Looking for leads?
Remember the good old days when the company’s sales staff would attend to conventions, send out direct mail pieces and even cold calls? Well, some of these practices are certainly being put to use now, but depending upon your product or service, there are other opportunities that don’t cost quite as much and can provide an even greater ROI.
I know a lot of people are probably getting tired of reading about social media, but, guess what … social media is getting a reputation for lead generation as well as customer interaction and brand awareness.
Onesource reported that business-to-business salespeople were looking to LinkedIn for prospecting and HubSpot found that Twitter usage could double monthly leads.
For online marketing, lead generation was their first priority, with 66% indicating it was their greatest concern for 2010 compared with just 17% who chose brand awareness. Take a look at a survey of US marketing professionals conducted back in April 2010 regarding the reason for implementing a social media strategy:
So how does a company determine whether or not a lead might be valuable? Interest and demographic information were the two most obvious picks, which could make social media an even more important and useful prospecting channel since profiles can include that type of data.
The question now remains, if your company is ready to increase their lead generation, you might want to seriously consider a social media presence (with a solid strategy, of course).