Small businesses and major corporations are both constantly trying to generate new business. Lead generation can be done a number of ways: through lead generation services, online marketing, tradeshows and more. Social media is the talk of the town for B2C businesses, but B2B companies are just getting on board. Successful B2B online marketers are using social media and seeing a positive impact from doing so. Did you know that the companies who actively manage social media campaigns have seen comparatively high conversion rates as well as healthy engagement rates (Optify’s B2B Marketing Benchmark Report)? If you’re wondering how to nurture those leads you’ve generated on social networks, take these 3 steps for greater success.

Step One: Connect

You may have made contact with a lead once… or maybe you haven’t. Social networks are a great way to reach out leads directly through mediums other than email or the phone. Optify found that Twitter is the strongest social media channel for generating leads. It even outperforms Facebook and LinkedIn 9-to-1 with 82% of social media leads coming from Twitter. Lead generation and lead nurturing efforts can be improved as your sales and marketing teams connect with these people and business decision-makers on social networks.

• How to Find Them: You have their contact information. Use it to find and connect with these prospects on networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
• How to Connect: Personalize your connection requests, especially with LinkedIn. If you’re asking someone to become a fan of your company on Facebook, provide them with a valid reason they should.

Step Two: Engage

Engagement with prospects can mean different things for different businesses, but the often overall goal is to create a deeper relationship with those potential customers. Engagement involves your business providing value to these leads via social networks. According to Optify, website engagement from different social media channels varies, but LinkedIn leads the pack while Twitter shows the lowest page views per visit.

• Tweet prospects directly to let them know when an event is taking place in their industry.
• Aim to become a thought leader for your customers to turn to by providing content that can help them gain new insight into how to be more successful. Share your content and the content of others – you don’t want to be overly self-promotional.

Step 3: Convert

Conversion is the ultimate goal. Connecting and engaging a lead are necessary steps in order to convert a lead into a customer. Social media can be the final point of contact between a prospect and your business or brand, so make each touch point count. Facebook is the strongest driver of traffic among the three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), but Twitter leads the way for lead generation.  While Facebook drove the highest percentage of visits from social media, Twitter outperforms it in terms of lead conversion by over a 9-to-1 ratio.

• The B2B buying process has changed and now customers are more likely to come to you when they are ready instead of responding to advertisements. Provide ways for prospects to become customers on your social networks such as with applications, social media specific discounts, etc.
• Optimize your landing pages so that as a customer comes to your pages via social networks, they don’t become lost and have a way to carry on the conversation, via live chat or easy social sharing.

Some may not see the value in lead nurturing via social media. However, it is time to open your eyes to the possibility of these expanding networks. The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, sponsored by Social Media Examiner, found that 58% of marketers who have been using social media for more than three years report it has helped them improve sales. Social media is where you business can truly become creative in how to attract, engage and convert leads you have generated. Lead nurturing isn’t restricted to follow-up calls and emails. Brand out and stand out with a social media nurturing campaign.

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Social business and an engaging social content strategy go hand in hand. The content you produce can incorporate a number of assets including checklists, images, videos, copy and social posts. Social media and the social content strategy approach have more in common with all other forms of content marketing than you might think. We know content marketing is on the rise for B2B businesses in 2013, but how is social media included in this number? As you develop your strategy, keep these three things in mind.

Talk Through Your Audience

It is easier to get your brand, content, and social posts in front of people who already connect with your business. What about the audience beyond your immediate fan base? B2B marketers, especially those on a budget, need to create ways to talk through their audience. The audience of your audience, and their audience, are potentially new customers for you. As you develop your social content strategy, consider the ways in which you can talk through your current audience to connect with new audiences.

• What do your customers want? Focus on the content that your customers want and what social networks are the best for sharing and promoting that type of content. For example, if you’re targeting IT professionals, LinkedIn may be a better place to start than Pinterest.
• What do they want to experience? Consider the type of experience someone will have when they encounter or share your content. The experience, whether it’s a phone conversation or the way in which they find information on your site, should be a consideration with everything you do.

For B2B buyers, their audience isn’t family and friends for the way it is for B2C buyers. A significant number of B2B buyers (38%) involve more team members in buying decisions, and around 30% do more detailed ROI/cost analyses of solutions than they did in the past (2012 Demand Gen Report B2B Buyer Survey). This means, B2B marketers need to find a way to reach  all the decision makers involved in the purchasing process.

Understand Content Strategies are Social by Nature

Business may be about the numbers, but marketing and sales are all about the chains and the paths customers take to reach the end of it. There are the sales and marketing funnel, buyer journey and more. “What the customer wants you to know” equals understanding what your audience and their audience want you and other vendors to know. The social B2B buyer and buyers in general are affected by the opinions of their peers. As mentioned, business buying is a group decision. While this conversation may be offline, it often begins or ends online.

