subject: Measure Social Media Contribution to Lead Generation [print this page] Measure Social Media Contribution to Lead Generation
Let me begin with an example. A B2B finance firm decided to conduct lead generation drives on the social media platforms. They hired a BPO firm to deal with that. The firm, on their turn, got call center agents to set up corporate profile pages on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The profile pages were acting as beds to encourage people to sign up as friends, followers or fans.
It was moving along smoothly, with outbound call center executive adding up to 100 followers on Twitter every day! The call center services was happy and was about to declare their mission a success. Suddenly someone hit a brainwave. They checked Google Analytics. The traffic coming in from their social media campaigns barely touched double figures on a daily basis, with almost no blind leads, let alone qualified ones.
What could have gone wrong? First up, the corporate profile pages put up by the BPO was shabby. It bore all the marks of a job done by amateurs. The writing and the information was far from what you would expect a business firm to be. The call center employees who created and managed the profiles spared little thought to the idea that these profile pages would be the face of the client company online.
Other than faults with the profile pages, the lead generation techniques were all over the place. The outbound call center agents pushed random web links leading to the client home page and services page. There was no interaction with the people on the pages. Tweets were nothing more than URLs. Very soon the corporate profiles looked positively spammy.
The blame doesn't stop with the BPO agents. The planning was faulty to begin with. The metrics of performance measurement were wrong. The call center agents were given daily targets of adding a certain number of friends and followers. That was the be-all and end-all of the campaign. The planners failed to understand that a B2B firm would never need the massy traffic. They need to cater to niche markets. They need to contact business heads and other business firms who might need the services of the client company.
That would have been the ideal lead generation. B2B leads need not be by the dozens, because it's not possible. You need quality leads and then follow up. An automated way of approaching the social media campaign would mean that your focus is vague and your returns on investment (ROI) hovering around the insignificant mark.
Social media metrics would mean interaction. Ask your BPO agents to talk to the people on the business page. Talk as you would have a conversation. Hit on some common ground to talk about. Measure your call center agent's performance through how many interactions your agent has made, how many comments done, how many times your client firm's name has been used in the course of interactions.
All these make up a successful branding campaign on social media. The ideal sites to promote B2B markets are still professional networks. There you get business heads hobnobbing professionally. That's where you got to be as a call center services firm looking for B2B lead generation.
