A great social media program does more than exist, it serves a stream for brand exposure, interaction and revenue. In order to run a powerful social media engine, the raw materials need to be blended together to set the stage for growth and conversion.

Here's what 's needed.

Goals. Clearly defined goals with a process of how to achieve them most efficiently should be square one for any marketer.

Multichannel digital communication. Great marketers utilize all means of connecting digitally with their audience, along with relevant traditional approaches. They are not stand alone efforts, but each channel is a piece of the campaign puzzle that fits together in the overall effort.

A robust marketing technology platform. A batch-and-mail tool will often cap marketers out at the modern stage. Well-rounded tools like Marketo, Act-On, SalesFusion are more than a means to broadcast email, they are the central hub for marketers to tie all of their channels together, manage integrated campaigns and track results.

Analysis. Using technology to develop insights is important. Once insights are received, they need to be used to optimize marketing strategy. What's working and receiving response? What strategy doesn't seem to be working and should be retooled or scrapped from the marketing plan?

Useful insights. Along with using insights to enhance overall market intelligence and strategy, insights are used to optimize the approach. Knowing your contacts demographic data, where they found you, how they interact with your marketing, what they seem interested in buying, and where their predicted buying intent stands compared to your other contacts helps in further segmentation, which amplifies the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Nurturing. Insights tell us who has noticed us. Nurturing through content marketing allows us to tell them our story. People who exhibit continued interest during and after the nurturing phase are showing strong intent to purchase. If a magazine's goal is to gain more subscribers, intuition leads most marketers to tell the market to buy a subscription. Contemporary marketers understand, in today's world, it's not always that simple. Consumers need trust and require nurturing. To go in cold with a hard promotion has dismal results with ultramodern, well-informed consumers. Instead, contemporary marketing rock stars are earning success through strategic nurturing; by having their brand show prospects who they are, what they do, how they do it better than the rest and why clients benefit from working with them first, and then presenting a promotional offer to seal the deal.

Lead generation. By leveraging insights to predict buying intent, then nurturing to further develop demand, your inevitable result will be pinpointing incredibly low-hanging fruit, some of which will be ready for the hard sell.

ROI. Using advanced technology-enabled marketing has it's advantages, and one of which is showing your value. If you're tracking your contacts, their lead sources, and their behaviors, it is relatively simple with proper tools to continue that track through the buying cycle. Ultra marketers could pull ROI reports displaying what sales or percentages of sales could be attributed to marketing efforts, and how many dollars each marketing channel leading to.