Generating Leads online for Small Businesses

Digital and social are fantastic ways to generate leads for your business.  The problem for a lot of small businesses becomes where should they focus first, and why?

That of course is a complicated question - or series of questions.  A better approach is to think about two pragmatic ones first.

1. What do you want to achieve?
2. What are you able to do?

Understanding what your short and long term business challenges and objectives are will let you answer question one.  Looking within your company to know if you have the time, budget and will to do anything or everything is question two.

I recently had a chance to conduct a digital review for a small business in the Business Intelligence and Analytics space.  Their current website was well designed and generating a lot of traffic for them.  As a smaller player in their field however they have a common challenge of not being well known to their prospective customers and were not generating any leads from their digital efforts.  They had also invested a fair amount of money into their current website and wanted to keep any changes (even improvements) at a minimal cost.

Here are three recommendations I made to help generate leads.

1.  Give content away
Within their service areas and industry vertical sections they had provided some limited examples of their work.  Most of these examples however were password protected and as a technique to generate contact you needed to connect with them to get the password to view more.

I believe that before you can ask a prospect to take that step, you need to show them true value.  My recommendation was to provide a single, solid example of their work within each area and vertical.  No passwords and no hassles for prospects.  Within each example I would also recommended providing a clear call to action to see or learn more by contacting an Account Rep to arrange for an online demo or access to other examples.

2.  Testimonials

No eye rolling here, as this is not news, but is an essential piece of content that helps provide credibility.

For each example of their work my recommendation was to contact the customer who that work was for and ask them to write a recommendation for it.  For this particular case I suggested that they may even write it for them to start and to focus on explaining a) why they chose to use their service and b) what they got out of using it.

No one wants to be the first customer.  People want to know that the tool / service / approach that they are considering is tested and true.

Some new businesses do not have case studies to demonstrate their work, which is a whole new challenge.  Delivering a proof of concept for prospective customers at no charge can help overcome this barrier.

3.  Lead on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the leading professional networking site and can be very valuable for companies to create awareness, whether you're a massive multi-national or 2 person shop.  Company Pages and Discussion groups are a great opportunity to connect with like minded people, participate in discussions and demonstrate leadership.

The employees of this company had incomplete profiles that linked to the company page, and even then the description of their jobs was not consistent.  Cleaning that up is easy.

My recommendation to them was to dedicate time and energy into leading conversations and establishing credibility through discussion groups.  Identifying groups that their customers (current and prospective), competitors and peers were involved in and joining in the conversations is the start of that.

Starting conversations topics and leading discussions within those groups to get their point of view out is the next step.  This company has a treasure chest of content around their ideas and approach on their website.  By using this content through LinkedIn they can easily get more mileage out of it.

From a budget point of view, none of these recommendation cost very much.  This to me seemed more like an exercise in understanding what the true business objectives are and thinking about how to best achieve them.

MLB doing a great job engaging Fans on Instagram

Major League Baseball was one of the first sports leagues to launch an integrated web template for all of their teams a number of years ago.  They have now done the same with Instagram and are doing a great job of integrating the fan experience online through it.

A recent promotion is centered around Miguel Cabrera's race for the triple crown (non-baseball fans click on link).  In order to have a chance to a Miguel Cabrera bat they asked users to take a picture of themselves wearing a "Triple Crown", upload the photo to Instagram and tag it with #MiggysCrown.

I love programs like this on a number of levels

1. Customer Engagement  Cabrera is an engaging figure and an exceptional talent.  Whether you are a Tigers fan or not this contest gives you a great opportunity to personally be involved at the end of the season
2. Measurement  To participate in the contest there are some simple steps, but they are all measurable and can be used to identify the key drop off (and acceleration) points
3. Repeatability  As MLB embeds their Instagram photostreams into their websites this type of program can easily be replicated across other activities and other teams
4. Sharable Moment  Taking a photo of yourself, supporting a top player and supporting the Tigers - all moments that as a fan and someone who is engaged with the game will support and share with their friends and followers

Other brands have tried programs like this using Twitter hastags and Facebook Photo Albums but it's the integration and simplicity of Instagram that MLB uses makes it a winner.

