Social media is the top emerging channel for lead generation among technology marketing professionals surveyed in May 2010, according to the annual Unisfair marketing survey. Furthermore, 66% of respondents said lead generation was their top priority for 2010, with only 17% ranking brand awareness and 16% ranking customer retention as top concerns. The survey illustrated that marketers are beginning to rely on social media as a steady source of new customers.

In another study, 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers said they were more likely to buy the brands they like on Facebook or follow on Twitter, strengthening the argument that social media is one of the most important emerging channels for lead generation. Being that social media is a great place to attract new customers, we put together a quick guide on how to use social media for lead generation.

This is how most companies produce advertising today, with variable results. For many advertisers, it’s not working as well as it used to because prospects aren’t paying attention anymore—i.e., they’re not reading print trade publications nearly as often. Not when they can Google the keywords describing your product and compare and evaluate pages of factual detail on virtually all available solutions to their corrosion problems.

The post-marketing (content-based) approach: Now, take the same product, but focus instead on developing content that can help prospects address key concerns or solve common problems in their field, using products like yours. For example, you could write a report describing how your anti-corrosion coating uses fewer hazardous chemicals, and explain, using solid financial analysis, how this reduces a typical customer’s actual waste disposal and insurance expenses compared to using other coatings offered by your competition. Use actual numbers derived either from your current customers’ operating results, or based on industry-recognized data sources, such as trade associations or industry research firms.

Once you develop the content, the best use for online and social media for lead generation is to use this content as a token of exchange for attracting the attention of the prospects in your market who are using online and social media, and to draw them closer to the point where they will contact your company and become prospects.

Here’s how you can utilize online and social media to deliver this content to your market:

• Summarize this report in a post on your company’s blog;
• Introduce this new report on industry discussion forums tied to top industry news sites in your field;
• Introduce this new report by highlighting it on your CEO’s (and your company’s) LinkedIn and Facebook pages;
• Refer to this report on postings to other members of LinkedIn industry-related groups, such as groups serving the insurance and “green business” fields;
• Refer followers and others to this new report on Twitter postings;
• Ditto for tweets where relevant, following “insurance” and “green business” Twitter users;
• Start a new group on LinkedIn related to the topic of anti-corrosion coating systems, and put a key product or technical executive at your company in charge as moderator of this new group;
• Produce a very simple, 2-minute narrated video summarizing this report, and featuring clips of your coating process in action. Post on YouTube, using relevant keywords, and also at an easily-found location on your company’s Web site

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Word of Mouth
This is a very basic and old school way of marketing but it has remained because it really is effective. All you have to do is tell all your family, friends and co-workers about your new site or blog and let them do the work! Be sure to have business cards on hand to give out to anyone you speak with. The old fashion still works in this high tech world, but it’s all about paying attention to what they are paying attention to, and making a comment or asking a question about it. So listen carefully and you could be amazed!

Build a base. Start with developing your personal brand and recognition: both of which will lead to prospects. This will add to your credibility and attract people to you because you’ll be perceived as a leader.

This can be debated but some say- Advertise aggressively and often. Whatever your advertising method, the more exposure you have, the more leads you will generate. Be proactive once you generate leads and make sure to follow up, this can be done through an automated system. Try it FREE for 30days here! http://tinyurl.com/3yrmoca

Flyers. Implementing an idea taken from another industry; the door-to-door concept can be applied to any industry these days. You can hire a company who specializes in door-to-door marketing or local college students to deliver flyers and start your promoting. This can be quite expensive so why not ask your local newsagent to deliver your flyers with his next delivery for a fraction of the cost?

Make it personal. Your message needs to communicate with them on a personal level. It could be a hand-written note or perhaps a picture. Either way, remember: You cannot replace a contact you personally made with one you bought from a list.

Video Marketing is HOT. Videos boost retention by 50 percent over live presentations. Have fun, show your personality and give people something to watch which they will enjoy. Creating videos has become very popular since the creation of YouTube and other video-based sites. This ties into viral marketing and is a good way to get people interested in your blog or website. It is most common to show or say the URL of your website at the beginning and/or end of a video, or tie it into your video site profile some how.

Give them something they want. Think about what your audience is looking for. If they want information, make it available; if they’re looking for a specific product make sure they know they can come to you to find it. Make your links readily available for them so they can easily access whatever info they need.

Target your audience. Think about who your target audience is, what situation are they in Age, etc… The more specific you are, the easier you will be able to relate to and attract your audience.

Don’t use mailing labels. Every letter, fax and e-mail should be personally addressed and never contain “Dear Client.” Remember to add that personal touch! You may be amazed at the feedback you will get.

Use a script (if calling leads) Scripting means every key word and key concept is written down. It gives you confidence and mastery over the subject.

Avoid self-promotion. Make your sites informational and provide value useful to the lives of clients and prospects, and they’ll seek you out when it’s time to do some planning and it will add to your credibility.

Capture Your Leads. Entice prospects to leave their contact information in exchange for the information you are providing and your site will drive leads.

Maintain an online presence. Become familiar with social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Learn how they work,and they’ll work for you.

Stop cold calling. It’s a total waste of time. Your time. The prospect’s time. Research shows it takes 9-12 touches to reach a prospect with a cold call campaign, and you get voicemail 80 percent of the time. In addition, you convert less than 10 percent into clients. Why bother? Learn to automate your business.

