Peer-to-peer Influence Marketing

Social marketing is shifting away from company-to-buyer marketing, and toward peer-to-peer influence marketing.

Need proof? A recent Forrester survey found that only 20% of buyers believe what a brand says about itself, because people view any brand-to-buyer communication as an advertisement. Conversely, 70% of buyers trust the recommendations of their friends and family.

When people learn about your brand through social, it gives you the opportunity to turn those “Likes” into leads. By adding elements of social to your campaigns, you empower customers, prospects, and fans to become brand advocates.

Leveraging the power of peer-to-peer communication delivers no- or low-cost brand lift and increased brand authenticity. Because your audience’s peers have nothing to gain by recommending a product, peer-to-peer word of mouth is one of the most credible forms of “advertising”.

Social Sharing

Social sharing amplifies your message and your lead generation efforts, but getting people to share isn’t easy

Social Sharing Offers

Keep these motivations in mind, and try to align them to your social offers. Consider adding some extra oomph to your social campaigns and messaging by employing one of these tactics:

• Refer-a-friend: Create a compelling offer for both the referrers and referees. This taps into the same power as peer-topeer recommendations—people are far more likely to trust their friends. Of course, this is also a fantastic way to collect lead information.
• Sweepstakes: Create a contest and get your entrants to spread the word on your behalf. Everyone loves winning, and contests are highly shareable on social channels. You can also gain important lead data through entry forms.
• Polls and voting: Everyone has an opinion, and most people are happy to share. Build relationships with campaigns that engage your audience and compel them to share their opinions. You can also gain valuable information about your leads’ likes and dislikes, which can help you plan future campaigns.
• Flash deals: Create a sense of urgency with a strong CTA and a time limit—these cause leads to act quickly. Flash deals can quickly increase brand awareness and bring in new customers.

Utilizing the 80/20 Rule for social

So what kind of content should you post on social channels? Social media has many different functions, including lead generation, brand awareness, and relationship building. To be effective, you need a good balance of promotional content and thought leadership. We advise marketers to use the 80/20 rule—80% of your content should be informational/educational, and 20% should be self-promotional.

Facebook

Facebook boasts the largest user base of any social network, so it’s essential that you have a presence there. Formerly dismissed by marketers as too “personal” for business correspondence, it’s become an increasingly common way to deliver messaging. With more than 1.1 billion users, and many opportunities for paid advertisements, Facebook is a critical element of any lead generation campaign.

Contagious Content

So what works on Facebook for lead generation? The key is to strike a balance between offering content that is valuable for brand positioning, and offering content that is fun and shareable on social channels. If you can show value to your followers, your lead generation efforts can have a true network effect.

At Marketo, we are always experimenting with different types of ads, new content, and eye catching visuals. We also track our success using Marketo and Facebook Insights. We’ve found that to successfully generate leads on Facebook, you need:

1. Compelling messages
2. Eye catching visuals
3. Mass audience appeal and shareability
4. A clear CTA
5. Personality!

Facebook is great because it allows you to humanize your brand—companies often forget that people aren’t ‘all business’ when it comes to social media. They want to have fun, not engage with robots

– Carra Manahan, Marketing Programs Specialist, Marketo

Facebook News Feed

Facebook’s News Feed uses an algorithm to determine whether your posts get displayed on a user’s News Feed, which is critical for lead generation. So how do you get your posts to appear? This algorithm has gone through numerous iterations, and (like Google) will continue to change over time, but it always responds to content engagement—if users and their networks interact with your content, it will show up in the feed. If not, it will be dropped.

Here are some other factors that the algorithm considers:

• Affinity: How close is the relationship between the user and content?
• Weight: What type of action was taken on the content?
• Decay: How current is the content?
• Post Types: What types of posts does a user typically interact with?
• Hide Post/Spam: What types of posts does a user usually hide or mark as spam?
• Clicking on Ads: Do users interact with the ad?
• Device Considerations: Can multiple devices handle your content?
• Story Bumping: A post may be older, but is it still being interacted with?

Promoted Posts

Amplify your lead generation and engage your followers (and your followers’ networks) by putting paid efforts behind some of your top posts. Remember, when using promoted posts for lead generation purposes, there should always be a strong CTA—ask followers to download an asset, attend a webinar, or learn about a new product. You want people to have something to click on.

How do promoted posts work? You can promote a post (including status updates, videos, blog posts, and offers) directly from your News Feed. Any post you promote will automatically appear higher in the News Feed, so more people will see it.

