The $21,000 Tweet: From Social Right to Your Pipeline

I used to believe that you’d have better luck running into Bigfoot in Central Park than getting a big-ticket lead from a tweet, but I’ve been proven wrong. The Sasquatch sighting of Twitter marketing happened, landing a dizzying $21,000 deal from a simple tweet. Here’s a screenshot of how fast the “Bigfoot deal” accelerated from tweet to signature.

Screenshot taken from Marketo’s Opportunity Analyzer

If you’re tracking where your leads are coming from (and you better be), don’t be surprised to see Twitter start to rank.

Today’s company requires a sophisticated lead-generation strategy that is multi-channel — everywhere potential customers are. Email marketing is great, but if you’re focused only on the email channel, you’re missing out on social’s marketing allure. To capitalize on the selling power of social, and adopt a progressive lead-nurturing strategy that takes advantage of all the channels available to you, follow these four steps:

1. Track your social channels by lead source

Track your leads from social just like you track them from every other source — particularly if you’re running social lead gen programs and campaigns. Zeroing in on where your best leads come from will help you focus on the most effective channels and then allocate your marketing budget to capitalize on what works.

2. Measure the social touch points along the funnel

Within your social channels, make sure you’re tracking specific touch points so that you know which ones ultimately have the most impact on your sales funnel.  You can track:

• Twitter interactions
• Facebook engagement
• Linkedin engagement
• Google+ plus engagement
• Slideshare views
• Blog comments

Don’t just lump all of your social metrics together; pull them apart to dial in on which social strategy is working best for you. And don’t be afraid to experiment with new ways to acquire lead info via social. For example, Twitter recently introduced Lead Generation Cards to help you better capture leads right in line with your tweets. To learn how you can get the biggest bang for your buck with them, read Dennis Bronnikov’s recent blog post, 6 Tips for Effective Marketing with Twitter Lead Generation Cards.

3. Put the right nurturing tracks in place

While the tweet that skyrocketed from initial conversion to a $21,000 deal in a few weeks was pretty exciting, the reality is that most leads you receive from your social channels won’t come to you ready-to-buy. Social leads usually need to be nurtured, so that your brand stays in mind until those interested are ready to commit.

With the right nurturing tracks in place, you can walk your lukewarm leads through the funnel until they are red hot and conversion ready. When a potential customer shows interest by replying to, favoriting, or re-tweeting one of your tweets, you have the opportunity to start building a relationship. The first step is to acknowledge the shout-out by responding to tweet love. The next step is to provide (and direct them to) consistent, quality content that speaks to your lead’s exact interest.

(See Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing for more on this.)

4. Consider a multi-touch attribution model

With a first-touch attribution model, the program that originally sources a customer gets full credit for the eventual sale, regardless of the actual path the customer takes to get there. A multi-touch attribution model, on the other hand, gives credit to all the marketing channels that influence your customer during his or her research-gathering stage. So while there are many different tactics that might kick off relationships with your leads, your Twitter messaging might keep them engaged and help spur them along the pipeline.

Using a first-touch attribution model, your social channels might not look like hot lead generators, since social isn’t the likely first place for your customers to share their contact information. But when you use the multi-touch attribution model, you can see how different touch points along the sales cycle influence your prospects and can even accelerate the sales cycle.

To take advantage of the selling power of social, invest in sophisticated marketing automation software platforms that are multi-channel, rather than tools that focus exclusively on email marketing. Companies that take social media seriously and are nimble across channels will lead the pack in the future. Just make sure you use a tool that is channel-ubiquitous and can scale well for large organizations, from B2C to B2B.