. LinkedIn groups enable you to create discussions and share content.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
• The most effective company pages utilize target
keywords in company descriptions to improve search
visibility. The more you appear in search results, the
more followers your page will have.
• Cadence – posting on your company page should follow
a steady daily cadence.
• Messaging – keep your messaging consistent with your
brand, your website, and other social networks.
• Ensure that all of your product listings are up to date
and use keyword-rich text to describe your solutions.
Existing customers may come to this page looking to
learn more about your other services.
• Videos and images are key to attracting more followers
and leads – LinkedIn users are visual and respond well
to company pages rich with visual content.
• Add follow buttons on your website or blog to
encourage people to follow your company page on
LinkedIn.
• Like LinkedIn groups, posts on company pages can also
drive traffic to register for gated content and become
leads.
• Be sure to prominently display your phone number on
your LinkedIn company page. People looking to call
your business should be able to find your phone number
quickly.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 2. LinkedIn company pages are useful for promoting jobs, content, and products and services.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
LinkedIn Advertising
Similar to Google search ads, LinkedIn ads are text ads
(with a small image) that link back to a web page of your
choosing. One of the main benefits of LinkedIn ads is their
ability to target members by geography, industry, LinkedIn
groups, demographics, job function, job title, and more.
You can run ads on LinkedIn members profile pages, on the
LinkedIn home page, and on search results pages, group
pages, and more. LinkedIn ads can be a powerful tool not
only for generating buzz about your company, but also for
generating leads. Have ads link back to a landing page that
asks people to provide their contact information for content,
to request a demo of your product or service, or to have a
sales person contact them. These pages should also include
a prominent phone number so members can call you.
LinkedIn Analytics
The new analytics tools on LinkedIn can help you gain
a better understanding of what posts are successful at
generating clicks and interactions. LinkedIn analytics will
show you how many impressions, clicks, interactions, and
followers were driven by each of your posts (see Figure 4).
With the wealth of information you can acquire from
LinkedIn analytics, you can see the types of professionals
(and their industries) who are actively participating with your
company on the world’s largest professional social network.
This information can help you tailor the content you create
to industries that produce the most qualified leads for your
business.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 3. Ads on LinkedIn can promote a specific product or service, a LinkedIn group, your company page, and more.
Figure 4. LinkedIn analytics helps you understand the effectiveness of your posts and content.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
Twitter has reached over 200 million active users. If your
company is lacking a Twitter social strategy, it’s missing
out on a huge audience of potential customers. Twitter is a
place where businesses can interact with other businesses
to establish thought leadership and share useful content,
but it can also be an effective vehicle for generating leads.
Twitter Chats
To get more exposure for your Twitter account and content,
you can engage users in a Twitter chat. Use a specific
hashtag (phrase beginning with a “#”) for your conversation
and encourage people to ask questions and participate in
your discussion using the #hashtag you have specified.
Twitter Search
Using a little piece of code in Twitter search, you can find
people who are posting about your target keywords. Enter
http ? “your keyword here” (see Figure 5) into the Twitter
search bar and Twitter will return results for people asking
questions and having discussions about your keyword. This
information helps you target and follow specific people who
are talking about what you do and the services you provide.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 5. Search for Twitter users talking about your topic.
Figure 6. Sample results from a Twitter search.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Twitter Advertising
For companies looking to take their Twitter activity to the
next level, Twitter also offers Twitter ads. Advertising on
Twitter, much like search engine or display advertising, helps
your business generate more leads and broadens your
reach beyond your base of followers. You create campaigns
with specific targeting criteria such as interests, geography,
gender, or device type. You then specify your bids and
budget, much like bidding on keywords with Google
AdWords.
Twitter uses a Cost Per Engagement (CPE) model. So
instead of Cost Per Impression (CPM) or Cost Per Click
(CPC), you pay based on the number of engagements
you generate. An engagement takes a number of forms,
including retweets, clicks, follows, replies or favorites.
