Tag Archive for: Social Media

Lead Liaison

Marketing at the Top of the Funnel

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Marketing at the Top of the FunnelWhat does it mean to focus your marketing at the “top of the funnel?” The sales funnel is essentially a model that depicts the purchasing process of prospects. The top of the funnel, the widest part, is where your brand makes itself known to the potential customer; this is prospect awareness and education. As the funnel narrows, so does your prospect pool. Here, your marketing and sales efforts become much more direct and personalized and you can focus on quality lead nurturing. The bottom of the funnel is when the purchase is made—leads turn into paying customers. When you maintain strong marketing at the top of the funnel, the bottom of the funnel should never be empty.

Marketing at the top of the funnel can include several different types of practices; a couple of the most successful include social media marketing and content marketing (namely, via blogging). Take a look at all of your current marketing channels: email marketing, blog posts, search ads, social media posts, how-to videos, etc. Which are the ones that educate prospects and invite them to explore your website? In order to answer that question, you need to have a solid understanding of who your prospects are and what they’d like to know. The best way to figure that out is to monitor your marketing analytics so you can keep an eye on the numbers that matter in terms of your company’s goals. Taking a look at these numbers will show you which articles are most popular, what your social media followers like to read, and which landing page designs are most effective in terms of leading the prospect to the information they are looking for.

As far as the overall process of the funnel, here’s a simplistic overview:

  1. Start with content marketing (blog/social media).
  2. Insert links that take the visitor to your landing pages.
  3. Provide something of value on the landing pages (for example, whitepaper downloads).
  4. Continue to nurture the lead with personalized information that helps them to make their purchasing decision.

When implementing marketing at the top of the funnel, communication between marketing and sales is key. This allows the sales process to continually evolve and increase effectiveness with each cycle. An effective marketing plan leads to a more effective sales process. Involving marketing at the top of the funnel means implementing productive marketing strategies at the early stages of a prospect’s interactions. Here, you can weed out the ones who are not likely to turn in to paying customers, saving your sales team time on those wasted efforts.

Lead Liaison

Social Monitoring: Do You Need It?

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Social Monitoring: Do You Need It?Many businesses implement complex marketing automation systems with a goldmine of data coming in – yet never seem to think about social monitoring. Taking a look at how customers behave when they use your website or view your marketing materials can give you a ton of great information, but you’re not always going to get the full picture of a user’s behavior scope.

While you’re confronted with raw data that can inform your marketing plan and increase branding or even sales, you may be missing out on valuable information that puts you in the loop about what customers are actually looking for. By monitoring conversations surrounding your brand and relevant keywords, you can get a better idea of how to craft customized content and engage with your audiences at a higher level.

Social Monitoring: What is It?

In a nutshell, social monitoring is about watching what your customers are tuning into online in order to make decisions about the types of content you put out there and how you represent your brand.

For instance, if you own a tire company and communicate with customers directly on your Facebook page, you may find that a decent amount of customers ask questions about flats – repairing tires, when to buy new tires and how to avoid driving on a tire that is in dangerously bad shape. You see social media conversations on your Facebook as well as web searches asking questions about tires.

However, major news stories are out there highlighting the dangers of driving in various weather conditions without the appropriate tire. Your competitors are engaging in dialogue with potential customers on their own Facebook pages and within various news stories about tire conditions in bad weather.  If you’re not having these conversations, you’re missing out on putting yourself and your expertise in front of customers in a way that would result in brand recognition and sales.

Engaging Socially

The above is a simplistic example, but you can apply it to just about any industry. There are plenty of ways to figure out the kinds of things your customers want to talk about. Check hashtags on Twitter, set up an alert for your core business keywords using http://alerts.google.com, or incentivize customers to complete online surveys that gauge what types of topics they’re interested in talking about. You can also look to click through and open rate in your email marketing efforts to determine what content best engages customers.

Marketing automation is a must for your business, but the more data you can collect from other channels, the more reliably you can determine the best direction for your marketing. You deserve a marketing automation dashboard that gives you everything in a package – from article writing to social monitoring to robust reports and engagement suggestions. Check out Lead Liaison’s dashboard to find out more about how a well-rounded marketing automation tool can take your business to the next level!

