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Lead generation might be a top goal for B2B marketers in 2015, but social media isn’t where they’re expecting to bring in qualified prospects, according to a new BrightTalk report.
In fact, social media and print advertising ranked the lowest on a list of 15 different lead generation tactics. A full 30 percent said these are ineffective lead gen tools and just 12 percent said they’re highly successful. On the contrary, email marketing was cited as the top tool, with 55 respondents saying it’s effective.
In an era when 7 out of 10 people utilize social media (and the average social media user is active 2 hours and 25 minutes daily), this is unsettling data. Marketers who consider social media ineffective for lead gen need to reconsider their current strategies and revamp what they’re doing to both promote the brand and nurture people to take the next step to learn more....
How many benefits of social marketing can you think of?
Social media can be used in so many ways – to develop your brand, increase SEO rankings, distribute content, acquire leads, and more. While many blogs talk about these benefits, there are very few that attempt to outline the “big picture” of social media or a comprehensive list of its benefits.
I decided to take a stab at it and ended up with 75 benefits of social media marketing. Below is an infographic with a compiled list of benefits. Check it out and see which benefits your brand is potentially missing on social media....
Last year, IBM poured some cold water on social advertising when it said social sites like Twitter and Facebook had almost no impact on online Black Friday sales.
This year, things aren’t much better.In tracking traffic and sales at about 800 e-commerce sites, IBM says it found that only about one percent of visits to e-commerce sites this week come from social networks, according to Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM. And, once again, just a fraction of one percent of overall orders are made by people coming to the e-commerce site directly from a social network, he said.
“I don’t think the implication is that social isn’t important,” Henderson said earlier this week. “But so far it hasn’t proven effective to driving traffic to the site or directly causing people to convert.”...
Why Social Media & Search Marketing go hand in hand. Taking the example of the Flower & Gifts Industry.
...We believe that Social Media and Search Marketing go hand in hand because Social conversations can lead keyword strategy in a certain direction, and Search keywords can influence Social content strategy. By combining your Search & Social Marketing efforts, you can make sure to provide your audience with the right content, based on what they search for the most and what engages them on Social Media. Today we will take a look at the Flowers & Gifts Industry as an example of Social Media & Search Marketing alignment...
As data gets bigger, more ubiquitous, and more social, you’re right in assuming that at least some of it is important to you and your business. You’re posting regularly and engaged with social media. But are you using it correctly? Getting optimal results for your business? And how, exactly, are you supposed to know?
The trick is to identify specifically what social data is relevant – and to analyze just exactly what that data means. There are a slew of metrics, tools, and services to help you make sense of your business’ social data, as with any other data you’re managing.
As a general rule, seek out rates and more nuanced metrics, avoid overemphasizing simple counts and totals. Here, we highlight five of the most important social media metrics you should be tracking – and they’re not just the usual suspects....
Building a small business content marketing strategy is hard work, but it’s probably about to get much harder. Many subject matter experts believe that our current state of content overload is just the calm before the storm. As Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners spectates, “the rush to content marketing in every industry will make it harder and harder for your brand to rise above the noise.” If your entire strategy to date has relied on doing what you competitors already did, a few weeks later, it’s definitely time to pause and reset. To inspire you to a more original small business strategy that’s built to weather an era where literally every company blogs, Tweets, and pens eBooks, we’ve taken inspiration from some of the hardest-working companies on the block: B2B companiess with brilliant content.
Social Media plays an increasingly important role in many business marketing efforts. It’s one of the pillars of a successful Inbound Marketing strategy, and with as little as 6 hours of dedicated effort a week, a small business can see improved sales results. While increased usage is great sign that business is adapting, there are some all-to-common errors that prevent business owners from taking full advantage of everything social media offers. It’s particularly important since recent research has shown the average time spent using social media is increasing. According to research from HubSpot, more than 85% of Internet users have Facebook accounts and 49% are on Twitter. In other words, your prospects are using social media. Since social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, it’s important to eliminate the stumbles. Here are 5 simple tips that will help you reach your prospects more effectively using social media:...