What’s nice about this model is you’ll only be charged when
someone actually engages with your brand in one of these
forms: you pay for your successes, not necessarily for the
existence of the ad itself. There are three different types
of advertising to consider: promoted accounts, promoted
tweets, and promoted trends.
Twitter is great platform for generating leads through
sharing content (be sure to share content that is behind a
registration page). It’s also an excellent place to interact
with your existing customers and inform them of additional
products and services that they may be interested in using.
Vine
Vine is useful for creating quick, creative, and fun marketing
videos that you can promote on your other social networks.
You have six seconds to get your message across in a Vine
video, so it isn’t the best vehicle to express elaborate ideas.
But it can be useful to generate buzz for a new product
launch or marketing campaign. Don’t be fooled by the six-
second limit, though; it can take an hour or two of editing to
make sure the video is just right.
To generate leads through Vine you can include a phone
number or email address in your video. For example, you
can make the last image or slide in your video a “Call Us
Now” call to action with a trackable phone number. You
can also have the Vine caption point to gated content or
a contact us form to gather contact information. Vine can
be also be successful when it is used as a the first step in
a content chain that links to other content that eventually
leads them to fill out a registration form.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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With more than 800 million daily active users, Facebook
is a social channel that marketers cannot afford to ignore.
The following are ways to generate a buzz and encourage
engagement on Facebook:
• Contests. Facebook is an excellent platform for B2B
marketers to host giveaways and contests. “Like
this post and be entered to win a free month of…”
or “Caption this photo to win…” are just a couple of
examples.
• Promoted posts. You can boost any post on Facebook
to help you get more exposure, likes, engagement,
comments, etc. The best promoted posts contain
compelling visual elements, offers, exclusive events, or
questions.
• Recruiting. Facebook has proved itself to be an
excellent medium for recruiting top talent across a wide
variety of industries. B2B marketers can use Facebook
to share knowledge of their company’s culture and
benefits. Visual elements are core to recruiting with
Facebook and attracting top talent.
• Visual content. All posts that your business shares on
Facebook should contain photos or videos. Build up
your business page with company videos, employee
photos, etc. and encourage employees to engage with
your business on Facebook.
Facebook is an excellent social platform for building brand
awareness, generating buzz for promotions and events, and
establishing company culture. While lead generation can be
more challenging through Facebook, it isn’t impossible. The
same way you might generate leads through content sharing
on Twitter applies to Facebook: link to landing pages with
clear calls to action and forms for viewers to download your
content, request a demo or consultation, etc.
As always, be sure your landing page includes a prominent
phone number for people to call to talk to you, and of
course make sure your business phone number is displayed
on the “About Us” section of your company page.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Google+
According to a 2013 article in Venture Beat, Google+ grew
33% from June 2012 to May 2013.2 Now, with more than
359 million active users, Google+ is quickly becoming one
of the world’s largest and most active social networks. It’s a
network that not only can help you generate leads through
content sharing, it can also help improve your SEO visibility.
Google+ and SEO
According to a 2013 study done by Moz, after page
authority, a URL’s number of Google+1s is more highly
correlated with search rankings than any other factor.3 The
study goes on to say that Google+ has qualities that make
it impact search engine rankings better than traditional SEO
practices. Simply put, if you don’t have an active Google+
page, your business is missing out on a prime opportunity
to improve your visibility in search results. Read on for more
Google+ tips:
• +1 links. The more people who like your business page,
the higher your Google+ page will rank in search engine
results.
• Geotagging. If your business page is set up with
location settings, when users search keywords that are
relevant to your page, your search engine results will
include your address and potentially a map with your
location. It’s ideal for local users searching for your
business, especially on a mobile device.
• Google circles. Circles are one way that Google+ lets
you segment your followers and people you follow into
different audiences. You can share different information
with certain circles, based on their interests or needs.
A popular way to segment your circles is by buyer
personas. Circles help you provide relevant content to
specific groups on users.
