The Definitive Guide to Lead Generation

CHAPTER SEVEN: SOCIAL MEDIA AND LEAD GENERATION
TWITTER
Think of Twitter as a virtual water cooler for marketing professionals: it’s a vibrant community where businesses can
generate leads, and thought leaders can discuss relevant industry topics. With 218 million users, Twitter can’t be ignored.
At Marketo, Twitter helps us
foster continuous, real-time
engagement with our customers
and prospects. We use Twitter
to spread the word about
specific product offerings, and
as a forum for potential
customers to learn more about
us and our products. And like
Facebook, Twitter offers many
opportunities for marketers to
collect and generate leads.
Promoted Tweets
We’ve had great success with
Promoted Tweets, a form of paid ads
that appear in a user’s feed, targeted
to followers and users who fit our
criteria. Our Promoted Tweets contain
timely and engaging offers, like
contests for free trips to industry
events, or links to relevant thought
leadership. We use Promoted Tweets
to create demand for new content
assets, upcoming events, or demos.
Every Promoted Tweet that we run
leads to a form, which improves our
chances of gaining user data. Like
Facebook ads and Google Adwords,
Promoted Tweets use a Cost-Per-
Click (CPC) pricing model.
Twitter enables you to target tweets
based on the following criteria:
• Interests
• Keywords in timeline
• Gender
• Geography
• Device
• Similarity to existing followers
Marketo also uses Promoted Tweets in
Twitter searches. These tweets target
users based on particular keyword and
hashtag searches.
Here’s how Promoted Tweets appear
in a user’s timeline:
For tweets promoted in search results,
we run two offers every two weeks,
with three different tweets focusing on
15 keywords and five countries. Fresh,
relevant content offers with the right
messaging yield click-through rates of
up to 17%, with a cost-per-prospect at
around $14. This, of course, will vary
based on your offer and the relevancy
of your content.
We always see significant spikes in
relevant tweets during industry events,
so we decided to capitalize on that,
using Promoted Tweets in search
results during key conferences such as
Dreamforce. This allows us to be part
of relevant conversations while the
conversations are still hot. By targeting
event-specific hashtags and relevant
keywords like “lead management”, we
can tap into prime lead-generating
moments. Being a part of real-time
conversations means pouncing on
real-time opportunities.
Promoted tweet in timeline
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