Everyone's talking about social media today. How do I use it? How do I measure the ROI? Etc. Etc.
I've written more than one post about the importance of helping clients to navigate these new waters, and have had mixed reaction from my readers. The most common objection stems from the question of "why should an agency promote an area that doesn't represent a defined revenue stream". My answer to that argument is that if your agency doesn't find a way to help your clients understand these new tools, then another agency will. Agencies can do their clients a great favor by helping them to figure out if social media can help to grow their business. Here are some thoughts on how to do this.
I recently came across a report on The State of Inbound Marketing, published by Hubspot in February, 2010. The primary focus of the report is on the growing importance of inbound marketing tools for lead generation, including blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, social media and social networks.
While I'm not in agreement with their self-serving conclusion that traditional outbound channels like direct mail, telemarketing and trade shows have become "less effective over time as buyers have behaviorally and technologically (e.g. TIVO, spam filters, "do-not-call" lists) tuned these interruptive campaigns out", no one can deny the growing power and impact of inbound tools, especially social media. Many businesses are aggressively changing their lead generation marketing efforts to explore and add programs that allow customers to find them.
Marketers who are actively engaged in, or actively exploring, social media can find many interesting conclusions in this study to help them plan their own approach. Here are a few that I found interesting and enlightening:
1. Company blogs are the fastest growing and continue to be deemed the most important lead generation service for their business, with 85% of users rating blogs as critical, important or useful. Almost half of the companies using blogs (46%) have acquired a customer from a blog-generated lead, the highest for any social media channel.
2. Twitter was ranked as the second most effective inbound tool for lead generation with 71% of users rating it as "useful or better". This was almost double the 39% of positive users in the 2009 study, and reinforces the belief by many "committed business Tweeters" that when Twitter is used properly, it can be a valuable addition to a marketer's toolkit.
3. Facebook ranked third in importance with 61% of users touting its importance, barely edging out LinkedIn, which had ranked third in the 2009 study. An interesting side note to this conclusion is that Facebook has been more effective in customer acquisition for B2C businesses and LinkedIn more effective for acquiring B2B customers.
4. Other reported inbound tools - StumbleUpon, Digg and MySpace - all declined in usage and perceived importance. MySpace has virtually fallen off the radar as a lead generation tool with only 10& of users rating the site as "useful" or better.
There are other interesting facts and conclusions in this report relating to cost per lead, lead generation budget allocations by category and company size, the importance of blog frequency, etc. You can download the full report and other useful information at www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources.
Whether you use this report, and other input, to help your clients undertand and utilize social media is up to you. If it were my agency, I would find a way.
