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If you’re using marketing automation, you’re no
stranger to its powers: management, analytics,
email engagement, financial insight, and more.
What you may not know is that marketing
automation, combined with the powers of social
marketing, can launch your marketing results out
of this world.
Most marketers use some social media in their
marketing efforts, but until now, social has lived in
its own orbit—useful, but separate. Your mission?
To make social marketing an integrated, essential
element of each and every marketing campaign.
Social media is no longer a “nice-to-have”;
it’s a need-to-have for marketers. Social media
engagement accelerates prospects through the
sales funnel and shortens your company’s overall
sales cycle. If you don’t have the proper tools in
place to effectively leverage social interactions,
you might never complete your mission.
Listen to the digital body language of your
prospects and customers, and let those behaviors
trigger more—and more relevant—engagement.
As marketers increasingly use social media to
disseminate content, it’s essential that social
campaigns are fully integrated with the rest of their
marketing efforts.
Marketo Social Marketing:
LAUNCH YOUR MARKETING TO THE MOON
Marketing automation software
makes that possible.
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You have a basic understanding
of marketing automation. (If not,
check out our Definitive Guide
to Marketing Automation first.)
Your organization is already using
social media—although maybe not
as effectively as you wish.
You have some content.
You want your social marketing to
contribute to lead generation.
BEFORE WE LAUNCH,
A FEW BASIC PRESUMPTIONS:
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The goal for a social marketer is to start conversations,
priming potential leads for engagement. Although
more and more people are searching for information
through social channels, these people are generally
in the very early stages of their research. At
Marketo, we have found it takes between 2 and
3 months for a lead generated by social media to
convert into an opportunity.
To move these leads through the funnel, marketers
need features and reporting tools that improve
integration between social media and all types of
content, including email, blogs, online resources,
video, and more. There are plenty of individual
solutions to those issues, but if you’re looking for
a streamlined, comprehensive solution, marketing
automation is your answer.
A suite like Marketo Social Marketing (MSM),
can unite your marketing automation with social
applications and analytics.
Adding a social element to your marketing allows
you to harness the power of word of mouth, track
the impact of an individual’s sharing through social
channels, and nurture relationships with the most
influential customers. Tools like sharing buttons,
referral campaigns, and sweepstakes make it
easy for your customers to engage. In turn, you
can harness the reach of each individual’s social
network—one inspired influencer can make content
go viral, reaching hundreds within seconds.
Make Every campaign Social wIth
MarketIng AutomatIon
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Social marketing truly can be used at every point
in the funnel. When combined with marketing
automation, social campaigns can impress
anonymous prospects, capture new leads, and
nurture those leads as they enter the buying cycle.
After they’ve become customers, you can use social
media to encourage loyalty through retention, and
offer opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling.
In the following pages, we’ll delve into specifics
about how social marketing can help you:
• Develop relationships with early-stage prospects
before they’ve entered your database
• Gather social data about prospects and leads
• Build and maintain relationships with known
prospects as they educate themselves
• Support the sales cycle after the formal buying
process has begun
• Deepen and expand relationships with existing
customers, turning customers into advocates
SocIal MarketIng In the
Customer LIfecycle
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There’s no denying it—your
prospects, buyers, and future
advocates are on social media.
1.5 billion Facebook users spend
a combined 20 billion minutes on
the site each day. 40% of LinkedIn’s
238 million users, and 76% of
Twitter’s 500 million users check
the platforms daily.
Both B2C and B2B marketers alike
are waking up to the power of
social. When Marketo surveyed
over 500 marketing professionals,
only 10% of B2B marketers, and
only 9% of B2C marketers, said that
their company was not engaged
with social media.
Why Social Marketing Matters
How would you describe your
company’s engagement with Social Media?
B2B
B2C
SOMEWHAT
INVOLVED
NO
INVOLVEMENT
MODERATELY
INVOLVED
VERY
INVOLVED
FULLY
INTEGRATED
10%
27%
20%
36%
30%
19%
31%
8% 10%9%
Marketo’s survey of B2B and B2C marketing professionals
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Clearly, social can play a major role in driving
revenue and accelerating the buying cycle. Still,
many marketers find themselves frustrated by social’s
difficult-to-demonstrate ROI. Every marketer needs
to know how social affects their buying cycle, not
only at the top of the funnel, but also throughout the
entire buying journey.
Luckily, the technology to map these connections exists.
That technology is marketing automation, powered
by strong content and a smart marketing team.
