Social leads are better

Our thesis: “A lead obtained through Social Marketing activities is of lower cost and delivers a higher value than leads obtained through other digital marketing means (i.e. search, display)”

We have a handful of solid data points to support this thesis:

• A study of 33 million unique users from Chitika’s network in September 2009 showed that visitors coming from Facebook and Digg were more loyal than those coming from the three major search engines… (Chitika defined “loyal” visitors as those who came to a site four or more times in the same week.)
• More than two-thirds of US Facebook users said a Facebook friend referral would increase their chances of purchasing a product or visiting a retailer, according to research and consulting firm Morpace.
• 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends. (Internet Retailer, September 2009)
• According to Hitwise: “..among the top 5 Print Media websites in the week ending March 6, 2010, 78% of Facebook.com users were returning visitors compared to 67% from Google News”
• According to a study by HubSpot: inbound marketing dominated businesses experienced a 60% lower cost per lead than outbound marketing dominated organizations
• And many more…

Not all rings are created equal

But; why does it work this way? IMHO this is an expression of the power of the feed: the combination of presenting relevant information in context (i.e. an expression of satisfaction by someone that shares needs and tastes with me) and coming from a trusted source (a peer that I trust) makes for a very effective lead generation capability.

Buying products and services in our time-starved economy is very spur of the moment – a trusted source giving the nod to you removes the barrier to purchase.  Spending  time on a referred link is a “purchase”; of your time relative to “spending” that time on something else.  Humans are meme followers, and interest is piqued when contextually  interesting information flies across our radar and one of our colleagues or friends underlines or puts an exclamation point on the context by bringing it into the feed.

This is why we are so excited about our products and how they help marketers leverage end users to generate leads in a contextual and relevant way, monitor the effectiveness of the efforts and enable to act on the data to optimize the investment of resources.

What do you think about this? We are interested in your comments.