In my last job, I was continually having to be the one trying to convince the marketing department to include social features and and add social elements to our demand generation programs.
Quite simply, they didn’t want to hear it.
I always wondered why there was a difference in opinion. Perhaps it was because social media was considered the domain of public relations/communications — inbound marketing — and demand generation is owned by marketing — specifically, outbound marketing.
Can the two peacefully coexist?
Earlier this year, I was asked by CMO.com to create a slideshow of ways to make demand generation programs more social.
I am one of the biggest advocates of social media ROI. While adding social media icons to emails and landing pages is a given, I would constantly be tracking the click-through rates and page jumps of your company or client’s social content.
One thing I am not a fan of: social media automation. I understand that demand generation programs have powerful built-in triggering mechanisms, but automating a Twitter follow or invitation based on one activity could be perceived as cold or even stalkerish.
Social media lead scoring is definitely key, and updating a CRM database with key information gleaned from social interactions can only benefit a sales and marketing organization.
Marketing automation software leader Eloqua launched a social media suite at Dreamforce last year, and is continually publishing some interesting content for marketing leaders on how to integrate social into demand generation. Below is a top-level introduction from the company.
I’m continually interested in hearing from marketing and IT folks who have seen success with social — including successful integration with existing legacy CRM systems. If you have something you’d like to share, let me know!