What Marketing can learn from Politics

Marketers’ today (myself included) talk about the customer being in control and the increased need for them to be able to drive the processes that they engage with.   This is being done through delivering increased customization and personalization from simple preference settings all the way to behavioural segmentation.

As their understanding increases of how these systems work, their expectations of what will be delivered to them (when, what, why and how) also increases.

Some brands have allowed customers to help them in product development and actively seek feedback and participation.  Starbucks is the champion of this, and the new Barclaycard Ring has really embraced it.

The ultimate trust you can show your customers, with trust being the path to loyalty, is by placing your brand in their hands.  Being guided by their insights, needs and desires to define and refine your brand will be the next step.

Political policy is shaped like this today.  The ultimate democratic tool, the opinion poll, shapes policy like no other mechanism.  Polls are used to guide politicians on every issue, big or small, so they can understand what their constituents think – and what they want them to do.

Yes, this means that political leasers have become more of a spokesperson or figurehead rather than a leader, but that discussion is for another day.

Thinking of your customers like constituents means a change in organizational philosophy.  It’s more than focus groups or getting them to like you on Facebook, it’s integrating them into your company.

• Put their involvement on your CMO and Executive scorecard
• Give them direct access to Marketing Managers and Communication Plans
• Engage advocates and detractors in product development and product testing

Take the number one thing on the mind of politicians - unless you keep constituents (or customers) happy you’ll be out of a job next time an election (or purchase decision) comes along – and you’ll have the same focus that a customer has when they are choosing you.

Combining Social with CRM - how to, and must do

In the digital age, customers own the conversation.  They determine what is important and what the merits of an individual product or brand are.

Traditional CRM however is based on push messaging.  While advancements in dynamic messaging and customized content are helping, Customers are fatiguing from traditional marketing channels like email and direct mail.  Social CRM allows brands to better support users an improving interaction by entering into a collaborative conversation with them.

Social is the platform of choice for a select group of key natural human behaviours
1.  Giving and getting advice "can anyone tell me where a good place to get my oil changed is"
2.  Establishing or building your personal identity "home with my little one today, time to be mommy"
3.  Sharing your interests with others "I love the new batman, Bane is crazy!"

The opportunity for marketers is to identify these behaviours within their customers and support the conversations that are happening around them.  CRM methodology typically builds towards Advocates and the sharing of their message to recruit other customers and support the brand.  Social let's us identify opportunities to amplify our message through the activity of all the user groups (Prospect, Customers, Advocates).   

How?
Giving them the content that will allow them to create social currency within their networks.  You can use the content that you built for your current website, or you can ask users for content.

Behavioural targeting through social lets us align product offers and engagement with actual user activity.
…"looking forward to my family coming over this weekend"
…"school is back, I haaatttte making lunches"
This can be done through Facebook media and community management.

Combining these worlds as a single ecosystem is tough for a lot of companies / brands to do, but it will become a must-have very soon.

Twitter Ads, and now with Targeting why I like them

Twitter has been making a number of changes recently, and with the launch of their new targeted-advertising I think that they are going to finally find that business model they were looking for.

Twitter has used promoted tweets and more recently brand pages to help marketers reach their audience, but with limited success.
 
Targeted ads will let marketers deliver promoted tweets from accounts based on a specific user (or group of users) interests.  Interests are determined by the topics of tweets.
 
I love the idea of targeting users based on subjects for two reasons
1.    Consumers expect relevancy and convert more off meaningful ads
2.    Marketers will pay for targeting – as it leads to higher conversion (see bullet 1)
 
What makes this more interesting is what it could do to the service offering of influence measurers like Klout.  They have been using their perks program (targeting users based on influence / reach on a particular topic) with some success but there is high skepticism around the model and score calculation
 
Announced changes to their API left some core users, and platform providers upset.  But with this new service offering it makes even more sense.  Changing some of the terms of service (what data gets in, what doesn’t, how much/little), Twitter can now provide further assurances that this advertising will be delivered.
 
The monetization of Twitter has always been a question mark.  People have always been skeptical about using advertising on Twitter, but we knew it was coming.
 
Implementing a proven model of relevant content based on user behavior (see Google, Facebook) will generate future success for the platform.