What is the Purpose of Social Media in Lead Generation?

By Jaco Grobbelaa on Jul 19, 2011 12:00:00 AM

<span id="hs_cos_wrapper_name" class="hs_cos_wrapper hs_cos_wrapper_meta_field hs_cos_wrapper_type_text" style="" data-hs-cos-general-type="meta_field" data-hs-cos-type="text" >What is the Purpose of Social Media in Lead Generation?</span>

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SAN ANSELMO, CA - JANUARY 27: In this photo i...

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What is the ultimate purpose of social media? You want to get good solid leads that will convert into customers. Basically, social media tells you how your customers are getting interested in you and your company.

You use social media as a business process, which means that you develop a process in writing that you follow and test regularly to hone it. The sales department and the marketing department, as two very different entities, need to sit down together and discuss what criteria a lead must meet before being passed from marketing to sales. Furthermore, marketing needs to follow-up after the lead is passed on in order to find out if the sale occurred. Also in order to keep the customer for life, the marketing department needs to stay in touch with the client for future sales.

If you attend trade shows and get leads, you need to determine which leads meet your criteria for further nurturing and which you can accelerate and send to sales.

If you get your leads from your website, you might want to use what is known as a squeeze page to get information about the lead to see whether they need nurturing or acceleration. One way to check is to see which ones go from an email to a particular page on the site. This way you can score them on readiness.

You can also do the same with LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. This use of sending the leads to a page will allow you to see where the prospect was on the web before arriving at your website. This will help you see which methods you use are working.

The next important communication point between marketing and sales is that you match the expectation of the prospective client with the expectation of a particular sales rep. You want your client-sales rep to be a match for each other.

The most important part of the process is not the number of leads you have, but the number of leads that are qualifiable. More of your leads will be qualified leads as you refine your social media presence. Your web presence is the face of your company. You want to keep it engaging, professional, current and lead-generating.