Last week our company, , sponsored a marketing workshop on content marketing and social media. “Marketing Success: How Content Drives the New Conversation” was presented at Automation Alley in Troy, Michigan, by Airfoil Public Relations. (For a copy of their great presentation, read – you can click here or find it included below.)
I found the workshop fascinating and immediately came back to the office full of more ideas on how to get better marketing results from our content like Microsoft Dynamics Case Studies, newsletters, Dynamics events and training .
My favorite tool for managing and measuring content marketing and social media is Microsoft Dynamics CRM – especially for powerful online nurture marketing strategies. Here are just a few of the simple steps we’ve taken to start to integrate social media results into Dynamics CRM:
#1 Create LinkedIn Profile tabs using easy-to-build (inline frames) for leads, contacts and accounts in CRM. So as someone from the sales and marketing team makes contact to the lead, he knows something about the person’s background, interests, etc..and can easily update the CRM record as to specific details like email, title, etc..
#2 Nurture your leads with an e-marketing tool like and automatically generate Campaign Responses. To really get a handle on your leads’ interests, build landing pages into your e-Newsletters, digital press releases, whitepapers, and case studies – all the valuable educational content about your company’s unique product and services.
You will be amazed to see the campaign responses build in Dynamics CRM as your lead’s interest grows from simply clicking on information or downloading a product paper, to requesting contact from a sales rep. More and more of our active sales prospects have started with this kind of low-level, digital “window shopping.” You can easily create custom views specific to your e-marketing campaigns with Advanced Search, and focus in on the most viable prospects and then take timely action based on genuine interest.
#3 Download the free , and because Dynamics CRM has a native interface to Outlook you can quickly, effortlessly add LinkedIn contacts to your CRM database.
From this same toolbar, there is a handy LinkedIn status button, so as you get in the habit of regularly using digital content to update your LinkedIn status and start to get comments and private messages, you can use the Track in CRM button to tie that back to your CRM contact. Send Tweets from LinkedIn using the same content, making sure to include a link back to your company website.
#4 When you get a hit from LinkedIn or Twitter, you can automatically create a campaign response in several ways. Because Dynamics CRM is so configurable, be sure to build custom marketing fields and drop-downs that include your favorite social media tool, the response type (ie Requests Information, Assign Rep, etc.) and any other custom fields related to your products and services.
Using the user-friendly Dynamics CRM workflow wizards, you can easily create “one-click” social media campaign responses with details specific to that response (ie. the lead or contact name and interest level) and have next-action steps automatically assigned to the appropriate account manager or inside sales rep, and an email sent including all the links and information about the lead’s interest in your specific product or service.
These are just a few simple ways we have started to integrate content marketing and social media marketing campaigns into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The beauty is that as creative as we want to get with our digital marketing, we will be able to quickly adapt creative new ways to measure and report on those campaigns in CRM.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the powerfully creative ways we can implement it for your marketing team, you can contact [email protected] or call 888-482-2864.
By Dynamics SL and Dynamics NAV
Here’s Airfoil's blog about the Content Marketing Workshop and links to the great presentation:
Businesses have known for a long time that content marketing really works. That’s why they do research, produce white papers and send newsletters and email newsletters.
However, they begin to hesitate when it comes to social media. Some fear unvetted feedback or simply don’t know how to use the technology.
This week, my colleague Rich Donley and I will talk to small businesses at Automation Alley about content marketing.
Extending content marketing through social media is an ideal way to extend thought leadership, raise brand awareness and generate business interest and leads. Consumers use the Internet to research, gather information and educate themselves. Instead of being sold through direct channels, today’s consumers want to discover information and new services themselves and by reading about others’ experiences.
Taking traditional content and extending it online through document-sharing sites such as SlideShare and docstoc, using press releases for search engine optimization and connecting to consumers through social networks can raise the visibility of a company without a significant financial investment. A time investment is involved but once these sites are set up for company, extending the content becomes second nature.
As we lay out in our point of view, companies need to think like media companies and produce content. Through social media, businesses can quickly gain a wider audience and remain top of mind with current customers.