Lead Liaison

How to Integrate Social Media with your Lead Tracking

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Integrate Social Media with your Lead TrackingTo maximize your online presence, it’s important to make sure you’ve got all of your social media channels covered and that you’re regularly posting to each one. Keeping track of posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. can be a full-time job on its own. Save time and employee resources by letting marketing automation help you integrate social media with your lead tracking practices.

By tracking all of your marketing activity, including website traffic, targeted email opens, and clicks via social media campaigns, your marketing team can get a better understanding of which marketing channels are most effective and produce the highest quality leads. When you integrate social media with your lead tracking system that is already in place, you have a greater chance of generating quality leads that are more likely to convert.

With Lead Liaison’s social media solution, you have the ability to keep track of who is clicking which links, how often they’re doing so, and which of those prospects end up converting—all in one place. Using lead tracking software alongside social media campaigns allows you to track and measure real-time visitor activity and clearly see where site traffic is coming from to determine which of your marketing efforts are most successful in relation to your customer base.

Here are some capabilities to take advantage of when you integrate your social media with your lead tracking:

  • Scheduling: Create a predefined schedule for your social media posts. Spend a few hours Monday morning (or whenever you prefer) creating all the posts you’ll need for the week, and set up a time and day to send each one out. You can even create “canned messages,” which are multi-use messages that you don’t have to worry about retyping each time.
  • Nurturing: If you integrate social media with your lead tracking, you have the ability to better understand your prospects’ needs. This empowers you to send out more personalized and direct messages that your prospects are more likely to respond to. Tracking leads in this way also helps your team to manage who needs to be nurtured and who is ready to be given to sales and move on to the next level.
  • Enrich prospects’ profiles: Joining lead tracking practices with your social media campaigns also helps manage and update the prospects that are already in your pipeline, lending to a better understanding of their online activity, and can ultimately suggest their buying readiness. Keep track of shares and clicks and add that information to their profile in your system.

Most importantly, having that connection between tracking your leads efficiently and managing your social media marketing allows you to communicate with prospects more directly and effectively, leading to a higher conversion rate. Take advantage of your marketing automation system and integrate social media with your lead tracking.

Lead Liaison

Social Media Planning and the Super Bowl

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Social media planning could be the key to truly getting your brand out there and making a post viral – especially during a big game or event like the Super Bowl. Did you tune in last weekend? If so, you might have been there for the big Bowl, for the halftime show or even just for the commercials. Super Bowl organizers know how to do it right – they throw in a little something for everyone to pile on as many extra viewers as possible.

Social media is no different – now it’s standard to live tweet big events like Bowl games, so of course big brands are getting on board. JC Penney’s ‘mitten’ tweets are now famous –

JCPenney Super Bowl Ad

People seriously thought someone in JCPenney’s social media department was partying a little too hard during the big bowl game and might not have a job come Monday. Then this happened:

JCPenney Super Bowl Ad

At the time of this writing, the last JCPenney mittens tweet received 3718 retweets and 1985 favorites. Not bad!

Careful Social Media Planning

Utilizing social networks to broadcast messages like these is a great idea. On Superbowl Sunday, your audience is going to be in front of the TV, but will also have laptops and smartphones out live tweeting and Facebooking about the event. This means that your brand should definitely be at the party – but with conscious content that’s relevant to the event at hand.

Sure, you can sell your services – but events like these are a time to figure out how you can present them in a way that’s fun and relates to the Super Bowl. You also don’t have to be stuck in front of your computer during the big event – you can use Lead Liaison and other tools to create great content and schedule it before you leave the house. This will allow you to ensure the right social media is posted and gets out there during the big game.

Answering Back

Even if you’re busy during major events, ensure you spend some time the next day responding to Tweets and Facebook questions about your posts. Being there for your audience is a big part of not only being recognized as an interactive brand – tweeting back can increase the visibility of your posts and your marketing message.

You can automate everything. Good social media planning allows you to take the time you need to enjoy your Sunday while your marketing is still doing its work. The Lead Liaison team would love to help engage your social media planning into something that ends up in tremendous results. Let’s talk today!