• Hangouts. Hangouts are chats and workshops that
you and other businesses can host and participate
in through Google+. You can connect over video
with current customers to address customer service
issues. You can also use this as a tool to connect with
prospects through a weekly chat series or training
sessions.
• +1 button. Make sure you include the +1 button on your
website. To set it up, follow the instructions found on
https://developers.google.com/+/web/+1button/
• Social extensions. You can now use +1’s you receive
on your Google+ page as a social extension in your
Google AdWords PPC ads (see Figure 7).
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
Again, in order to be successful at generating leads through
Google+, you should drive traffic to a registration page that
also includes a phone number.
Blogs
Most businesses by now have figured out that blogging is a
necessary piece of their marketing strategy. It helps you stay
relevant in search engine results pages, establish thought
leadership, announce product launches and updates, and
upsell and cross-sell to customers.
Blogging can also be a great way for B2B social marketers
to generate leads. You can include a clear call to action
within or at the end of your blog post that guides your
readers to download gated content on your website, request
a demo, email you, or call your business to learn more.
Make sure that your business phone number is prominently
displayed on your blog to make it easy for readers to call
you if they have an immediate interest in your post. For
gated content, be sure it expands on your blog topic. It
should provide actionable insight that readers can follow to
help their own business – not simply a sales pitch.
It’s important to monitor comments on your blog in the
same way you would monitor LinkedIn group comments.
It’s a good idea to require people posting comments on
your blog to provide an email address, that way when
someone posts a comment asking for pricing or additional
information, you can have a sales rep follow up with them
immediately. You may also want to approve comments
first instead of having them automatically go live – spam is
always present, and sometimes takes innocuous forms.
Finally, it can be a good idea in your blogs to link to free
non-gated content on occasion. Regularly sharing free
content will help you to retain followers and encourage
people to share your blogs with their networks. And don’t
forget to make sharing easier by including +1, Facebook,
LinkedIn, and Twitter share buttons.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 7. Google +1 social extension lets you show how many followers and +1’s your company has on Google+.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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SlideShare, YouTube, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon
SlideShare, YouTube, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon are
all visual social media networks. To succeed in each of
these networks, you should produce a steady stream of
compelling (even humorous) visual content in the form of
photos, videos, and slide decks.
SlideShare has more than 60 million monthly visitors.4 It’s
an ideal platform for sharing webinar decks, PDFs and other
visual presentations. The six most-used tags on the network
are statistics, business, marketing, trends, research, and
social media, making it a very relevant social platform for
B2B marketers.
SlideShare has a free plan that enables you to upload
content under a certain size, and also offers paid plans
where you can collect leads from content, view analytics,
upload videos, and more. Educational content performs
better than salesy content, so choose what to share wisely.
YouTube is an excellent place to host recordings of
webinars, product launch videos, demos, and other creative
video assets that your customers and prospects will find
useful. Be sure to have your own company channel set up
and include a description for each video using keyword-rich
text. You can include links in your videos that drive viewers
to downloadable content with registration forms or contact
us requests.
Be sure to display a phone number in your video messages
to encourage people to call your business. If you use a
unique call tracking number (more on that later on), you’ll
be able to tell how many phone calls your YouTube video
generates. You can also advertise on YouTube as part of the
Google Display Network (GDN) to generate leads through
banner ads and text ads.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
StumbleUpon is an online content discovery tool and
one of the Internet’s top sites for web traffic referral. To
give StumbleUpon a try, set up your company profile and
begin submitting content to promote. It’s always a good
idea to promote other people’s content just as often (or
more often) as your own, so you don’t appear too self-
promotional. You should also focus on promoting only your
most useful content in order to cultivate a reputation as a
trusted and valuable sharer. Give your content good titles
and descriptions so it stands out, and include important
keyword tags to help people find it. StumbleUpon also
offers paid promotion options if wish to spend budget to
achieve short-term boosts in content traffic.
Pinterest isn’t only for fashionistas and wedding planners.