Social marketing is constantly evolving, which
means that your measurement methodology will
have to be continually revised. That said, there are
definitely best practices to follow as you solidify the
place of social marketing within your organization.
• Develop your vision. Meet with key
stakeholders to determine the most important
metrics for your team to track. Make clear
distinctions between essential and
non-essential data.
• Leverage new social applications.
Use social applications like Marketo Social
Marketing to accurately track social campaigns
and engage your audience.
• Review the quality and relevance of
content. Your social media engine is fueled by
content—but only if it’s both relevant and useful.
Measure which content pieces are downloaded
the most, which are shared the most, and which
resonate the most with your audience.
Social Marketing Basics
8. Social sharing can become part of your
marketing campaigns at the earliest stage
of your sales funnel—before you even know
your prospect’s name. We know that up to
70%—and sometimes as much as 90%—
of the buying process is now done through
self-education. Prospects visit your corporate
website anonymously, research your products
and services through third-party resources,
seek out word-of-mouth recommendations,
and, of course, visit your social media sites.
What qualified leads see on your social
media sites will impact their buying cycle.
During this vital part of the sales process,
you’ll need to invest in and build
relationships with prospects, even before
they’ve volunteered contact information—
if you don’t, more agile competitors will.
This is where seed nurturing comes into play.
Phase One:
Social as Seed Nurturing
7
Seed nurturing is the process
of building relationships with
unidentified prospects.
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1. Build your reputation. If you can establish
your organization’s credibility and thought
leadership, you’ll gain the trust of early stage
prospects. Share your high-value content on
social. In most cases, this information is
already freely available on social sites—
you may as well be the source.
So how can you leverage social marketing to nurture leads?
Use Twitter and Facebook to comment on
developments in your industry; join LinkedIn’s
Influencer Program to share original content directly
with LinkedIn users—even those who aren’t directly
connected to your brand. Buyers trust industry
leaders who demonstrate that they understand and
can solve buyer problems.
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2. Humanize your brand. You shouldn’t only
be sharing thought leadership—social media is
the perfect place to have some fun. While this
will depend on your brand’s public image, your
company might share funny memes on your
Facebook page, or use humor to attract positive
attention on Twitter.
This is a great way to endear yourself to
anonymous leads who may have just discovered
your brand. They may not be ready to buy, but
when they are, those positive associations will
pay off.
A fun, Halloween-themed post to Marketo’s
Facebook page
“Companies often forget that people aren’t ‘all
business’ when it comes to social media.
They want to have fun, not engage with robots.”
– Carra Manahan
Marketing Programs Specialist, Marketo
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3. Use Native Advertising. Native ads on
social, like Sponsored Posts on Facebook,
blend in with a user’s friend activity—though
they’re always labeled as “sponsored” or
“promoted.” According to a 2013 study by
IPG Media Lab and Sharethrough, consumers
find native ads significantly more visually
engaging than traditional ads. Using eye
tracking technology and surveys to study 4,770
participants, the report found that native ads
generated a 9% lift in brand affinity and an
18% lift in purchase intent.
4. Publish landing pages to Facebook.
With marketing automation, you can publish
multiple landing pages directly to Facebook.
These pages don’t redirect users to your site,
but allow you to gather data from customer
behavior—in the same way that you can
gather data from a page built on your
marketing automation platform.
A Marketo landing page published directly to Facebook
12. The integration of social marketing with your
lead generation process is one of marketing
automation’s biggest benefits. From social
engagement, you can glean data about
both your prospects and your customers—
individually, and as a whole.
Phase Two:
Gather Lead Data with Social Marketing
11
Using marketing automation, you can not
only see how many leads you’ve captured
from social, but you can also delve deeper
into their data. This gives you insight into
which social channels are most effective.
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1. Social Sign-On. Marketing automation makes
it easy to insert a social sign-on or single sign-
on, which prospects and customers can use to
access gated content. The individual chooses a
profile to sign-on through, and that information
automatically populates the form.
Asking a prospect or customer to fill out a form
before downloading content is a great way
to gather lead information, and social sign-on
makes filling out forms easier. If you’re using
marketing automation, these forms will also
capture demographic information from the user’s
social profile. For example, if a person signs in
through their LinkedIn profile, your marketing
automation system can collect information
directly from LinkedIn.
Social sign-on form, linking social profile
data to your database
Here are 3 of your most valuable tools when it comes to gleaning data on
social sharing platforms:
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2. Polling/Voting. A marketing automation system
with a built-in polling or voting function, like
Marketo Social Marketing, makes social engagement
simple, allowing organizations to place polls on
any Facebook tab or company landing page.