You can also determine a specific budget for each promoted post. Your budget will depend on your personal business objectives, but Facebook prices promotions based on your fan count and budget—they can range from $10 to $1000.

At Marketo, we promote assets and daily blog posts with strong Facebook CTAs, and we’ve seen a big uptick in visibility since we started doing so. Recently, we created a Facebook promoted post for our Definitive Guide to Engaging Email, which led to 9,923 clicks; 6,765 actions (“likes” and comments); a 3.976% click-throughrate; and cost us $0.70 per click.

Facebook Ads

Facebook ads provide highly targeted opportunities to reach your audience. They appear on the right side of a user’s screen, and are similar to traditional Pay-PerClick (PPC) ads—you place a bid on how much you want to pay per click, or you can pay per thousand people who will see your ad. And much like a typical PPC ad, the cost depends on the popularity of your keyword terms.

You can choose to link Facebook ads to pages on your website, or to your Facebook page to get more “Likes”. You can also target Facebook ads based on a variety of demographic criteria including location, job title, age, industry, gender, and more.

Custom Audiences

If you’re using Sponsored Stories or paid ads, you can target a specific set of users, or custom audiences, with whom you’ve already established a relationship—either on or off of Facebook. These audiences can be defined by the following attributes:

• Email address
• Facebook user ID
• Phone number
• Facebook App user ID
• Apple IDFA
• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Interests
• Connections

Tracking and Results

Facebook’s Page Insights application provides fantastic analytics, tracking a variety of engagement and ad performance metrics. Leveraging this data internally can help you begin the conversation about your program ROI on social.

Page Insights lets you see:

• Page “Likes”
• Post reach
• Engagement
• Organic/paid reach per post
• Post clicks
• Post “Likes”
• Comments
• Shares

Twitter

Think of Twitter as a virtual water cooler for marketing professionals: it’s a vibrant community where businesses can generate leads, and thought leaders can discuss relevant industry topics. With 218 million users, Twitter can’t be ignored.

At Marketo, Twitter helps us foster continuous, real-time engagement with our customers and prospects. We use Twitter to spread the word about specific product offerings, and as a forum for potential customers to learn more about us and our products. And like Facebook, Twitter offers many opportunities for marketers to collect and generate leads.

Promoted Tweets

We’ve had great success with Promoted Tweets, a form of paid ads that appear in a user’s feed, targeted to followers and users who fit our criteria. Our Promoted Tweets contain timely and engaging offers, like contests for free trips to industry events, or links to relevant thought leadership. We use Promoted Tweets to create demand for new content assets, upcoming events, or demos.

Every Promoted Tweet that we run leads to a form, which improves our chances of gaining user data. Like Facebook ads and Google Adwords, Promoted Tweets use a Cost-PerClick (CPC) pricing model. Twitter enables you to target tweets based on the following criteria:

• Interests
• Keywords in timeline
• Gender
• Geography
• Device
• Similarity to existing followers

Marketo also uses Promoted Tweets in Twitter searches. These tweets target users based on particular keyword and hashtag searches.

For tweets promoted in search results, we run two offers every two weeks, with three different tweets focusing on 15 keywords and five countries. Fresh, relevant content offers with the right messaging yield click-through rates of up to 17%, with a cost-per-prospect at around $14. This, of course, will vary based on your offer and the relevancy of your content.

We always see significant spikes in relevant tweets during industry events, so we decided to capitalize on that, using Promoted Tweets in search results during key conferences such as Dreamforce. This allows us to be part of relevant conversations while the conversations are still hot. By targeting event-specific hashtags and relevant keywords like “lead management”, we can tap into prime lead-generating moments. Being a part of real-time conversations means pouncing on real-time opportunities.

Promoted Accounts and Trends

Twitter also offers two additional promoted ad options—Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends. With Promoted Account ads, businesses can make their Twitter accounts show up under the “Who to follow” list on your Twitter page. This can be targeted based on who a user typically follows, whether it’s a similar advertiser or an industry thought leader.

Promoted accounts can also be placed in search results when someone searches for a particular topic or hashtag.

Promoted Trends enable a business or an individual to promote a particular trend or hashtag, which appears on the left-hand side of a user’s screen, under “Trends”. Note that promoted trends carry a hefty price tag—according to Mashable, placement costs about $200,000

Twitter Lead Generation Cards

Twitter Lead Generation Cards permit businesses to collect lead information directly from Twitter. How do these work? When individuals expand your tweet, they see a form, a description of your compelling offer, and a CTA. Twitter handles, names, and email addresses are already filled in, so all a lead has to do is click the CTA.