If you have a compelling photo attached with a blog post or
white paper, don’t be afraid to share it on Pinterest. As long
as the written content is accompanied by attention grabbing
visual elements, it will share well on this platform. Once your
content gets the attention of pinners, you can encourage
them to click on your image to learn more. Then send them
to landing pages with relevant, gated content.
Businesses have also had success sharing infographics
on Pinterest. By including a prominent phone number on
your infographic, you can encourage viewers to call your
business to learn more about the content you shared.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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4 Tips from Olivia, Ifbyphone’s Social Media Specialist
1. Be consistent with your voice and keep the content as personalized as possible. Your audience wants to feel like they are engaging with a real person on social media, not just canned marketing messaging.
2. Don’t fear Pinterest – If you have great content accompanied by interesting images, your content will share well on this platform. Even if your product isn’t inherently visual, don’t be afraid to find images to illustrate the concepts you want to share.
3. Decide when to gate content with a form and when it should be free to your visitors. Not all content is created equal - you must be willing to give some away for free on your social networks.
4. Maintain a steady cadence on each of your networks. If you are posting 3-4 times per day on each network, stagger the times you post throughout the day. No one wants 4 of your tweets showing up in their news feed in a row. Also, use tools like followerwonk to find out when users are most likely to engage with your content. You may be posting at the least ideal time for your audience.
See more marketing tips from Olivia by subscribing to our blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/IfbyphoneBlog
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
Social Marketing for Mobile Devices
No social media strategy is complete without accounting
for mobile. Social media usage accounts for 31% of all
mobile Internet time – nearly twice as much as the time
users spend on email, the second most popular smartphone
activity. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube,
Google+...you name it, people are accessing it on their
smartphones.
Social media can be an effective tool for generating visits
to your mobile site and landing pages. That’s why it’s
important that when you drive people to your web pages
via social media, be sure those pages are optimized for
mobile viewing. Also, when your social media marketing
sends people to landing pages to register for content, keep
in mind that smartphone users would usually rather call
a business than fill out a form – it’s just easier and more
natural when you’re surfing with a smartphone. So be sure
to include a phone number prominently on your page and
make it clickable to instantly trigger a call from the visitor’s
smartphone (see Figure 8).
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 8. Click-to-call phone numbers on web pages trigger immediate calls from smartphone users.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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When it comes to proving the value of social media
marketing to execs (many of whom are social media
skeptics), marketers often look at the wrong data. While
top-of-the-funnel metrics such as clicks, likes, shares, and
engagement are all important metrics and useful in helping
you determine which content works best, most execs
don’t care about the top of the funnel. They care about the
middle-of-the-funnel metrics such as form registrations,
phone calls, store visits, and more that actually impact
the bottom of the funnel, i.e., accounts, revenue, and ROI.
That’s why B2B marketers should focus on data that shows
how their work generates qualified leads and revenue.
Marketers and execs alike should keep in mind that, when
it comes to lead gen, social media may not perform at the
same speed or level as other campaigns. Social media
conversion rates, days to close, and number of accounts
generated will probably be less than that of paid search,
webinars, and other campaigns.
How to Track Web Leads from Social Media
Tracking web form registrations from social media is the
first step to tracking leads. When someone visits one of
your landing pages and fills out a web form, the lead should
be tagged as belonging to the appropriate social media
source that referred it. You should then track that lead
through your sales funnel to see if it becomes revenue.
Doing this requires three pieces of technology, two of which
you are probably already using: marketing automation and
a CRM system. Marketing automation tools like Marketo,
Eloqua, and Pardot enable you to capture leads from web
forms and tie those leads to the marketing source (in this
case, the social media service and specific activity) that
referred them. This means that you can create reports
on how many leads each of your social media channels
generate.
What’s more, when you integrate your marketing automation
tools with a CRM system like Salesforce.com or SugarCRM,
you can track each of those social media leads through
the sales cycle, and that means being able to prove to
execs that each of your various social marketing activities
has generated X amount of web leads, Y amount of
opportunities, and Z amount of revenue.
Proving the Value of Social Media Takes the Right Data
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
The Often-Overlooked Analytics Tool: Call Tracking
If your social strategy is effective, tracking web leads
makes a strong statement about the value of social media
marketing. But it still only tells part of the story. What if
instead of filling out your form, the lead picks up the phone
and calls you? Can you tell exactly which social channel and
activity drove that call? Can you tell if the call even came
from social media at all?
Failing to track the inbound phone calls your social media is
generating can be problematic for two big reasons:
1. You might not be getting credit for a ton of social
marketing leads. If someone reads a blog and calls
sales, for example, or calls after watching a video you
post on LinkedIn or after reading about a contest you
posted on Facebook, you can’t prove it. And any CPL
(cost-per-lead) data will be wrong because your lead
numbers are off, making it appear as if you are spending
more per lead than you actually are.
2. Inbound phone calls are often from leads who are ready
to engage with a sales manager, and therefore more
likely to become revenue than a web lead. (An internal
study of our own leads at Ifbyphone uncovered that
phone leads are 3x more likely to become accounts.)
Phone leads are also the lead type more sales managers
prefer (see Figure 9). Phone calls are the leads you most
need to track back to your social channels.
That’s why the third tool marketing teams should use is
a call tracking tool. Call tracking software enables you to
include unique trackable phone numbers in your social
media pages, profiles, landing pages, and posts (as well as
the content you drive people to through social channels).
Even if a lead visits your web site before calling you, call
tracking tools can still tell you how that caller found your site
and the specific social post they called from.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Figure 9. Larger percentage of sales managers rate telephone leads as “excellent” or “good” – more than any other lead type.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
What Is Call Tracking?
Call tracking is a form of lead attribution and marketing
analytics technology. Marketers use it to track inbound
phone calls back to the specific marketing source that
originated them and then follow those leads through the
sales cycle to revenue.
Call tracking enables marketers to understand what
marketing sources – including offline, online, and mobile
ads; campaigns; keyword searches; web pages; pieces of
content; direct mail or email blasts; and social media activity
– generate phone leads and revenue – and which don’t.
How Call Tracking Works
Call tracking technology works by giving you clean trackable
phone numbers (local, toll-free, or vanity) that you insert in
your marketing material. When someone calls one of those
numbers, you’ll know exactly what source they’re calling
from and be able to pin that source data with the lead
information. If that lead goes on to become an opportunity
or a customer, you can tie those events and revenue back to
the original source, so you can understand and prove how
your marketing is impacting lead generation and sales.
For tracking leads that call you directly from offline ads (like
print or TV), content (like eBooks, webinars, or videos), and
social media profile pages (like LinkedIn and Facebook), call
tracking is a fairly basic concept. You simply:
1. Insert a trackable phone number obtained from the call
tracking software in your marketing materials or on your
profile pages.
2. Attribute those numbers in the software to their
respective source.
3. Tell the software where to route the call, and you’re off.
All calls will still come to you, and the callers won’t know
the difference, but you will be able to tie the call back to
the specific source that originated it.
4. Use call tracking software to generate reports on the
calls each source generates.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
For online and mobile sources such as Twitter or LinkedIn
PPC ads where people visit a web page first before calling,
call tracking works a bit differently by using a technique
called dynamic number insertion (DNI). DNI automatically
displays a unique call tracking phone number on your web
pages based on the referral source.
Here’s a summary of how it works:
1. First, you should include a phone number prominently
on your web pages for people to call.
2. You then replace that phone number in the HMTL with
a small snippet of call tracking JavaScript code you get
from the call tracking software.
3. The code then automatically displays a unique phone
number on your web pages for each visitor based on
how they got there (i.e., Google or Bing keyword search,
Twitter PPC ad, banner ad, social media post, etc.).
4. When the visitor calls the number, the phone lead is
attributed in call tracking reports to the right referral
source, including the exact keyword search.
