Using Social Media Strategy and ROI Metrics To Increase B2B Sales Skip Reardon Director of Digital Marketing

Here’s What I’ve Heard So Far Today

During the next 60 seconds… 2,000,000 searches on 500,000 “Likes” on 90,000 tweets on 7,600 searches on 600 videos uploaded to

Social Media Investment Trends Source: John Bell, Olgivy, 2011 NOTE: Social media is NOT just for marketing!!

The Marketing Mix Has Changed …Or Has It? Consumer model Cost (of ownership) Communications Convenience TODAY Community 1960’s Product Price Promotion Place TODAY People 1990’s

Social Media Tools Understanding the primary tools – Facebook – LinkedIn – Twitter – YouTube – Why? B2B decision makers are the most socially engaged in the world - when compared to average internet users.

A Few Recommendations… If Your Business Offers Products/Services Social Media Tools To Consider That rely on local customersFacebook, Twitter, Google Places That rely on your expertise/IP, networks, new relationships LinkedIn, Facebook That can be shown or demonstrated for best effect YouTube, Facebook, Twitter That target a more mature demographic Facebook, LinkedIn That target a younger demographic Twitter, Facebook

The Traditional Sales Funnel

The Social Media Funnel

Social Media Strategy What is your social media strategy based on? What do B2B leaders do when we have questions? We SEARCH – “How can I help you solve your business problem?” 2,000,000 Google searches per minute! ….and search is becoming increasingly social

Social Media Strategy “How Can I Help You Solve Your Business Problem?” Yet only 29% of sales reps are really prepared to understand customers’ business problems 40% of survey responders: biggest challenge – getting sales to challenge and collaborate more with customers How can we solve this? – Create relevant content to solve business problems – Make your experts available – Revise your approach to relationship building – Remember– it’s ALL social selling

Measuring Social Media’s Impact What are the metrics/measures? – Relevant Awareness/Engagement : website visitors, page ranking, followers, FB Likes, LI’s Shares, Google’s +1 – Advocacy/Conversion: comments, RTs, reviews, WOM – Loyalty: repeat products/services sold, cross-sales of products/services, testimonials, referrals

Measuring Social Media’s Impact How can we measure them? – Websites/blogs: Google Analytics – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube - all have built-in analytics 3 M’s – Monitor – watch and track mentions – Measurement – of engagement data – Metrics – KPIs for social media measurement

What Actions Do You Take? Lagging Indicators Quantitative campaign measures over a period of time – Website visitors, “Likes”, Shares, followers, comments, subscribers, reviews, page ranking But - ROI should not be the sole measure of performance Leading Indicators Short-term measures of success that offers some predictive insight into future outcomes. – Sales leads, direct orders, inquiries

A Look Toward The Future “Skate to where the puck is going to be…” – Social will “no longer matter” – It’s “just” communications – Mobile – smartphones, tablets – Social impact on e-commerce

Finally, A Quick Recap… Strategy Create relevant content to solve business problems Make your experts available Choose social media tools wisely It’s ALL social selling Execution Apply freshness and frequency to content Monitor measures frequently Make changes mid-stream when something is not working – it takes time Revisit strategy regularly Rinse, repeat…..

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