With the recent (and somewhat flat) IPO of QuinStreet, it got me thinking about how our clients can start to use the concepts of vertical marketing and social media in conjunction with each other. It’s a way to strategically think about how organizations can increase social media exposure, and in turn justify the expenditure through a measurable ROI channel.
To take a quick step back, what do I mean by vertical marketing? Vertical marketing, in the way that QuinStreet does it, essentially means setting up websites that don’t necessarily have your brand on it, and then providing a lot of information around that vertical(mortgages, loans, online learning, etc.). When you fill out a form that says that you want to hear more, QuinStreet essentially sends the lead over to a single or multiple companies who pay for those warm/hot leads. And it’s not just companies like QuinStreet and ValueClick who are doing this. Companies are doing this on their own, and it drives SEM as well as sales.
So how is this similar to social media? For those of you who may not be familiar, there is a story from the book Groundswell (video below) that talks about how P&G created a website called BeingGirl.com to engage with young girls about their feminine problems. It was an unbranded website that had a forum where these girls could ask Iris, a psychologist hired by P&G questions that they might not feel comfortable asking their parents. Each of Iris’ answers was followed by the simple line: “Good luck from BeingGirl.com. Brought to you by Always Pads and Pantyliners and Tampax Tampons.” According to P&G, this was 4 times more effective per dollar spent than traditional advertising.
So with these two examples in mind, I think that there is a huge opportunity for organizations to use their engagment strategies to drive strong lead generation.
If you are not already running vertical sites to drive traffic, start monitoring social media channels to find out what your consumers are looking for. A lot of the marketing execs who I talk to are trying to understand the topic areas that are already occurring across the overall conversation (related to their brand) in social media. Figure this out, and then start building a site that is aligned with your company’s overall goals. Obviously, easier said than done.
Once you have a site up, add social components to it so that your consumers can talk to each other as well as to your company. This is not really something that either QuinStreet or ValueClick has done, but I think companies who build their own vertical sites can make this a priority. Of course, be transparent in who you are while trying to provide a non-biased forum for consumers to get and share information. And then provide unobtrusive links to drive traffic back to the sales funnel. I think this type of strategy to lead generation can really help companies begin to justify the costs of social media and see revenue generating results. Which is what we all really want in the end anyway.
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