• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 7, 2011

Day 2: Marin Software VP Matt Lawson led the group discussion on lead generation following the Friday morning sessions at the MediaPost Search Insider Summit in Captiva, Fla. Here are some key topics to think about:

1) Challenges with using Facebook for performance. a) Highly targeted, but often tiny audiences b) Facebook is like a bar, great for conversations, but not necessarily selling. c) Difficult to measure "unlike" rates -- how often are people liking, then later unsubscribing from a page.

2) Looking at social as influencing up-funnel activity a) Email drives social engagement drives likes b) Lots of folks engaging in social efforts, but not able to justify paid social ads without DR c) Similar to SEO: mining the data, projecting an appropriate experience d) When using ads, social attached ads (# of people liked) increases click-through

3) Key question to ask: could this ad get the equivalent of "drunks at a bar" to engage in a conversation a) Major challenge is repetitive customer service questions being asked on brand pages, b) Best way to handle this is by having multiple pages and segment the traffic c) Tools like getsatisfaction can be used for service pages d) Leveraging micro-sites, off facebook, can be more effective than FB pages if you do a good job of relating the content to the user experience. need ability to scale to hundreds of microsites