Twitter Lead Generation Cards can also sync to your marketing automation tool, but note that Lead Generation Cards only have a full name field—most marketing automation tools collect names in a first and last name field. Also, Twitter Lead Generation Cards do not capture company data. Because of this, you can’t (yet) push the lead information to most CRM tools.

Tracking and Results

When people choose to follow you on Twitter, you’ll be notified and can review their conversations in dedicated streams. This helps you identify opportunities to engage.

We’ve seen immediate results from our efforts on Twitter: our average lead-conversion rate from emails and online campaigns is between 2-3%, but some of our Twitter campaigns have yielded conversion rates as high as 14%.

Twitter Words of Caution

A little self-promotion is good for business, but if your entire tweet history is about you and your company, you’re doing it wrong. Use the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should be helpful or entertaining, 20% should be promotional

Linkedin

LinkedIn goes beyond personal profiles and status updates; it’s a great resource for networking, influencer relationship building, and lead generation opportunities through paid programs. Because users visit the site for purely work-related purposes, LinkedIn lends itself to making business connections.

Company Page

Building out your company page is the first step to optimizing LinkedIn for lead generation. Your company page tells users who you are, what you do, and why they should follow you.

Follow these key best practices when building out your LinkedIn company page:

• Optimize your company page for keywords—people frequently run searches on LinkedIn, so make sure you show up in results.
• Add tabs to your company page— these are usually “Careers”, “Products”, and “Insights”. Your “Products” tab should be optimized for search.
• Post on LinkedIn at least once daily to establish your presence.
• Consider adding videos and other media to your product pages to further engage users.

LinkedIn Sponsored Updates

To get into the lead generation game, LinkedIn began offering Sponsored Updates, allowing companies to put paid promotions behind status updates. These promoted updates are seen by your followers and targeted users outside of your follower network. Like all other social ads, LinkedIn updates should include a visual, and then link to a gated asset.

Sponsored Updates allow you to target users—you can choose to include or exclude users based on the following criteria:

• Location
• Company name
• Job title
• Skills
• School name
• LinkedIn Group associations
• Gender
• Age

LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn ads give companies the chance to target their audience in powerful, unique ways. How? The information found on a user’s LinkedIn profile is different than other social networks, and it’s particularly helpful for businesses. This data maps well to the lead data you want from users—such as job title, company, industry, geographic location, and other demographic targeting.

LinkedIn allows you to customize your ads—you can opt for text-only ads, images, or video ads. However, according to LinkedIn, adding an image to your ad can bring you 20% more clicks.

Google+

Google+ is quickly becoming an essential part of any business’s social media strategy, but it’s also a must for lead generation. Already boasting 90 million users, Google is making Google+ accounts mandatory for all Gmail users and those who want to post comments on YouTube. Google+ also now plays a major role in SEO.

About Us Page

Use the “About Us” page on Google+ to give audiences a quick overview of your business. From there, you can link to specific pages and services, directing potential customers to the most important pages on your website. Make sure your copy is SEO friendly, but—as always—avoid keyword stuffing.

On Marketo’s Google+ “About Us” page, note that we include our tagline, keywords, and links that direct viewers to our highest ranking pages.

Claiming Ownership of Your Content

We’ve already discussed Google AuthorRank in our chapter about SEO, but it’s worth noting that Google search results greatly favor those who engage with Google+. Google Authorship is how Google authenticates authors, and how it begins to “trust” you as a quality source of content.

Google+ Hangouts

Google+ Hangouts are a great way to generate buzz, sharing, and brand awareness. Gather thought leaders in your industry for a panel or a topical chat. Send out invites to your customer and prospect base, and make sure you promote heavily on social.

Slideshare

Readers are inundated with text, which means marketing professionals can’t rely solely on whitepapers and blog posts to reach prospects and customers. It’s now vital to include visual elements in all of your marketing campaigns.

SlideShare is a service that hosts your slide decks and presentations online, but it’s also much more— it’s an essential part of any successful content marketing strategy, and a powerful social community with a reported 60 million monthly visitors.

Creative Topics and Visuals

Content marketing through SlideShare can help you establish yourself as an expert in your field, using highly consumable visual elements. When it comes to lead generation, SlideShare can help you attract audiences who might ordinarily skim past your content. Some people might want to read a 10-page ebook, while others want to consume their information quickly and visually.

Optimizing for SEO

Creating slide presentations that rank for certain keywords can be much easier than ranking a post on your blog. To give your presentations a fighting chance in the world of search engines (as well as in SlideShare’s own search results) include keywordrich titles, descriptions, and tags. Write your titles and descriptions with SEO in mind.

