Today, consumers are ignoring traditional marketing channels and effectively finding ways to block them. How is this affecting your lead generation efforts? Are you connecting with your target audience or just gathering a large quantity of poor quality leads? Social Media has opened up a new channel for marketers. You now have the ability to have conversations directly with potential customers. Are you ready to join the discussion and build awareness for your products? Do you know how to quickly identify those that are specifically interested in your products/services? Do you know how to avoid social media pitfalls that can hurt your lead generation? Let’s Talk! about how social media monitoring can impact your sales prospecting and lead generation. Filling the sales funnel with high quality leads while reducing time can only increase your organization’s bottom line. Written by Connie Bensen, the Director of Community Strategy at Alterian, whose blog was recently named one of Forbes 20 Best Marketing and Social Media Blogs.

1. Increasing the Quantity & Quality of
Leads with Social Media Monitoring
Seven Ways to Increase the ROI of
Your Lead Generation Efforts

2. Full Whitepaper Available
This is an excerpt from the whitepaper:
‘Increasing the Quantity & Quality of Leads with Social
Media Monitoring’ by Connie Bensen, Director of Social
Media and Community Strategy at Alterian.
To download the whitepaper in its entirety, please go to:
http://bit.ly/LeadGenROI

3. Use the web to utilize social media for marketing efforts
The new social web is about trust and
relationships. Sales has always been
about that, but now the internet offers
a new venue that disregards the
boundaries of geography.

4. Use the web to utilize social media for marketing efforts
Companies don’t buy, people do! And
for products with a long buying
process that translates into a longer
time spent researching the web for
solutions. So the precepts are just as
applicable for B2B marketers as well
as B2C.

5. The Biggest Challenge is that the Web is a Vast Place
Searching for a specific topic realizes
a staggering number of search
results. The trick is how to deal with
information overload and efficiently
pinpoint what specifically applies to
your marketing needs.

6. Social Media Monitoring Makes it Possible
Use social media monitoring to identify those
that are specifically interested in your products /
services. And it is also possible to efficiently
bring their conversations to you. This makes it
easy to join their discussions and build
awareness for your products. As you build brand
presence and relationships are established your
business will soon realize high quality leads.

7. The Internet has Become a New Marketing Channel
The good news is that the web has created a
channel that is opt-in and has changed
marketing forever. Brands have realized that
they are now able to participate in the
conversations but the task of monitoring these
conversations and knowing where to begin
seems overwhelming. A social media monitoring
tool allows a marketer to gather all of the
conversations over the past given period of time.

8. Engaging in Social Media is about Building Relationships
• Everyone will welcome your presence if you
provide value and information. But if you spam
them with pushy marketing messages you will
be ignored or even asked to leave.
• The prospecting will happen indirectly. You are
going to encounter conversations that range
from people expressing a need for your type of
products to those seeking customer service.

9. Main Types of Social Media Interactions
• Inform
• Thank
• Share
• Apologize
• Redirect

10. 7 Ways to Use Social Media Monitoring for Lead Generation
1. Identify people expressing a need for your product /
service
2. Create a Customer Profile
3. Reduce cold calling
4. Lower acquisition costs
5. Increase revenue due to cross selling and upselling
6. Reduce marketing costs and spend on Google Adwords
7. Align sales efforts with marketing

11. 1. Identify People Expressing a Need for Your Product or Service
Search for specific words and phrases you can
identify conversations where people are expressing
a need for your product or service. This allows you
to find pockets of online communities where your
potential customers are located and is a great way
to find new markets.
Best practice is to listen for a while and ease into
the conversation.

12. 2. Create Customer Profiles
Use a social media monitoring tool to analyze all the
conversations and create word clouds that visually depict
the most frequently used words. It will also create word
clouds of words or phrases that authors have tagged their
content with. These word clouds provide valuable insight
into the words and phrases that are of the highest
importance to your consumer group (specific to your search
terms). These words should also be used as SEO
keywords (outlined in the first whitepaper of the ROI series).

13. 3. Reduce Cold Calling
Listen to what the needs of your industry are. Once you
have a strategy, you can then join the conversations and
provide links to your content when appropriate. Best
practice is to make sure that it is applicable to the topic at
hand. If the community finds value in your content they will
share it with others. They will click through to your site,
explore your information and express an interest in more
information.
These warms leads are qualified and essential targets!

14. 4. Lower Acquisition Costs & Shorten the Length of the Cycle
The creation of informative content also results in
reduced spending on marketing and advertising.
Prospects and customers will share the information
and the resulting word of mouth is far better than
any marketing or advertising that you can buy,
because people trust their peers far more.

15. 5. Increase Revenue Due to Cross- and Up-Selling
Answering your customers quickly allows you to
build brand confidence and reinforces that your
company cares. It also provides opportunities to
discuss their business needs and allows you to
suggest other products that would meet their
needs. Or maybe there is an opportunity to up-sell
to a higher level? This high level of customer care
will be noticed by your customers and will result in
increased loyalty as well as positive word of mouth.

16. 6. Reduce marketing Costs and Google Adwords
Publishing content which others find valuable
builds SEO organically. It is also the most highly
regarded by search engines. Many are finding that
it provides more than enough value to discontinue
or refine their spend on Google Adwords. It’s much
easier to measure the effects of a social media
engagement using social media monitoring than it
is to identify the gain from Adwords.

17. 7. Align Sales Efforts with Marketing
Together, the sales and marketing teams can
interact in social networks to jointly build
relationships with prospects and customers
toward the same goal of increased sales.

18. Next Steps
1. Try the Freemium version of Alterian SM2 (a
professional social media monitoring tool)
2. Explore resources on social media monitoring
www.alteriansm2.com
3. Request a Little Book on some BIG marketing
topics www.alterian.com/resources/littlebooks
4. Email info@alterian.com
5. Call +1 312 884 5321

19. Thank You!
Phone: 312-704-1700
Fax: 312-704-1701
Email: sales@alterian.com
Twitter: @Alterian
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EngagingTimesLive
uStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/alterian-s-engaging-times-live
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1823072
SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/Alterian
iTunes: Alterian Leadership Series
Blogs: www.EngagingTimes.com
www.TheMarketingMojo.com
www.ConnieBensen.com