Turning prospects to leads
Now that your company is able to drive traffic, how do you turn that traffic into a lead list? Two ways that work well are to create a membership portion of your company‟s site, or to build an email list.
Membership Section – Membership sections can be useful for creating a community around your company‟s products or services. The difficulty is that you have to give people a compelling reason to sign up, so this method may not be for everyone.
However, if you have a membership site already, Facebook Connect is a great tool for if your members match up with Facebook‟s demographics. In general, you‟ll lose a percentage of your audience any time people have to register to use your site; but with Facebook Connect, people can sign up for your site and import their Facebook information using their Facebook account. Many people, especially teens, remain logged into their Facebook accounts at all times. Facebook Connect also allows users to post their activity back to their Facebook accounts, creating a viral effect.
Google has a similar service that allows users to log in with their Gmail accounts. This does not quite have the same viral capabilities as Facebook with the sharing capabilities, but it does allow you to build membership profiles based on the user‟s
Google information.
There is no rule that you have to use one or the other of these two services. You could use both Facebook and Google connect to offer members several options for logging in. The most important thing is that when you use one of these services, make sure your own website collects membership information so your company can develop its own lead list that‟s not dependent on Google or Facebook.
Email list – The second option for your company is to start building an email or newsletter list. Direct email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to get a response online. Most companies offer something for free – for example, a free whitepaper, a free Ebook, a free teleseminars, or free content in a newsletter – in exchange for contact information, such as name and email address.
With an email list, you can segment your users and track opens and clicks to suit your business needs. A newsletter also allows your company to plug its products or services on a regular basis, as long as you offer valuable information in addition to sales pitches.
Companies that use memberships and email lists to convert prospects to leads end up with more qualified leads to pass on to their sales team.
Turning leads into customers
At this point, your company has its lead list. Now, you can integrate this lead list with your current process and start reaping the benefits of using social media as part of your company‟s lead generation strategy.
Case Study on Finding B2B Leads: Brazen Careerist
Brazen Careerist is an online talent agency dedicated to providing tools to the HR departments of companies interested in recruiting Generation Y. The company put together a teleseminar and invited thousands of HR professionals to attend for free. Brazen Careerist found HR professionals by utilizing professional groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Because the teleseminar was valuable to the incumbents, the offering gained even more traction with word-of-mouth and sharing via social media outlets.
In order to gain access to the seminar, each HR professional had to provide an email address and company contact information. Over 400 people signed up for the hour-long teleseminar. At the end of the seminar, Brazen Careerist asked professionals to submit any questions that hadn‟t been answered in the seminar.
Now, the company had a lead list of companies that were struggling with recruiting Generation Y, the name of someone within the organization and all the contact information necessary, plus a list of problems that HR professionals were trying to solve, regarding recruiting Generation Y. They gave this information to their sales department, who got to work on the phones. They also put out another informational packet to answer the most common questions HR professionals had, which built credibility and trust with the potential clients.
0 comments: