Blogging and social media generate new leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional marketing tactics. They convert into sales too. This post looks at how small firms can produce the right level of blogs without taking business owners away from their day job.
Digital marketing tactics are fast becoming mainstream. They have gone beyond the experimental stage and are challenging traditional techniques like exhibitions, trade shows and direct mail in terms of lead generation performance.
Not only do digital techniques have a cost per lead that’s typically 60% lower than traditional tactics, but the lead quality seems to be just as good too.
Recent research published by Hubspot looked at the effectiveness of inbound versus outbound marketing techniques. Inbound refers to activities like blogs, content publishing, social media and web traffic resulting from SEO. Hubspot defines outbound as telemarketing, direct mail, trade shows and more traditional activities.
The findings highlighted a shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards inbound digital tactics. This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business keeping a close eye on your bottom line.
The research found that inbound digital techniques like blogging and social media had the lowest cost per lead. The average lead cost for traditional tactics was $346 which compares to a figure for blogging and social media of just $135 – a whopping 60% difference!
Looking at blogging and social media platforms, respondents claimed success in acquiring new customers from the following:
65% LinkedIn
55% Blogging
43% Facebook
40% Twitter
Hubspot went on to look at the lead-to-close rates to identify the most effective channels for lead conversion. This revealed the following metrics:
15% SEO
15% Direct traffic
9% Digital links / Referrals
7% Paid for Search
4% Social Media
2% Outbound calls
So, leads arising from SEO and via the web generally, had a higher conversion rate than outbound calls (15% versus 2%). It’s not entirely clear what actually falls under the terms “Direct traffic” or “Referrals”, but links from blogs and other published articles probably fall into the latter. Equally, one suspects that the results from nurture activity targeted at direct mail respondents or trade show visitors may fall under “Direct Traffic”.
In terms of blogging itself, the research identified a high correlation between frequency of blog posts and the ability of the technique to generate new business.
At first sight, this diagram could be a very scary one for small business owners: the more you post, the higher the probability of generating a new customer. However, evidence suggests that a third of SME bosses want to reduce the time they spend creating blogs or participating in social media. A couple of observations should help calm the nerves!
Firstly, you don’t need to post multiple times a day to benefit from blogging. You stand a greater than 50% chance of winning new business if you just post once a month. Publish more frequently and your chances of success will be even higher.
Given that it takes around three hours to compose a blog it’s no wonder that the time and effort involved appears onerous. Posting once or twice a week will get you near to a 70% success rate, provided the posts are of quality content and relevant to your audience.
That’s the real challenge; devoting the time to create quality content that is relevant to your audience. The higher the quality, the longer it will take to create. That can be a big problem when you’re also trying to run the rest of your business.
What’s to be done? You can’t stop producing blogs as they are a highly cost effective method of generating new business. Equally, you probably can’t afford to devote over three hours to produce every blog post.
Ideally you’ll have someone in your organisation able to take on the role of blog preparation. Alternatively, you’ll need to outsource the task to a professional or accept that it’s something you’ll have to continue to do yourself.
Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate has become an essential part of your marketing activity. The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget away from the more expensive traditional techniques in favour of more cost effective digital tactics.
Hubspot research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably US).
57% had less than 25 employees; 72% were B2B and 38% were owners or heads of business.
Industries included professional services, communications, technology, media, education and others.
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Copywriting and ghost blogging for small businesses
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