Think only the last click matters when it comes to online purchasing?

You may want to think again. It turns out that social media is good for more than just funny cat pictures and selfies.

You can learn a lot about B2B buyer behavior by paying attention to social networking. Dell was able to create predictive models for social media marketing that examined their leads’ content consumption and lifecycle.

One key premise – and finding: When a customer comes in via social media channels, they are more open in what they want to see and learn about your product.

Dell’s results?

• 3x the normal close rate
• 25% shorter sales cycles
• 75% accuracy in customer targeting through predictive data models

Pretty useful for finding hot prospects—and creating enhanced content strategies.

It’s great to see another application of predictive modeling in the B2B arena.