Social marketing is great, wonderful, revolutionary, and fun. All on its own it can drive you pretty decent results (depending on your goal, and what you’re representing); however, social marketing can do so much more when it’s part of an integrated strategy.

So, have you thought about how you can use social media in your PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns?

As an online marketer you’re likely already familiar with PPC advertising. Whether you run the campaigns yourself or not, you know they exist, you know they drive traffic to your Web pages, and you know some of that traffic turns into customers, otherwise your company wouldn’t be doing it.

Generally, the people who concern themselves with PPC advertising are online marketers and web developers. The marketers write the copy and set up the campaigns, and the web developers create the landing pages that the PPC traffic will be directed to (unless you have landing page software, in which case you can eliminate the web developer step). Once the traffic ends up on the landing page, it’s the social marketers job to reach in and help cultivate a relationship with the visitor.

Creating Social Landing Pages

The way I’m going to suggest you do this is through adding social proof on your landing pages. Social proof is simply a way for visitors to see that hey, other people similar to me are already using this solution and liking it. This often comes in the form of testimonials, but can also come in the form of a social widget.

Social widgets on the landing page, such as a Facebook ‘Like’ box or a Twitter badge, can be used to display social proof and help increase conversions (the number of people who end up on your landing page and then go on to become customers or leads).

Brian Clark (Copyblogger) says,From a marketing standpoint, social proof is the basis of both buzz and large sales figures. Without it, there’d be no “grapevine” in the first place. It’s also why testimonials are so essential in direct marketing.”

If you think social widgets would distract from conversions on your actual landing page, you should consider the value of social sharing after the conversion. Once a visitor converts into a customer, having a social thank-you page can help you capitalize on the excitement of making a new purchase. Allow the customer to share their good news with their social networks straight from your thank-you page. This not only sends out positive sentiment for your brand, but also potentially introduces you to an entirely new audience. Or perhaps you’ll just provide them an opportunity to connect with you on social networks. Once connected you can begin building long-term, meaningful relationships with your customers.

If you’ve been wondering how to demonstrate ROI from your social marketing activities, this is certainly one way to do it. You can also correlate your activities to ROI by creating a social media conversion funnel. Depending on what your ultimate social goals are, your tactics will differ, but I hope this post gives you some food for thought!

For more information on social landing pages, and 7 reasons why they’ll help you increase business, flip through this slideshare:

How are you using social media in your integrated marketing strategy?

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Kristina Allen (@allenkristina) is the online marketing manager for @ioninteractive where she handles social media and PR initiatives. ion interactive is home to the LiveBall, landing page software that helps marketers create, test and optimize landing pages.