And like marketing automation tools, you can integrate
call tracking tools with your CRM system (see Figure
10) to follow each phone lead from social media through
to revenue. If you use these three technologies (marketing
automation, call tracking, and CRM) together, you have the
data you need to paint a simple, powerful picture of social
media’s effectiveness at generating leads and customers.
Instead of forcing execs to sit through 30 slides of data on
how social media marketing is driving likes and retweets,
you can show them what they really care about: a single
impactful slide proving how your social strategy (along with
all your other marketing) is generating leads and revenue.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
19
Figure 10. Include social phone call data in your CRM dashboards and reports.
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
20
If you decide to explore call tracking, you may wish to try
a technology called voice-based marketing automation
(VBMA). VBMA is cloud-based software built specifically
for marketers. With VBMA, marketers can easily implement
call tracking for all of their marketing campaigns (including
social media) and integrate that data with their CRM and
even Google Analytics and Universal Analytics data.
What’s more, call tracking is just one piece of VBMA. It also
includes phone lead routing, recording, scoring, and more
that marketers use to fully understand and control their
phone leads the same way they do for their web leads.
• Call routing: Ensure phone leads go to the right sales
rep by routing inbound calls to groups of sales agents
or individual agents based the caller’s geography, time
of day, the marketing sources they called from, and
more. Agents can answer calls from anywhere on any
device they choose.
• Lead scoring: If you want to qualify inbound
calls before passing to sales, VBMA provides IVR
(interactive voice response) technology than can
automatically score phone leads using any questions
you choose. The IVR will only pass high-scoring leads to
sales.
• Call recording: Call recordings provide a wealth of
information for marketers to mine. What terminology do
prospects use? How do they describe their pain points?
Use this knowledge to build more effective marketing
campaigns and sales pitches.
• Convert web leads into instant sales calls: When a
lead fills out a wen form, the longer it takes sales to
contact them, the worse the chances of conversion.
VBMA can help by triggering an immediate call to your
sales reps whenever someone fills out a form. If the rep
accepts, VBMA will then call the lead and connect the
two in conversation.
To learn more about the different ways you can use
VBMA for lead reporting, scoring, routing, recording, and
management read, “Tracking Phone Leads: The Missing
Piece of Marketing Automation.”
Voice-Based Marketing Automation for Social Media Call Tracking and More
B2B Lead Generation for Social Media: Tips for Generating and Tracking Phone Leads
The first step in a successful social media strategy is original
and useful content. Once your business has established a
set cadence for content creation, you can follow the tips
outlined in this white paper for each social media channel to
increase engagement, generate and track leads, and prove
ROI to execs.
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. | (866) 245-4479 | www.ifbyphone.com | twitter.com/Ifbyphone | Ifbyphone.com/blog
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Next Steps
Call (866) 245-4479 to learn how Ifbyphone can help you track leads back to social media. You can also request a demo of Ifbyphone’s solution at www.ifbyphone.com.
Sources:1. Chief Marketer, Social Media Marketing Survey, 2011
2. Venture Beat, July 2013
3. Moz, August 2013
4. Social Media Examiner, March 2013
Conclusion
About Ifbyphone
Ifbyphone, the leader in voice-based marketing automation
(VBMA), connects, measures and optimizes sales and
service calls for businesses and organizations. Ifbyphone’s
VBMA solutions capture and manage phone leads and
information that often slip through the cracks of traditional
marketing automation and CRM software solutions.
The Ifbyphone product suite is a set of software-as-a-service
applications including call tracking, hosted IVR (interactive
voice response), call routing, virtual call center and voice
broadcasting. Organizations of all sizes in all industries use
Ifbyphone, including marketing agencies, lead generation,
e-commerce, direct response, financial services and
insurance, health care, retail and logistics, and SaaS and
technology. For more information, visit www.ifbyphone.com
www.ifbyphone.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ifbyphone
Facebook: http://facebook.com/ifbyphone
(866) 245-4479
300 West Adams Street, 9th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606
© 2013 Ifbyphone, Inc. All rights reserved.
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