The problem with typical lead generation programs is that they’re mercenary. Far too often, the mentality is more about efficiency than about building a meaningful and profitable relationship with customers. More effort goes into profiling prospects than dialoging with them, and rapidly sorting out qualified prospects who are closest to making a purchase decision. That’s great for the company, but often less than ideal for the average consumer. That’s why we have do-not-call lists, TIVO, email filters and a CAN-SPAM act.

The approach too many companies pursue is like lining 100 ducks up on a fence, shooting all your ammo at them and hoping you knock down 1.5 percent—and then creating an ambitious goal for the next campaign to achieve 1.7 percent. Unfortunately, the remaining 98.3 percent become increasingly unavailable to line up on the fence in the future because they don’t like being shot at. But marketers are getting smarter.

One of the recent evolutions in lead generation focuses on “nurturing” or “cultivating” leads. When you run a campaign and only 1.5 percent convert today, another large group of prospects may be qualified, but not ready to buy. The idea is to keep the lines of communication open with these prospects until they’re ready to buy, rather than letting them fall out of the funnel altogether. Marketers are increasingly responsible for building a continuous and actively engaged crop of prospects, rather than treating every campaign as a self-contained window of prospecting after which all of the unconverted leads are forgotten. Many call this the continuous campaign, and it’s certainly an improvement.

But if you look at the trajectory of this trend, it’s quite obvious that it’s still one step short of its logical conclusion. What cultivating leads is reaching toward is, big surprise, building communities. Think about it. Cultivating is about sustaining an open line of communication. The problem is that too often it’s not a real dialog. It’s more like: “Are you ready to buy now? How about now? Uh. Now?” It’s not about sustaining an open dialog, where you’re actively engaging members of your market community on issues that matter to you both. The other problem with most cultivation techniques is that they’re isolated lines of communications—one-to-one. The power of social media is the power of sharing ideas. Peer-to-peer. There’s a lot more value, authenticity and trust in open public dialog than there is in one-to-one communications that are typically one-sided discussions about sales.

The challenge with developing communities is the same challenge companies are facing with all social media channels. You can’t control the message as well as you can when you’re churning out propaganda. But people are growing increasingly resistant to all forms of propaganda, so you really don’t have much of a choice any way. The question is how to go about what I call the new era of social marketing. I wrote about this in detail in an earlier post, so I won’t rehash it all now. But I will tell you about my experience doing community development on Facebook, as one example of community driven marketing.

Recently I ran a traditional lead generation campaign with a white paper offering 12 Essential Tips for Success in Social Media. The response was overwhelming. The paper is still generating qualified leads, well over 1000 since the campaign started during the summer. A friend of mine challenged me to drive the same campaign online through Facebook, and I learned some important tactical lessons about social marketing.

My first step was to spend some time searching the existing Facebook groups focused on marketing. One of the most active is Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy Group. I engaged in some of the discussions going on in various forums, talking about social media and marketing technology. I started building my network of friends. My first surprise was discovering how many smart and engaged marketers are hanging out on Facebook.

After a couple of weeks playing around on existing groups, I started my own group under my agency’s name, MotiveLab. I posted my white paper as a featured link in my group, and then went out to other groups and talked about it. The response was similar to the lead generation campaign. In less than a week I had over 400 new downloads of the whitepaper. But more important, I gained more than 150 new members of my group. The seed of a community. Now what?

One of the challenges on Facebook—and on the Web in general—is getting people engaged. It’s one thing to have people read your white paper, but it’s another thing to get them to comment or engage in public discussion. After basking in the glow of having a successful community as measured by the relative number of new members, I quickly realized I needed to do something to keep the energy going. I started by posting a few discussion topics, but no one responded. I posted some links to content I’d written on my blog, still no comments. Finally, I took a page from LinkedIn and started my own Q&A. I started writing “Questions of the Week”, and sending them out to members of my group. What’s the secret to great community content? What’s the best software for building corporate communities? What’s your favorite online community?

And this is where I learned the real value of social marketing. Instead of plastering the Web with invitations to buy my services, I was engaging in dialog with members of my market community about issues that matter to them. I was inviting their insight, their opinions, and tapping into their ideas. In the process, I was learning a lot of things about my market, meeting a lot of very intelligent peers and, surprise, getting requests for proposals. What was interesting about these prospects is that none of them asked the typical sales-process questions I usually get during lead generation campaigns. Because these prospects were already members of my group, and already engaging in dialog, I didn’t have to educate them about who I was or how I do business. They already knew what they wanted to know about me and my business.

Now I’m not by any means suggesting that Facebook is the next generation marketing vehicle, or that this exact approach will work for any company. But the principal will, and it’s only growing. Social Media has created the opportunity for consumers to connect and share information that helps them make better purchase decisions. Chances are, your customers are already participating in these groups somewhere online. You can try to pick them off using traditional lead generation techniques, but look at how these techniques are evolving. Everything is pointing toward the development of customer communities, in which businesses play a role as a member of the community—sparking dialog, assessing needs, offering products and accepting feedback. The only question now is whether you jump in early, or jump in late.