Whether it’s your website, blog, brochure, newsletter, Facebook page, press release or newspaper ad, nobody reads your content because they’re simply enamored with your business. Why? Because nobody cares about your business. Don’t take it personally. And please, stop scowling at me because I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve heard this. People read your marketing content because they’re looking for answers to questions. The first of these questions is usually, “What can your business do for me?”...
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This growing mass of information and options–often combined with unrelenting interruption marketing–can be overwhelming. When the distracted consumer is the norm and it becomes increasingly harder to separate the signal from the noise, more is often less.
As our customers’ world grows ever noisier our reflexive response is often to dial things up to 11. Resist that urge.
The new battle ground is for share of attention. And we earn and command attention not through shouting louder than everyone else, throwing more at the wall to see what sticks or defaulting to using price as the only arrow in our quiver.
The antidote to a tsunami of stuff is to know more about our customers than the competition and to turn that insight into intensely relevant products and experiences....
Use the examples of how these small businesses use Twitter to create a loyal following for your own business.
Small businesses hear all the time how effective content marketing is but often they are resistant to allocating their limited budgets and precious time to it because: 1. Good content takes time to develop; 2. And it doesn’t immediately lead to paying customers.
Even though it’s time-consuming and you won’t see ROI today, content marketing – when done well – can become the driving force in your sales machine for years to come.To help you look at it from different standpoints, I reached out to 6 content strategists with one question: “How can content marketing help small businesses generate leads and drive revenue?”...
B2B firms are natural candidates for inbound marketing and content strategy campaigns. Many entrepreneurs believe that effective inbound marketing efforts require tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and at least a year to get traction in the marketplace. However, with content marketing, it’s possible to make a significant impact against specific metrics in a short period of time.
Here’s a plan that’s achievable for any content marketer or entrepreneur at a B2B firm. If you’re strategic, you can plan, develop, launch, and begin to reap the benefits of a content marketing campaign in as little as sixty days. Ready to learn how? Read on....
Shift the way you think about content by seeing how it can actually save you time and money in the long run.
Think of content as an investment, if only for the SEO value it will provide. When you create one blog post -- just one day of content creation effort -- it's indexed in search engines forever. If you create one blog post, and create it well, that can drive results for your business in the form of traffic and leads for years and years to come.
So while one hour today may seem impossible, that one hour of work could drive hundreds or thousands of leads in, say, ten years
Talk about ROI.
This concept of creating once, and creating well, should be applied to marketers at any stage -- but none is more critical than marketers undergoing a website redesign. If that's you, now is the ideal time to invest in carefully choosing your page structure, and thoughtfully crafting content to perform well for both readers and search engines. A successful build (or rebuild) will make your website an enduring presence online. A great keyword strategy combined with appropriate content and site structure turns your website into a 24-hour marketing machine for your company!...
...The key for B2Bs, especially SMBs, to delight their consumer is by producing, say it with me: content. But, you can’t just throw out content that only serves to clutter an already polluted digital space. It must be delightful. It must give your consumer information and education that they actually want and need. Abigail Posner, Head of Strategic Planning And Agency Development at Google, has some great advice when it comes to delighting the consumer: “Create content that reminds us of our own capacity for excitement, happiness, and vivacity so we want to share in it with others.” That’s delight, folks. How might a B2B do that? Just like a B2C would. Let’s talk about it:
I have been doing a little research on the use of social media for competitive intelligence. I have done this type of exercise in the past but thought I’d be a little different this time and actually make a blog post out of the sites I came across that I found to be useful in some way. These are 30 blog posts that I found that talk about competitive analysis using social media. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think....
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The data is interesting, but "B2B" doesn't make much sense as a single entity from a lead generation point of view. Depending on whether the products and services are horizontal or vertical markets, direct or channel, the strategies and tools are different.
Which audience are we talking about, the ones that find you, or the one's you go out and find. They have completely different characteristics.
The figures above are presumably averages of the two approaches.
Then, both Social and Email marketing can be lead gen tools, but more often used for nurturing, a second stage process.
So, average of different strategies, and an average of different stages.
Is it not like saying "the players in my football team averaged 4 goals each last season". This wouldn't tell us what our striker is worth would it?
So is social media marketing the way of the future? Interesting read...
insight: b2b marketing , lead generation, social media still ranking not on top. Or are the effects just indirect? That is the key question.