Digital marketing techniques are having a profound impact on small business performance. Now you can publish blogs that generate new sales leads at a lower cost per lead than traditional techniques, and free-up more time to run your business.
Small businesses are responding to the challenging economic climate by consciously reviewing the techniques they use to generate new business. The trend is away from traditional techniques like exhibitions and outbound calling and more towards blogging and social media. What’s more, this change appears to be having a positive impact on profit margins too!
Savings of up to 60%
Research published by Hubspot in 2012 reveals small firms are reallocating up to 21% of their marketing budget towards blogging and social media. These firms are finding that digital techniques can generate new business at a lower cost per lead. Some 52% of respondents felt blogs produced leads at a lower cost than traditional techniques whilst 45% claimed the same for social media.
Aligning blogs and social media to “Inbound” marketing, and tactics such as trade shows and telemarketing to “Outbound” marketing, Hubspot calculated the average cost per lead based on respondent input.
They found that the average outbound cost per lead came to $346 whereas the value for inbound leads was $135 – a massive 60% difference! Given the current economic environment, it’s no wonder small firms are re-allocating marketing budget towards blogging and social media.
Hubspot also asked respondents to rank blogging and the main social media channels in order of lead generation importance.
All channels scored 60% or more in terms of their usefulness in generating new leads. Even more revealing was that 25% said blogging was “critical” in terms of importance and a further 34% ranked blogging as “important” as shown in the diagram below.
Chart 1: Importance of blogging and social media to new lead generation activities:
The hidden costs of social media and blogs
Whilst digital techniques are proving to be more cost effective than traditional lead generation methods, they still have associated costs that can have a big impact on small business performance.
The sheer time and effort required to maintain a social media presence or create a quality blog is proving too much for many small business owners. Research elsewhere indicates that it takes three or more hours to create a single blog post. If you wanted to create and publish, say, three posts a week, you’d need to find an extra day on top of your already busy schedule.
You may be like a number of small business owners who want to spend less time managing social media and blogging; a third of SME’s feel this way. Understandably, you need to devote more time to running your business. However, if you stop publishing blogs you’ll be back to relying on traditional lead generation techniques and the consequent impact on your bottom line.
The opportunity cost of your time
As the owner of a small business you’ll be stretched trying to cover all the different aspects of your business. This makes you best qualified to act as thought leader. You’ll also be ideally placed to interpret an item of industry news and highlight the implications for your audience.
However, if you don’t enjoy writing or don’t feel you have the right style or approach, you will end up spending longer than is necessary on the task of blog writing; that’s wasted time that could be invested more productively elsewhere in your business.
What’s more, the material you publish is going to directly impact how your business brand is perceived by existing customers and prospects alike. The content has to be relevant and engaging, yet still include a subtle call-to-action. Plus, your audience will view typos and mistakes as badly as those found in a glossy sales brochure; blogging and social media for businesses demands higher standards than for personal use.
Unless you enjoy writing and creating charts, graphs, etc., you may be better off handing the task over to someone in your business able to focus fully on the job, or outsource the task to a professional. You’ll then be able to stay in control of the message by reviewing and influencing content before it’s published.
If you were to allocate the task of publishing just one blog post a week to someone else, not only would you be generating leads at a lower cost than traditional methods, but you would have an extra three hours a week to devote to running other parts of your business!
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Ghost blog writing and outsourced marketing for small businesses
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
Firms can reduce their cost per lead by up to 60% by adopting blogging and social media over more traditional marketing techniques. The problem for small businesses is how to create quality content without compromising business performance.
Recent research published by Hubspot highlights the extent of the shift away from traditional marketing techniques towards digital tactics. This has big implications if you are the owner of a small business, as digital communications can have a significant impact on your bottom line.
Whilst the research is US based, the findings are still relevant for the UK and Europe. The research 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, tradeshows and more traditional activities.
In truth, the Hubspot definition for outbound tactics can be challenged. It’s probably better to consider techniques in relation to their interruptive impact on the target audience. Inbound represents tactics where the audience are in control of when they engage with your business.
At the other end of the scale would be outbound phone calls / telemarketing which represent perhaps the most disruptive tactic when engaging your audience. In between are a range of other techniques reflecting different degrees of audience disruption.
The Hubspot research found that inbound tactics featuring low on the audience disruption scale also had the lowest cost per lead. This is reflected in the chart below which shows that blogs, social media and web leads from SEO enabled traffic, head the list.
The research also found that, on average, the outbound lead cost was $346 compared to just $135 for an inbound lead. That’s a massive 60% saving on average lead costs.
The inbound digital marketing techniques that were most successful in generating new business for B2B firms were:
* LinkedIn 65%
* Blogs 55%
* Facebook 43%
* Twitter 40%
The research does not say if any of these tactics were combined when generating new business leads but the overall trend is still impressive.
However, a separate report highlights that many SME owners find the effort required for social media and blogging too onerous. Some 33% of SME owners want to spend less time on this area. Yet, if they stop, they know it will directly impact their lead generation performance.
If you run a business and recognise the value blogging can contribute, you have essentially three options:
1. Write the blog posts yourself
2. Allocate the task to someone in your organisation
3. Outsource the task to a professional
Which option you choose will largely depend on your budget, the capability and bandwidth of your staff and the extent to which you enjoy writing.
Building your social media and blogging presence in today’s economic climate is fast becoming mandatory in order to maintain business awareness. The cost implications alone demand that you re-balance your marketing budget towards more cost effective digital tactics. They have moved on from being experimental fads to mainstream marketing tactics.
Traditional lead generation tactics will no doubt continue to play a key role in your lead generation programme. However, you should seriously consider how much of your budget should be allocated between traditional and digital channels for 2013.
Hubspot Research respondent profile:
972 respondents in January 2012 (presumably in the USA).
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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