You can ask your audience any multiple choice
question, add pictures, choose the maximum
number of votes, and create a message that
appears when customers share the poll.
Additionally, polls are an easy way to collect
contact information—use the social sign-on
feature to minimize friction in the process of
collecting it.
If a visitor shares your content, your marketing
automation can also collect that data, which will
be tied to their record as a known lead. This data
also allows you to identify visitors as influencers
(or potential advocates) by reviewing who shares
the poll and who has the greatest social reach.
A poll built in Marketo, which syncs with lead data
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3. Sweepstakes. Reward prospects for sharing their data with
a contest offer. Much like polling and voting, entrants will have
to provide email addresses in order to participate. Automation
software with a social marketing function will allow you to
customize your sweepstakes. Sweepstakes can be added to
any landing page, webpage, or Facebook tab.
Customize your sweepstakes offering
with entry limits, bonuses, timeline,
and frequency.
A contest offer (with an incentive to share)
published directly to Facebook.
16. 15
Social is about more than seed nurturing or
lead generation. If your social marketing is
fully integrated with your marketing automation,
you can also use it for lead nurturing—
building and maintaining relationships
with your newly identified prospects. As
we learned in the previous section, social
interactions give you valuable insights into
your prospects—not just who they are,
demographically speaking, but what they do.
Phase Three:
Build and Maintain Relationships
“Imagine social media as a way to stay in
contact with a long distant friend. If you
want to keep the relationship alive, never let
the spark fizzle out—in other words: Stay in
contact. Maintaining a fluid connection with
prospects throughout the sales process will
maximize your chances of conversion.”
– Jessica Ayala
Account Coordinator, Red Kite Business Advisors
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1. Be relevant. Have fun on social, but make
sure you’re engaging in a relevant, valuable
way. If your prospect shares information that
could be useful to your other followers, feel free
to retweet. Retweeting is a great way to turn a
monologue into a conversation, as well as to
get a hot prospect’s attention.
2. Segment and trigger based on
downloaded content. Segment and trigger
communications and campaigns based on the
type of content people have downloaded on
social media platforms. Get a strong indication
of buying intent by combining knowledge of
these interactions with your record of other
engagement activities—such as email click-
throughs, downloads, and visits to your website.
3. Interact with prospects over multiple
media channels. Integrate social marketing
channels with traditional channels such as
email, direct mail, and phone. Nurture email
campaigns are crucial, but you can multiply their
power by creating (or re-using) complementary
social campaigns. Wherever possible, entice
leads to visit your social sites, and include social
share buttons, making it easy for your customers
to engage with your message on every platform.
Here are four ways you can use social interactions to nurture leads once
they’re identified:
18. Once you’ve identified your prospects,
social marketing can be of real value to
your internal marketing and sales operations
teams. Bolstering the “lead lifecycle”—
the path that your leads take once identified
by your lead management system—
also promotes alignment between your
marketing and sales teams.
Phase Four:
Support Sales
17
Note: agreement between
marketing and sales on what
constitutes a “sales-ready”
lead, as well as when a lead
should be recycled back to
marketing for further nurturing,
is necessary to a successful
lead lifecycle.
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1. Alert sales reps about increased activity
or interesting comments. In the social
sphere, hot leads indicate their sales readiness
through “interesting moments” or behaviors.
In the case of social media, this can include
increased interactions and conversations on
social media sites. By notifying the sales team
of these interactions as they occur, you will
dramatically increase the relevancy and timing
of their conversations with these prospects.
2. Emphasize social marketing activities
in lead recycling campaigns. Make the
most of prospects’ increased activities on social
sites by setting up a rule to trigger a lead score
change, which will prompt sales to re-engage
the lead. While you can make this an automated
trigger, sales needs the ability to manually
indicate a specific timeframe in which the lead
should be re-engaged. This way, sales can put
their deeper insight to use in the relationship.
3. Reach prospects through preferred
channels. Social marketing interactions
are a great way for your sales rep to build
relationships with prospective buyers, especially
younger contacts who may be as comfortable
interacting online as through email or phone.
The key is to identify the preferred channels for
each contact, and then communicate via
that channel.
Online social interactions can provide deep insight into a lead’s sales readiness
and buyer intent. Here are a few key ways to make social insight valuable to
your sales team:
20. So you’ve built credibility with your
anonymous leads, used social data and
nurturing to drive them down the funnel, and
helped your sales team convert full-fledged
customers. But your mission isn’t over:
The final task is to turn those customers into
life-long advocates, and incentivize them to
share your valuable content.