Lead Liaison

Why Social Media Content Should Include Text

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Why Social Media Content Should Include TextSocial media content is what drives engagement for your brand. Whether you’re posting just a few times a week or interacting daily with your customers, it’s important to create and maintain a social media presence over time.

Part of creating a social media content strategy is knowing what your customers want to see. For many businesses, the only way to truly find this out is to test various forms of content over time. Many people respond better to images, some to news stories, some to blogs from your own site. And of course, there are infographics.

The Power of the Infographic

Infographics are awesome, but splitting up your content into different types will really determine how your audience wishes to engage with you. You can never really be sure what will go over best. It’s a good idea not to make the assumption that every person in your audience is a visual person and enjoys seeing their social media content in picture form. Images don’t appeal to everyone – in part because they don’t always load quickly on certain connections.

Facebook is Not Instagram

Instagram is a great way to share image content. You can even use that content to showcase your products or services. As long as you’re interacting with other Instagram users, they’ll follow you and you’ll have an opportunity to put what you’re selling right in front of them. It can truly be a powerful platform.

Because Facebook is capable of hosting various types of multimedia content, why not set up your company Instagram to send images straight to your Facebook? That way you can save your Facebook postings for social media content relevant to information from your site, news posts, blogs or other text-ready updates.

Social Media Content is Necessary

If you’re posting a few times a week, you may not have enough content out there to drive engagement. This is particularly the case if you’re only posting images and not sharing multiple forms of content. It’s a good rule of thumb to mix up your content and test it using all the capabilities Instagram has to offer.

Some folks stick to images because they simply don’t have the wordsmithing abilities to create blogs and content for their site, much less social media content updates. We can help! Lead Liaison offers social media content services right within your dashboard. Simply send out your request and our writers will take care of your needs within a specific timeframe – whether you’re looking for social media content updates, blogs or other pieces of writing. Let’s talk about your content needs today!

Lead Liaison

SEO is Dead, Content Lives

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SEO is Dead, Content LivesSEO is Dead, Content LivesIt’s possible you’ve heard the headlines throughout 2013: “Is SEO Dead?” Search engine marketing experts are still working to figure out how Google’s algorithm changes this year affect websites on the whole. Out of all the research that’s been done and the rankings that were tallied, the truth is emerging: content is king and SEO is dead.

It’s Time To Beef Up Your Content

The “Is SEO Dead” question has little to do with whether or not people will still use search engines to find what they need. They absolutely will. It’s evident that with sites tanking, more and more small businesses will rely on PPC to get their websites and products out there to users. Traditional SEO isn’t dead – but the “tricks” advertisers have used over the years to game the search engines aren’t going to apply anymore. Old-fashioned, keyword optimized onsite content is going to be the only true way to rank up through the search engines and make your site indexable.

The more content and the more relevance to your audience, the better. It’s not just about putting as much content out there as possible – it’s about making sure your content is engaging and your audience wants to see it. The more eyes on your content, the more comments and the more general engagement from social media, the more you will find yourself ranking.

Is SEO Dead?

As long as it’s possible to be on the search engines, and as long as people are typing in their chosen keywords, SEO isn’t dead. It’s very much alive and kicking – and not just because our advertising partners are still doing well for their clients, but because people are still using Google – and because it’s still possible to get your site to the top of the search engines.

If you’re not creating good content for your site right now, there’s no better time. Websites who have been upset or penalized by Hummingbird are trying to rebuild their sites to catch up with the latest updates, so you have just as much of a window to create content as they do. Don’t wait – get started creating keyword-rich content that your audience will love today and watch your website excel.

If you’re looking for content resources to help SEO your website, we have what you need! Our Lead Liaison dashboard provides an opt-in content resource that allows you to receive the postings you need. Our writers are a trusted, proven resource for clients who can provide content that comes right in through your Lead Liaison marketing automation dashboard. Talk to us about our content resources today!

Lead Liaison

Do You Have Time for Your Social Media Marketing?

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Do you have time for social media marketing?Your social media marketing commitment has to be one you can handle. There’s really no alternative – regardless of whether you’re hiring someone to do your social media or making time weekly to do it yourself, keeping an eye on your social media and how it affects your overall marketing campaigns is critical to success.

