A New Way To Connect Twitter To Lead Generation

B2B marketers are so anxious to generate leads from social media they are turning Twitter into a list for cold calls and mass email blasts.

In the last couple weeks, two companies have emailed or called me because I follow influential sales and marketing accounts on Twitter.

There is nothing social about this! Marketers are just turning social into a source of email or telemarketing lists for mass outbound marketing.

Here is a better way, along with actual results, that companies can use to drive leads through social media.

Retargeting From Social Media

Like many B2B marketers looking to drive engagement, you share content and drive conversation around other people’s content. But when you focus on promoting other people’s content, you don’t have an opportunity to capture a potential lead.

Now, with a new Social Retargeting offering from Bizo, you can buy banner ads targeted only to people that click on content you share, even when it isn’t your content.

Bizo’s solution is dead simple to use:

  1. Use a URL shortener from Bizo (bizo.me) to share links to content through your social media channels. There is a simple share button, making it as easy as using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to share content.
  2. Upload banner ads promoting your own content, or other lead generation offers, that can drive traffic back to your site.
  3. Provide a credit card and run a banner campaign to reach people that have clicked the links you share via social media.

This extends your retargeting program, often one of the best performing online advertising tactics, to include the audience you have developed in social media.

Sample Social Retargeting Results

Bizo shared the results from their own tests in a recent blog post. Rather than only relying on Bizo’s own audience, Bizo used Promoted Tweets to expand the reach of the content they shared.

As you can see the chart below, Promoted Tweets by themselves were an expensive lead source (defined here as a net new contact in Bizo’s marketing automation system). However, when combined with Bizo’s new offering, it become a cost effective channel. Here is the summary:

Who Should Test It

This solution may not be right for every marketer, but if you are in one of the following groups it is definitely worth looking into and potentially testing:

  1. Content curators. If you share content from others, this allows you to promote your content to anyone that clicks. With a sizable audience, Bizo’s results indicate you could target a $10, or potentially lower, CPL over time.
  2. Social advertisers. Do you use social ads to promote your updates on any social media platform but don’t always drive back to your own site? This could be the perfect solution to promote your updates and still drive leads. Based on Bizo’s results above, you might expect a $60 to $80 CPL over time.
  3. Newsletter or email marketers. Since Bizo’s solution is tracking clicks, this solution can be used to target individuals that click on emails and go to offsite content. Note email service providers could add a similar solution but many are not offering this today.

Your Turn

Should marketers scrape leads from lists of social media followers or should you use solutions like Bizo’s that let your audience respond first on their own terms? Share your view in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Photo by Thai Jasmine on Flickr

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