SlideShare presentations are easily embedded into other sites, which will also drive SEO results. Each time someone embeds your presentation, it serves as an inbound link to your content.

SlideShare Forms

When it comes to lead generation, forms are where SlideShare really shines. With SlideShare, you can embed a lead generation form directly into your presentation, which pops up after some or all of your presentation is complete. Users can enter their information to download the slides and learn more about your company.

If you are using a marketing automation platform, you can sync your leads directly into your database and add them to a nurture program.

Ask The Experts: Social Media And Lead Gen Roundtable What Social Channel Works Best For Lead Generation?

Although many think that Facebook is a terrific platform to build a strong community of fans, it’s even more powerful when you turn your raving fans into quality leads that you can communicate with and build a relationship with outside of Facebook.

– Amy Porterfield Social Media Strategist

At Social Media Examiner, we’ve found that LinkedIn has the highest conversion rate, but Facebook delivers a higher quantity of leads for us. We have a much larger fan base on Facebook (192,000+) compared to LinkedIn (11,000+), and have multiple dedicated staff manning our Facebook account.

– Michael Stelzner CEO and Founder, Social Media Examiner

There are three channels that are great for lead generation. Facebook’s ad interface and their targeting capabilities are impressive—you can get very granular and ensure you’re reaching the right audience. LinkedIn has generally given us the best leads, because you can target by job titles, companies, company size, or industry. Lastly, we’ve had success with lead generation forms on SlideShare, where we host all of our slide decks, from webinar decks to shortened versions of our ebooks.

– Carra Manahan Marketing Program Specialist, Marketo

Ask The Experts: Social Media And Lead Gen Roundtable What Is The Future Of Social For Lead Generation?

Social media platforms are becoming more sophisticated in terms of giving marketers opportunities to strategically attract leads. It’s no longer all about attracting fans and followers—the appeal of social media marketing is gravitating more toward turning those fans and followers into warm leads. These leads are genuinely interested in hearing from you.

– Amy Porterfield Social Media Strategist

Now that Twitter has introduced Lead Generation Cards, which allow advertisers to collect leads directly from paid ads, I think we will see more of this type of lead generation across the various social networks—especially as those networks become more reliant on advertisers who are seeking to generate leads.”

– Michael Stelzner CEO and Founder, Social Media Examiner

More and more companies are investing in their brand’s social presence, and at the same time, social platforms are investing in features that help drive lead generation. If you’re not using social media for your lead generation efforts, you’re missing out on a great opportunity. We’ve seen great ROI from adding a social component to almost everything we do—whether it’s a simple social share button or a fun contest.

– Carra Manahan Marketing Program Specialist, Marketo

Ask The Experts: Social Media And Lead Gen Roundtable What Are The Key Social Components Of An Effective Lead Generation Strategy?

You need to know where your audience is spending time and have a keen understanding of their interests, likes, dislikes and overall challenges. If you can create giveaways that they perceive as highly valuable, they’ll be more than happy to give you their names and email addresses in exchange. That’s how list building on social media sites works best—with an irresistible giveaway, promoted on your social media channels. This not only builds goodwill and establishes your authority, it also builds your email list with people that are genuinely interested in what you are all about.

- Amy Porterfield Social Media Strategist

Generating leads with social comes down to offering a valuable free offer. It’s important to remember why people are on social networks: to connect with people. Thus it’s critical to offer up major value if you’re going to interrupt their main reason for being on the network. Said another way, people using social networks have a low tolerance for overly promotional content.

“At Marketo, we’re aware that a social media manager doesn’t just post a few tweets or Facebook statuses every day—they also have a strategy for reaching lead generation goals. To have an effective lead generation strategy, you’ll need to make sure that you have awesome content, the right people, and creativity. Content is what fuels social media—without it you would have nothing to offer your audience. Dedicated staff ensure that you’re following a strategy, not just using social at random. And creativity is key for breaking through the noise

“I would say they are missing out on a huge opportunity, and will struggle to build up their email lists if they don’t begin to experiment with social media opportunities to attract quality leads. I would also say that their competition is very lucky!”

“Social networks are the fastest and lowest cost way to generate leads, bar none.”

“People who think social media is not effective for lead generation need to give it a try! I can’t stress how important it is to test before drawing conclusions. You’ll need to try different methods, keeping in mind that not everything you do will be a success. Not every post on every social channel will get a ton of engagement—you need to figure out which messaging and content resonates best with your target audience.”