Hiring

Some people alleviate their social media management issues by hiring a team to take care of their Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media marketing pages. This is always a great idea if you can afford it- but what about supervision? How will you know your social media marketing team has your best interests in mind and is posting engaging content that’s relevant to your business?

Ask any team you’re considering working with if they have a strategic way of targeting your audience. You should also ask how and when they plan on reporting back to you. If you or someone on you team isn’t monitoring an advertising team you outsource to, you won’t have any control over what’s posted about you.

Making Time for Social Media Marketing

Time constraint is a huge factor in how social media marketing is handled. You can schedule time weekly to check out engagement, use a social media aggregator and make any necessary updates to your profiles. However, many folks are going a step beyond that. Some small business owners vow to check into social media daily and answer questions, but simply don’t have the time to do it.

If you’re doing your own social media marketing, methodology is important. Have a set schedule that includes what tasks need to be done for the week along with a time frame. If you can’t make time to do these tasks week after week, or someone on your team isn’t doing them efficiently, it’s time to look at other options like outsourcing.

Tracking Social Media

Engagement is about more than getting people to notice you, come to your website and buy from you.  It’s about building trust between you and your customers. Analytics and tracking allow you to see how effective your social media marketing campaigns truly are. If you’re not checking metrics such as brand mentions, clicks to your website from social media or new followers, you could be missing a good opportunity to leverage more interaction for your brand.

Most analytics tracking systems don’t give you the data you need to single out and nurture individual customers who come from your social media marketing efforts. Lead Liaison can! Talk to us today about upping your social media game and tracking customers from entrance to exit.

Lead Liaison

7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

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7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing CampaignMarketers have been flooding social media channels for over three years now. Some brand leaders have effectively embedded social campaigns into their marketing strategies. But many companies are still struggling with making social effective. Why? After several days of research, we’ve uncovered several common mistakes companies are making in their social marketing practices. Here are some thoughts on how to deploy your social media marketing effectively.

Maintain a dialogue – Don’t simply post links to blogs or company web pages. Social media sites are for being “social” (conversing and sharing) so balance informative posts with conversation generators. Pose a thought-provoking question every now and then to get followers to truly engage with your brand.

Uncover what your social circles/followers are doing – find out what interests them, what they are talking about, or what they are sharing. As with any marketing campaign, success starts with knowing your audience well. Take the time to learn about what is important to your followers before posting, tweeting, or “liking”.

Follow others and connect on their social pages – Gaining followers is not a one-way proposition. Buyers, brand advocates, and other stakeholders want to feel they are important to you. If someone elects to connect with your social channel, connect with their channel.

Visit your competitors’ social pages – What better way to find out what your competitors are up to than by monitoring their social pages. Posts on their social pages may reveal common problems your market is having or provide opportunities to address their shortcomings on your social channels. More importantly, you may be able to uncover their strategies.

Join a conversation – Hashtags and other tags allow you to connect with leads that are interested in specific topics. By embedding a hashtag, you join a conversation about common issues, challenges, attitudes, and more. Doing so not only provides an opportunity to link to a specific audience but can signify that certain topics share importance to you and your followers and that you wish to provide more information to your leads.

Use the appropriate strategy for the appropriate social site – Not all social media sites are created equal. For example, Pinterest is for photo-sharing – use images that will generate sharing. Select your photos carefully. Shots of employees or someone using your product may be of interest to your company but won’t likely pick up many followers. Choose images that are funny, cute, awe-inspiring, or memorable in some other way and connect the image to your brand. Facebook has yet to develop hashtags effectively, so deploy hashtags on Twitter or Tumblr instead.

Share responsibly – Things have kind of gotten out of hand with the hashtag craze. Now any phrase under 140 characters can be a hashtag. Make sure to deploy hashtags that are useful to your social circles; they should be relevant to your audience, common enough to be part of a larger conversation, and connect your prospects’ minds with your brand.

Our automated posting feature can be a great way to connect with your audience – if used properly. For more information on integrating social media with marketing automation, connect with Lead Liaison!

Lead Liaison

Social Posting for Lead Management Success

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Social Posting for Lead Management SuccessThese days, B2B marketers are using social posting for lead management success and lead management purposes. Social media engagement is still a fairly new tactic but there are a few rules that have been established that should be followed in order to achieve success at managing leads through this channel.

Post Frequently – But Not Too Frequently

While there is no magic formula for exactly how often to post on social sites, most marketers consider 3-6 daily posts as sufficient to generate views. Keep in mind that posting will likely not be effective if overused. It’s extremely important not to post simply for the sake of putting something out there. Viewers want substance so, unless there is something meaningful to post, avoid filling up your leads’ post feeds.

Social media managers are constantly concerned with the best time of day to post. The answer often varies depending on the channel. Professional sites like LinkedIn are most often viewed before and after work hours, while Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are more heavily visited at different times throughout the day. Most SM experts agree that posting at night is very ineffective.

Which days are most effective? That depends on the site but most SM visits occur early in the week (Monday – Thursday). Image/video sites like Pinterest or Instagram are frequently visited on the weekend while LinkedIn has more traffic at the beginning of the week.

Use Hashtags to Join or Create Conversations

Hashtags (phrases starting with “#”) are used to group comments around specific topics, such as #marketing automation or #generate quality leads. By embedding a hashtag in your post, you connect a post to a conversation about that topic. This tactic helps to gain exposure and provides a way to establish a knowledge authority or thought leadership position.

Microblogging sites like Twitter, Tumblr,  Flickr, and Google+ are channels where you can deploy hashtags. They can be placed anywhere within the post and posters can embed multiple hashtags in one post. If enough site members promote a hashtag by retweeting or sharing, that hashtag will “trend”, which means the term will appear in trending topics for that site.

Provide Answers

Use social posting as a means to help your markets overcome issues or challenges. SM is an effective way to display your expertise and willingness to provide solutions. Post links to content that shows how to troubleshoot a problem or optimize your solutions. Social posts are a great way to build links back to site pages that address customer concerns or provide FAQs.

Linking to reputable knowledge authorities in your industry can be effective at supporting your online presence. Connect your account with popular figures that can help provide credibility and confidence in your company.

Don’t use social media to broadcast features or benefits of your solutions. While buyers may include SM as part of their purchasing research, they don’t often use this channel to discover new products. Prospects will likely turn to SM to see what others are saying about available solutions (in the same vein as review sites), so avoid making claims or promoting your solutions. (However, social sites may be appropriate to post upcoming event announcements or other one-time experiences.)

When used wisely, automated social media posting can drive website traffic, engage your leads, and provide an effective public image for your B2B company.

Lead Liaison

Forrester Research is Telling B2B to Go Social: We Agree

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Forrester Research is Telling B2B to Go Social – We AgreeForrester Research is telling B2B to go social. They released its results of the company’s most recent Technographics® survey, one which polled 382 North American and European decision-makers at companies with 100 or more employees.

Forrester’s report uncovered some incredibly high social media usage statistics. The study revealed that 100% – yes 100% – of respondents use social media in some capacity for work-related purposes.  In addition, 98% of business decision-makers are “spectators”; they read blogs, watch videos, listen to podcasts, etc. for work-related purposes.

To a lesser extent, nearly 80% are “joiners” who maintain a profile on networking sites for business purposes. The study also found that 75% of business decision-makers are “critics”. They comment on blogs or post ratings and reviews for products and services.

This confirms what many CMOs and marketing strategists already know:  businesses should be investing in social media. Interestingly, however, the social sites that most may think of may not be the best channels for B2B engagement. LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have their advantages, such as huge mature communities. For outreach, those sites are effective at building audiences.

For marketing engagement purposes, the Forrester study suggests that niche communities are more often for specific purposes, such as to solve a technical problem or ask a community for recommendations. Forrester blogger Zachary Reiss-Davis writes, “for example, business technology buyers might visit IT Central Station or Spiceworks to learn more about multiple competing technologies at once; alternatively, they might visit a community managed by a single brand, such as the Cisco Communities or SAP Community Network.”

We have believed what Forrester uncovered. Social engagement is a vital new toolbox in the war for buyers. This belief led to the release of our social posting automation interface. Some may argue that automation takes the sociability out of the equation but we disagree: as Forrester has shown, B2B decision-makers expect SM to be a channel for marketing – and they’re all in communities out there.

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