Hotel Sales Blog

Can Social Networks Really Generate Leads?

In an article in eMarketing.com (June 15, 2010) a recent study indicated that social networks generated weak lead generation in visits to the company’s website.   The visitors to the web site generated by social media were visiting one page, had a short attention span and seldom got to the ‘contact us’ page.

One of the most interesting things to come out of this research are the pages that social media referral visitors looked at.

Notice how high the percentages for visitation to the blog page.  The same was shown with Twitter and it is unfortunate that the research did not more extensively include LinkedIn, which is the B2B site of preference.

Several months ago the same online publication published a study indicated that companies were obtaining customers in the B2B space but they came primarily from LinkedIn.  The pages most likely to generate these leads that were converted to customers was the blog.

Why? At it’s best, the blog is informational and not just product promotion as most of the web site is (See Seth Godin’s book ‘All Marketers are Liars.) Most web sites are filled with adjectives that customers don’t really believe any more but a well done blog gives visitors information about issues and/or the company without hyperbole.   

What can we deduce from this.  First of all, a vistor may return to a site many times before they become a lead through the contact us page — there are no stats because the customer only appears as a social media lead the first time they visit — after that they are ‘repeat’ visitors.  Secondly and probably more importantly, the blog is one of the most useful tools in the marketers aresenal and it is often missued or neglected — it’s value not perceived to be as strong as other lead generation sources.

Let’s hope that these two graphs give the company blog it’s due and prominence in communicating with ptotential customers.

PS  If you were waiting to receive leads flowing out of social media, think again.  For the most part leads still need to be developed and social media is an invaluable prospecting and relationship building tool.