Startup Blog

Case Study on Social Media Marketing Lead Generation - #sherpaB2B09

Posted by Mike Volpe on 10/5/09 2:00 PM

I had the great opportunity to speak to a bunch of my marketing peers at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Demand Generation Summit in Boston today (#sherpaB2B09).  It was part of a panel discussion, and there were no slides, but my notes are below  Enjoy and share!

Background on Social Media for Lead Generation

  • Why is social media marketing important?
    • We have built a bubble around us to block out these outbound marketing messages
    • Only through more inbound marketing approaches can you attract people who have built this bubble around them
    • Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter are all 100% controlled by the user who decides if they want to start communicating with you - unlike email, phone and direct mail where anyone can contact you, and then you have to tell them to stop 2. What is a social media marketing campaign?
  • At HubSpot, we have no social media marketing campaigns
    • Using social media and inbound marketing is a way of life. We are always trying to have an ongoing dialog with our market

Example: Social Media Marketing for Lead Generation Case Study

At HubSpot, we did a webinar on "How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR" in March 2008 (this was way before Twitter had achieved mainstream popularity).

Step 1: Start by building assets

  • Blog - 5,000 subscribers at the time (we have over 20,000 RSS and email subscribers today)
  • LinkedIn Group - about 5,000 members at the time (there are over 40,000 members today)
  • Twitter Company Account - About 1,000 followers of @HubSpot at the time (we have over 20,000 today)
  • Facebook Fan Page - About 500 fans at the time (we have over 6,000 fans today)

Step 2: Use your marketing assets to promote your offer

  • Wrote a blog article about Twitter marketing tips that also mentioned the webinar
  • Emailed an appropriate segment of our opt-in house list about the webinar
  • Posted the webinar as an event on Facebook and LinkedIn
  • Added links on the webinar registration page to share with your friends on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook

Lead Generation Results for this Case Study

  • Landing page conversion rate over 50%
  • Over 4,000 people registered for the webinar (4,000 leads!)
  • Triple the size of our largest previous webinar (we have since grown to as many as 8,000 people registering for a HubSpot webinar)
  • Over 30% of the webinar registrants were not on our email list
  • 1,200 completely new leads!
  • Hundreds of qualified leads for the sales team, generating hundreds of opportunities representing over $500,000 in pipeline created
  • SEO: The blog article and the archived webinar rank extremely well, even today - 18 months later
    • First page of Google organic search for phrases like "Twitter Marketing" and "Twitter PR"
    • #1 Google ranking for "Twitter for Marketing and PR", "Twitter for Marketing", "Twitter Webinar"
  • Blog: One of top 10 most popular blog articles ever
    • Over 20,000 people have read the article, leaving over 100 comments
    • Over 1,500 people found that blog article about the webinar during last month, over 18 months later
  • The archived webinar has been viewed over 16,000 times, over 1,000 of those in the last 30 days
  • Total cost $3,000 - About $1,000 for webinar software, plus our time to create the content (probably a total of 40 hours at an estimated cost of $2000 at $50/hour)

Final Advice on Social Media Marketing for Lead Generation

  • Think about social media marketing as part of a holistic inbound marketing strategy
  • Social media marketing is not a campaign, it is a marketing lifestyle
  • Blogging and publishing content is essential to social media success
  • Archive your social content and optimize it for search engines to make it perform for months into the future
  • Focus on building long term marketing assets

Webinar: Twitter for Marketing and PR


twitter for marketing and pr


Want to learn more about using Twitter for Marketing and PR?

Download the free webinar for tips and tricks to drive inbound marketing using Twitter.

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Mike Volpe

Written by Mike Volpe

Mike Volpe is a startup advisor and angel investor based in Boston.

Topics: social media, lead generation, B2B

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