I am going to break with tradition here at TMCnet and recommend a recent webinar, “Sweet Leads are Made of this: Integrating Social Media with Marketing Automation.” The reason is that Jason Miller, social media manager of Marketo (News - Alert), dispelled some myths and demonstrated some valuable insights as to the role social media can and should play in lead generation. It was a true eye opener. And, if you are in sales and marketing looking to not just grow your funnel but do so with qualified leads, the information provided could prove to be invaluable.

Covering all of the touchpoints and generating actionable insights

It is hard to encapsulate all of the topics Jason and I covered in the hour we spent together. That said, here are a few major food for thought items to consider.

• 70 percent of the buying cycle is already complete before a prospect is ready to talk to sales.
• Content remains king when it comes to the sales cycle, and you better have answers to potential customers’ questions on all of your touchpoints – including the information in front of contact center agents – or you will lose a potential deal.
• If you do not have all of your bases covered (e.g., integrate all of the information from various databases and interact with existing and potential customers in the ways they wish to interact with you), the chances of success of engaging and ultimately closely them are diminished.
• Using social for outbound engagement is becoming increasingly important and it works; statistics show that inbound is not enough for successful campaigns.

It is not the purpose here to replicate in full all diversity and number of suggestions Miller had for how the integration of social and automated marketing can significantly improve your lead scoring, qualification, follow-up and closing efforts. From leveraging “social signals” to tips on where, what, when and how to employ social media in outbound, he walked through how using tools and capabilities on Twitter (News - Alert) and Facebook helps generate quality leads with actual use cases.

The biggest point that Miller made that should resonate is that, given where technology is going, it is becoming almost table stakes to socialize every marketing campaign. The graphic below illustrates the point.

 
Source (News - Alert): Marketo

The realities are that social media extends your reach and encourages engagement, and more importantly, tracking it allows you to quality people from the first interaction where they may be interacting anonymously to when they are fully engaged. In short, with the integration of social and automated customer experience management (CEM) capabilities you get visibility into behavior, the ability to build a life-cycle profile of a prospect, and hence have context for what to do to seal the deal.

It enables sales and marketing to move down the funnel from simple name gathering via initial contact to making people customers and possible brand advocates.

Source: Marketo

As the example shows, social integration provides a lift. 

If you believe that social is merely a check list item and have been disappointed that the results your organization from have Twitter, Facebook (News - Alert), Digg, etc., presences have not gotten you the results promised or expected, don’t blame it on the messenger. These capabilities are tools that, when properly integrated with outer customer relationship capabilities in a holistic approach, can provide you the competitive edge you seek. 

Seeing and hearing is believing.