• Reach out to leads who are in the research phase of the buying cycle with whitepapers, case studies and infographics that not only educate the buyer, build thought leadership but are also easily shared on social networks.
• If possible, share the demographics of who else is buying from your business. Your prospects may be interested in knowing who, in their area or industry, has found success with your products or services.

Nearly all B2B buyers (94%) view multiple pieces of content from the company they ultimately select (2012 Demand Gen Report B2B Buyer Survey). This is one indication that you need to be producing content that your audience will find relevant and useful in making a purchasing decision. The other key indicator in this passage that you should be focusing on is that of multiple pieces. For example, you can create calculators, webinars, case studies, eBooks and buyer guides. Each of these unique pieces of content helps elevate your business and brand.

Be Relevant to Address Needs

You may have been able to pick it up from the previous sections of this article or past blog posts, but the content your marketing and sales teams share needs to be relevant. What your customers and their audiences say should serve as inspiration for the content you create from a social perspective. Listening is the basis, while acting to drive action and sharing are the goals. Content is what brings these two together successfully.

• Start social listening, if you aren’t already, to discover the pain points of your audience and their audience. Then use content and social media to solve these problems. Note: add example of how they should do this.
• Segment, target, and personalize your content to be as relevant as possible. Social media is not for amplification, it’s for social conversations.

More than 37% of buyers say sellers fail to provide enough content tailored for their specific job roleor industry. Stand out from the crowd while nurturing a lead by providing relevant content that they’ll find valuable. Nearly 63% of the respondents said that case-study examples were at the top of their research content lists. Industry case studies that address the pain points are a sure way to encourage your content gets shared.

Social media networks are important platforms for every business. It provides you with the opportunity to connect on a more personal level with your audience. Don’t let the opportunity pass you by! Talk to and through your social audience by developing a content strategy that focuses on relevance and tailored content.

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Metrics matter. As marketers, there are multiple numbers and reports we need to validate our efforts.  After all, if a marketing team isn’t helping a business generate new customers and creating better relationships with current ones, they often won’t be considered as successful as they could be. A Hubspot cheat sheet shares the 6 of the most important marketing metrics. We’ve broken them down just for B2B marketers.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a metric used to determine the total average cost you spend to acquire a new customer or lead. Businesses want a low average.

Why You Should Care: An increase in CAC means that you are spending comparatively more for each new customer or lead, which suggests there’s a problem with your sales or marketing efficiency that needs to be resolved.

Marketing Percent of Customer Acquisitions Cost

The Marketing Percent of Customer Acquisition Cost is the marketing portion of your total CAC, calculated as a percentage of the overall CAC.  This number can show you how the marketing teams performance and spending impact your overall Customer Acquisition cost.

Why You Should Care: An increase here can mean a number of things: Your sales team could have underperformed (and consequently received) lower commissions and/or bonuses, your marketing team is spending too much or has too much overhead or you are in an investment phase, spending more on marketing to provide more high quality leads and improve your sales productivity

Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC (LTV:CAC)

The Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC is a way for you to estimate the total value that your company derives from each customer compared with what you spend to acquire that lead or new customer. While reaching new customers is always important, so is total company growth.

Why You Should Care: The higher this number, the more ROI your sales and marketing team is delivering to your bottom line. A ratio that is too high could indicate you aren’t reaching enough new customers or connecting with enough leads. Spending more on acquiring new customers or leads to reach out to will reduce your LTV:CAC ratio, but can help speed up total growth.

Time to Payback CAC

The Time to Payback CAC shows you the number of months it takes for your company to earn back the CAC it spent acquiring new customers. In industries where your customers pay a monthly or annual fee, which many B2B businesses do, you normally want your Payback Time to be under 12 months.

Why You Should Care: The less time it takes to payback your CAC, the sooner you can start profiting from the new customers. Most businesses aim to make each new customer profitable in less than a year, though new customers in the B2B industry can take 12-24 months to make a purchase.

Marketing Originated Customer Percent

The Marketing Originated Customer Percent is a ratio that shows what new business is driven by marketing, by determining which portion of your total customer acquisitions directly originated from marketing efforts. It’s based on your sales and marketing relationship and structure, so your ideal ratio will vary depending on your business model.

Why You Should Care: The impact of your marketing team’s lead generation efforts have on acquiring new customers is reflected in this percentage. A company with an outside sales team and inside sales support may be looking at 20-40%. A company with an inside sales team and lead focused marketing team might be at 40-80%.

Marketing Influenced Customer Percent

The Marketing Influenced Customer Percent takes into account all of the new customers that marketing interacted with while they were leads, anytime during the sales process. This percent takes into account the impact marketing has on a lead during their entire buying lifecycle.

Why You Should Care: This metric will indicate how effective marketing is at generating new leads, nurturing existing ones, and helping sales close the deal. It gives your CEO or CFO a big-picture look into the overall impact that marketing has on the entire sales process.

To find out how to calculate these numbers, visit the HubSpot cheat sheet.

Which of these metrics matters the most to your business?

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