Last week Google announced an update to its search engine and is now including social results when you are signed into your Google account. If you are logged into your Google account when you initiate a search you will start to see results from your connections on Linkedin, Twitter, etc. Search is changing rapidly and this move means that "keyword rank" is becoming a squishier metric as Google starts to return more personalized results that will vary from searcher to searcher. It also means that every sales and marketing organization should be focused on building their reach and that includes social.
Check out the video below for the skinny from Google:
The evolving search landscape is going to have an effect on ALL sales and marketing organizations as they strive to generate as many high quality sales ready leads as possible. In a recent Marketing Sherpa report on CMO perspectives, the biggest marketing challenge facing CMO's today is generating high quality leads. A large number of CSO's and VP's of sales will also tell you a major challenge for them is generating high quality lead flow for their sales reps.
Through getting focused on content creation and promoting through social networks both marketing and sales organizations can help themselves in the lead generation department. Through defining what a sales ready lead is marketing can then define their lead nurturing programs to tee up sales reps with solid opportunities. Through working towards sales and marketing alignment both sales and marketing can begin to chip away at the lead generation dilemma.
Your company's reach (opt-in content subscribers) is one of its most powerful assets. Social allows you to push this reach to higher levels and adds additional ways to communicate with current customers and prospects. There are decision makers, influencers, and end users out there everyday that are researching and looking for solutions to their major challenges. Google's change to their search platform signals a doubling down on quest to make meaning of social within search results. It also means your company should be doubling down on social too.