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Do you have examples that demonstrate real results from your social media marketing?
I'd like to hear from small businesses who can provide examples of actual sales, or even solid leads, as a result of their social media activities.
As an example, I was looking for speaking opportunities when I heard about Entrepreneur magazine's Expo Group. I couldn't find a contact on their website, so I posted a request for a name to their Facebook wall. Got a response right away, from both the page manager and the contact.
Anybody out there have case studies of their own?
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10 Answers
Robbin:
This is a great question. We have tried to build metrics around this but its very challenging as the leads that eventually come from social media are as direct as the ones you see coming from SEO and SEM campaigns. For example, at our sister company ReadyContacts (http://www.readycontacts.com), we get approximately 10 leads a month who come based on learning about us from (1) LinkedIn conversations (2) Reference form a LinkedIn connection. A good 20% of these leads close and spend and average of several thousand dollars.
Like its been said before, I think its important to treat social media investment as a way to contribute to the community and build trust and references, which collectively can lead to long term lead flow.
This question has been up for about 8 hours now with no response. Have I answered my own question?
Robbin, I do not have a documented Case study to share with you at this point of time, but at LeadFormix, we have seen some very good leads coming in from LinkedIn, which even converted to clients.
We are a B2B Marketing Automation company and have built our presence across various social media channels, the most number of leads (enterprise visitors) for us came through LinkedIn. Sometime back we published a research report too, based on our findings, take a look you might find it useful.
2010 Report - http://www.leadformix.com/social-media-for-b2b-lead-generation/sm-b2b-report....
2011 Report - http://www.leadformix.com/Why-Should-You-Use-Linkedin-For-B2B-Generation/
Hope that helps,
Cheers
Merlin
Merlin...Although I'm looking for very specific examples, thank you for providing the additional reports. In one of those reports, you note that LinkedIn appears to be the best lead generator, and the "surprise" social media channels are Reddit and Dzone. Given your target audience of high tech companies, this isn't surprising. It supports the idea that niche sites, which are more targeted, will yield better social media marketing results than the more generalized social sites, even if they have a huge following.
Why is this true? LinkedIn is targeted right at your research responders -- that is it is very focused on white collar professionals and/or enterprise-level workers. Reddit is a news-sharing site where the most popular stories rank higher; for readers, it may be a credible news source with more in-depth information than a social networking site. Dzone is targeted at developers, the very people who purchase tech services, and visitors to the site are most likely looking for either tech help or support.
And it's even less surprising that Facebook yields little, because it's mostly aimed at consumers who are socializing, rather than shopping for technical services.
I don't know if this is exactly what you are looking for, but in the past 6 weeks, 55% of our ORDERS are either directly initiated from Facebook or are direct referrals from past Facebook customers. I am a print broker who sells offset, digital and large format printing and Facebook has been a fantastic source of customers.
Our FB customers do tend to be smaller orders in terms of dollars, but they are starting to develop into quite regular customers.
Hi Michael,
I'm curious. How have you tracked the orders that have come via FB, and only via FB? Since your website links to your FB page, as well as to http://pinsonprinting.com/, and since your FB page links back to http://pinsonprinting.com/, how do you identify the business that comes solely from FB?
Rob
Hi Rob,
Well, it is really low-tech. Almost every FB order starts as a private message. Even though I have the e-store, people don't seem all the excited about using it. That's the first way.
When orders come in from the e-store, it hasn't been hard to identify who are FB friends. I think with every e-order, they have told me ahead of time that they were going to place the order.
With referrals from past FB customers, they have all involved giving me an email address and following up with the lead myself.
It is possible that some friends of friends have placed orders without my knowing they came from FB, but that would just increase the overall percentage.
I wish I could "turn you on" to some fancy tracking tool that does this, but sometimes the simple method works best.
Have a great weekend,
Mike
This is an excellent question and one we ponder regularly. Our view is that social media drives conversation and brand exposure while online marketing drives sales leads.
We though have had direct results with some:
On Twitter we have a Philippine Client who got a order request from Brazil.
On Linkedin we have a concrete company who developed a needed service from the group discussions.
One other client was able to develop a lead by introducing them to his Twitter page for content they had posted.
There are some but like we say when people want to buy something do they go to social media. No. They search. What social does is get people thinking about brands and their friends might recommend something if they ask.
A business does need both but if a small business expects to get new revenue direct from social media they probably have to wait about 24 months.
John Davenport
Managing Director
Social Merkado
www.twitter.com/socialmerkado
Just wrote about this yesterday - "Determining Social ROI (and Some Proven Techniques for Getting It)", http://technologymarketers.com/StatingTheObvious/determining-social-roi-and-s...
Enjoy!
I agree with all the above statements..
There is a rapid growth in this global for the leads in to the market.. by FB also we are able to do our promotions with the other deals also
http://www.loudcastle.com/
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