Phase Five:
Turn Customers into Advocates
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1. Referral Campaigns. This is an easy,
automated way to reward your biggest advocates,
put a social twist on your referral programs, and
amplify your reach by leveraging your customer’s
social connections. If your marketing automation
system has a referral application, customers will
be able to share offers and track their progress
toward a referral goal.
Increase participation with a social
sharing incentive.
According to a recent Forrester Research Report, 70% of consumers trust
recommendations from a friend, while only 10% trust advertising. Here are
three of your most powerful tools for converting happy customers into advocates:
In Marketo Social Marketing, you can customize
sign-up and progress tracking buttons, define
offer details (like the number of referrals required
to receive the reward), and the information you’ll
collect with each sign-up. These forms can be
placed on your website, or on any existing asset—
making them useful for lead generation as well.
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2. Integrate intelligent share
buttons. These are buttons that can
be added to landing pages, web
pages or Facebook tabs. Visitors
can click on them to share a page
on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
When a visitor shares, your marketing
automation system can capture data
about the sharer, which networks
they used, their social reach, and
the share messages they used.
3. Video Sharing. Marketers can
embed videos (with social network
sharing options) on any existing
landing pages, Facebook pages, or
on your website. Ordinarily, video
assets are limited to static, traditional
marketing outlets; this feature allows
prospects to share your videos across
all their social media channels.
A social share button allows viewers to share videos across social channels.
23. Now that you’ve completed your social
integration, it’s time to report back to
mission control. To prove that your social
marketing is worth the investment, you’ll
need to track how your social campaigns
affect and contribute to the multiple touch
points across your sales funnel.
If you are mapping engagement to every
touch point throughout the sales funnel,
you can see clearly how each moment of
engagement affects each prospect. After all,
if you score a $50k deal as the result of a
tweet, you’ll want to know.
Luckily, if your social applications are
integrated into your marketing automation,
you can track individual leads (and
customers) as they interact with your
campaigns. You can also review referral
traffic—visitors to your site who were directed
there from another site—measuring the
source and frequency with which social
media platforms direct traffic to you.
Phase Six:
Tracking and Analytics
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Through these social tools, organizations can track engagement through
dashboard reporting metrics like social reach, impressions, mentions,
and conversions, thus measuring your campaign’s performance.
Social Metrics 101
Impressions: The number
of times your post, tweet,
offer, or announcement was
displayed to users
Social Reach: The number
of unique users who received
at least one impression
of said post, tweet, offer,
or announcement
Mentions: The number
of times a user tags your
company’s hashtag, or
tweets “at” your company’s
Twitter handle
Conversions: The number
of customers who first entered
your database through
social channels
Marketo Social Marketing dashboard
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The world has changed for marketers—there are
more people to reach, and more ways to reach
them. It’s clear that social is still evolving, but it’s
also become clear that social marketing is crucial
to every marketing campaign.
As marketers, however, we’re not satisfied to
perform routine maintenance, or to do just enough.
Many of us have long suspected the enormous
power of social, but have struggled to tap into
that power. To do so, you need to use a marketing
automation system that integrates social, email,
web, and offline marketing.
Social marketing on its own is nice; social
marketing that’s integrated with your entire
marketing strategy is gravity-defying. Your ability
to integrate social into the rest of your strategy—
from lead nurturing to customer advocacy—
will determine your mission’s success.
Mission Landing:
Closing Thoughts
26. About Marketo
Easy, Powerful, Complete.
Marketo uniquely provides easy-to-use, powerful and complete marketing software
that propels fast-growing small companies and global enterprises alike. Marketo’s
marketing automation and sales effectiveness software—including the world’s
first integrated solution for social marketing automation —streamlines marketing
processes, delivers more campaigns, generates more win-ready leads, and
dramatically improves sales performance. With proven technology, comprehensive
services and expert guidance, Marketo helps thousands of companies around the
world turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver.
Known for providing breakthrough innovation and fueling explosive growth,
Marketo was recently named one of America’s Most Promising Companies
by Forbes, the #1 Marketing Software Vendor on the INC 500, and the
#1 fastest-growing private company of 2011 by the Silicon Valley Business
Journal. In both 2011 and 2012 the company received the CRM Market Leaders
Awards Winner for Marketing Solutions by CRM Magazine. Salesforce.com
customers also honored the company with two AppExchange Best of ’11 Awards,
for Best Marketing Automation Solution and Best Chatter Exchange.
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