Focus on how you can help. To get immediate action, promote benefits – not features. Tell people what you can do for them rather than how great your product or service is and you will notice that they will want to find out about your services naturally.

Don’t try to network with everybody. You develop more effective referral partners when you whittle it down to a more manageable number. I focus on quality, not quantity, and concentrate on developing a dozen referral partners to work with.

Build a Web site with leads in mind. A Web site can be a lead-acquisition machine if it is easy to find and if it is used as part of an ongoing marketing campaign.

Narrow your expertise. The truth – clients choose the expert. And “the expert” understands their clients’ thinking and provides consistent results for others in their field. Narrow your focus and pay attention to one particular field, soon you will become the expert.

Stay focused. Don’t try to cram more than one message in your mailing. By adding more than one offer, you’re forcing your reader to split their attention.

Use images wisely. Some e-mail clients hide images by default. If you have important information in your images, it’s a good idea to repeat it in text somewhere else in the e-mail.

Build your referral business. When you receive a qualified referral, you are pre-sold, have trust and credibility, shorten your sales process, reduce your cost of sales, and gain a new client more than 50 percent of the time. No other lead-generation strategy comes close to these results. Write your referral sales plan with weekly referral goals and a tracking process to measure your referral-selling success.

Networking. Regularly network with related professionals, stay active in local business groups and try to get local speaking engagements in front of targeted prospects. Networking can have many benefits to promoting your site. I am always adding people on instant messaging services and talking to people related to my field. By networking and making friends in the business you can learn from each other and help each other which will benefit your site. The best way to do this is to meet people in forums or on sites related to yours and chat via instant messengers. I usually run

Offer something FREE. While pens and imprinted items are fine, if you can create a special report with a title that everyone “MUST” have, people will call to get it. Submitting tutorials is a great way to get traffic to your website via a link. A lot of designers submit tutorials to sites like the ones below, and get a lot of exposure. Most of these tutorials sites are very well ranked so getting a link on them can be very good for your website or blog.

Article Directories
Article directories are a wonderful way to get traffic and backlinks to your website. There are many well established article directories that have been proven to get websites traffic. People search for articles in different categories and after reading the article they usually follow a link at the bottom of the article to your website. Use this space wisely.

Business Directories
Posting in business directories is still an effective way to get backlinks and small amounts of traffic. Most directory sites have many listings that are organized into. Being that there are so many business directories, the best way to find one related to your site would be to do a Google search them.

Classifieds
Classifieds are a common way to easily make posts for free, and reach large amounts of people. They tend to work better for business or service-based websites, but you can also drive traffic to other types of sites as well.

Forums
Forums are another good way to get backlinks and traffic, but you need to contribute to the forums and not just spam them with your links. I recommend becoming an active member of forums that are related to your site, as well as including your website link in your forum signature. By making intelligent and informative posts people will be inclined to check out the link in your signature because you’ve built interest about yourself. The best way to do this is to manually search for forums related to your site and then sign up to start posting.

Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites are often overlooked as a way to market a website or blog. Having lots of friends and access to groups can be a good way to contact a lot of people in an easy and efficient manner. Most social networking sites also have forums and classifieds that you can post in.

Search Engines

This is probably one of the most difficult ways to market a site, but also one of the most popular ways due to the fact that the traffic you get can be extremely targeted to exactly what your site offers. This is especially important for sites that sell a product and are looking for a high conversion rate. It is usually better to start off targeting niche markets and low competition long tail keywords. Ranking well on Google for a phrase like ‘graphic design’ in the search engines would be extremely difficult to do, so look for longer keywords or more detailed ones.

Pay per Click Advertising (PPC)
PPC advertising takes a lot of studying to do right, and can cost a decent amount of money, but if your site is well designed and converts well, or you are just looking for traffic, it can be a very powerful marketing tool when done right.

Banner Advertising
The difficulty in banner advertising is simply creating a very alluring banner design in the amount of space specified. Some sites don’t let you create animated banners, but if you have a very intriguing static banner on a good site it can get you traffic for sure. The best way to do this is to manually search for websites and blogs related to your site and contact them for a banner exchange.

Email Marketing

Email marketing can be very beneficial if done well. You do not want to be a spammer or buy lists of emails, though. The way to work email marketing is to have an opt-in email form on your website where users can sign up to receive emails and special offers. Offering a free e-book or tips is a good way to get people to sign up. Once they are signed up you can send emails once in a while to bring them back to your site or to promote something. Get a free trail for 30 days here http://tinyurl.com/3yrmoca

Viral Marketing
This is the hottest new way to market a website, but it is not easy! You have probably heard about all these YouTube videos getting millions of views, and articles on Digg getting thousands of hits. If you can think up a really clever, funny or useful idea and tie it into your website via a link or some other way, you can drive incredible amounts of traffic to your site with very little money or possibly none at all.

Podcasting
This is basically creating audio files and then letting your users download or stream them via a link on your website or blog or via RSS feeds. This is a good alternative to creating videos if you don’t have a video camera or don’t like being on film. I have seen many sites successfully offer audio downloads as a way of bringing users a large amount of information quickly.

Blogs
Blogs are a great way to reach a lot of people in a fast manner. They take a lot of work, and to make a blog really effective they need to be updated with fresh content at least several times a week. A lot of websites will have a blog in addition to a main website as a sort of news system for their main site, or just as a way to drive traffic to a website.

Press Releases
Press releases can be an efficient way to get media attention if your website or product is newsworthy enough. There are several websites you can do this on.

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