Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Apr 09, 2010 @ 09:18 AM
This is a post that should lead to a series of questions; questions you should be asking yourself if you have any responsibility for the social media strategy within your company. Whether you're executing on that strategy yourself, have staff to do it, or have outsourced to an agency, there is certainly no lack of social data you're receiving. The problem is that it's mostly quantitative about activity and gives you very little insight. Having thousands of followers on Twitter or fans on Facebook may make us feel good, but it's fairly meaningless if we don't know what the impact of these numbers are on the business.
While we've thankfully evolved away from the notions that social media in not measurable, the pendulum is in danger of swinging too far in the other direction. In other words, too many B2B marketers are being asked to show the direct impact that social media efforts are having on revenue. We continue to advocate that focusing too much on this direct impact goal is misguided; better to focus on the impact that social media is having on the seeding and creation of demand. Many organizations are doing this by tracking the change in response rates when social media is part of the tactic mix, but it's key to discover how it can raise conversion rates at other points in the demand creation waterfall.
And this leads to the questions. Are you using social media for activities beyond the top of the funnel, such as pipeline acceleration or sales enablement? Even if you're not applying social media to these initiatives, are you even tracking these types of activities regardless? Do you know your optimal tactical mix throughout the waterfall? Do you even have any impact beyond the handoff to sales? Without insight into what you do currently (as well as historically), it won't be possible to gauge the impact that social media marketing has on activities beyond the top (or even before the top) of the funnel.
If you're already asking these questions, you're on the path to gain the most insightful measurements of your social media marketing activities. And bonus points if you got the Pink Floyd reference in this post's title.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 @ 09:16 AM
Instead of focusing exclusively on generating yet more new leads that may or may not qualify, an effective way for marketing to impact the elongated B2B sales cycle is to help move deals that (for whatever reason) have stalled in the pipeline, an activity we call pipeline acceleration. While marketers have many tools to help prospects buy, and sales sell, there are two ways that marketing can drive late-stage pipeline: stimulus offers (specific programs extended to a prospect to increase the velocity of customer buying processes) and enablement/knowledge (internal programs designed to help sales build competence and neutralize roadblocks when dealing with stalled selling opportunities).
Social media can play a key role in stimulus offers. Giving a prospect controlled access to your online customer community shows that prospect the experience of what it would be like to be a customer. This lets the prospect see how customers interact with each other and your company; select prospects can browse and search community discussions to match their interests or concerns. Having the prospect see how issues and negative experiences with the company are resolved goes a long way in giving prospects evidence of how you treat customers. Also on the stimulus front, tap your subject matter experts to focus the critical content already available in whitepapers and other collateral into concise, customized podcast, blogs or tweets that align your message directly to known prospect pains. Podcasts can also be effective in distilling down case studies that can have direct relevance to prospect needs.
On the enablement/knowledge side, the inclusion of social media features within sales enablement platforms continues to gain steam as a more organizations leverage internal communities built around knowledge sharing and best practices; this is especially valuable for leveraging the group experience of not only other sales reps but also subject matter experts that reside in other parts of the organization. The use of podcasting as an internal training and communications tool continues to grow and is a proactive way in helping arm reps with the talk tracks and selling points to help accelerate prospects, particularly if they include the experiences of reps that have success accelerating their deals.
Remember, marketing is not just about new leads. You already have prospects in the pipeline that have a strong interest, now do what you can to help them close.