“Most marketers have looked at social media as being at the very top of the funnel.” Aseem Badshah, CEO of Seattle-based start-up Socedo was referring to the B2B space where ROI means generating qualified leads and ultimately, of course, revenue.
“Social media sits in a corner,” he said. “It’s not a major demand gen channel. Our purpose is to help the B2B social marketer go from being a cost center to being ROI positive.” That means, Badshah explained, putting social ROI “at every stage of the funnel.” One strategy for doing so is through an integration with the Marketo platform, announced today.
The new Socedo Social Lead Monitoring solution will enable Marketo users to drive insights derived from leads’ social activity directly into their Marketo database, shedding a bright light on social ROI. Using Socedo’s capabilities, B2B marketers should be able to identify Marketo leads active on social media, track interactions with the brand (or competitors) and key topics, and add social data to a lead scoring model. This means not only delivering more sales-ready leads to the sales team, but being able to draw strong links between social engagement and ultimate conversion.
As Badshah explained to me, the solution will promote lead scoring based not just on email opens or website activity, but things like engaging with competitors or visiting trade shows—signals which will often be clearly visible from social activity. One current limitation: Today the solution draws data primarily from Twitter, but LinkedIn data is also being mapped. “Facebook is definitely something we’re thinking about, and it’s on the roadmap to investigate it,” Badshah said.
Socedo’s research underlines the potential value of matching social activity to Marketo leads. Socially engaged leads move faster (25 percent) through the buying cycle and convert at a higher (22 percent) rate than other leads. What’s more, said Badshah, a pilot test showed that 60 percent of a sample of leads were undervalued by MA, precisely because their social engagement with the brand had remained invisible.
While Marketo is the go-to-market partner for the solution, Socedo hopes to integrate with other MA platforms down the road. Microsoft was among a select group of customers testing Social Lead Monitoring. ““Socedo opens up a new channel for us to engage with our leads,” said Phil Amato, Marketing Communications Manager at Microsoft and Head of the Microsoft Social Selling Program. “Socedo is helping us understand which of our existing leads are actively engaging, or have previously engaged, with our Twitter handles and what they’re saying. The social data they provide on leads helps us identify warm leads in real-time so that the social media team can qualify leads directly on social, as well as lead score organic social engagements.”
Pricing will be based on numbers of Marketo leads successfully matched with social identities and the number of tracked keywords (or handles or hashtags).
