Last updated on
September 15, 2023
When it comes to lead generation, it is crucial to use and employ different platforms and techniques. One of the platforms that are underutilized a lot is social media.
Around 3.6 billion people use social media worldwide, making it the perfect channel for businesses to reach and generate leads. It's all about using the right tactics to reach the right audience at the right time.
Let's delve deeper into how you can leverage social media for effective lead generation.
A lead is any person who indicates interest in a company's product or service in some way, shape, or form. It refers to any data that you can collect to identify someone interested in your products or service by collecting information like their name, email address, occupation, employer details, etc.
By using social media platforms, you can effectively generate leads for your business. Both B2B and B2C marketers can use social media to generate leads, and it helps them identify the social media audiences interested in your business.
Having an effective lead generation process puts your business in front of potential customers. Social media amplifies your lead generation efforts by raising brand awareness, driving website traffic, and improving community engagement.
Generating leads through social media requires proper planning and tactics. Before starting, you need a plan of action. Some of the questions that are important to answer are:
When you have answered these questions, the first step is to optimize your social media profiles.
The first step is to make sure your social media profiles are optimized to collect leads organically. Your social media profiles should provide easy access for your customers to contact you, sign up for your newsletter, shop your products, and more.
Provide clear contact information on your profiles. Double-check whether you will be able to provide customer support and answer any questions on the given contact information.
Different social media platforms offer unique profile features to add to your profile. Depending on your requirements, you can add buttons like Sign Up, Visit Website, etc., to your Facebook page. You can also add Get Tickets, Reserve, etc., on your Instagram or Facebook profiles.
Adding a link to your website helps tremendously. It allows your potential customers to directly visit your website to check out your products and services.
Initial online impressions are everything: the image on your profile picture is crucial in shaping your personal brand and network. Make sure to have a unique profile picture. You can use any profile picture maker available online for this purpose. With various editing and background tools, you can customize your profile picture to reflect your personal brand.
After optimizing your social media profiles, you need to strategize your approach and create content accordingly. There are several ways you can generate leads through content on your social media. Let's delve into some of the most effective ways to lead generation by leveraging social media.
A lead magnet is a free item or service provided to the customers in exchange for their contact details. Some examples of a lead magnet can be trial subscriptions, samples, white papers, e-newsletters, and free consultations.
When done right, lead magnets often compel people to share their information with you. Make sure your lead magnet is something people want and are interested in. It can be anything from a research report to an insightful eBook to a free tool. Lead magnets can also include exciting discounts, webinars, whitepapers, case studies, and more.
One of the most effective ways to generate leads through social media is to show others love your brand. Customer testimonials and stories give you the social proof and reputation to acquire new leads.
Testimonials should include how clients have benefited from your product or service and should demonstrate brand value. According to Wyzowl, 2 out of 3 people are more likely to buy something after reading a testimonial or watching a customer show how a business, product, or service has helped them achieve their goals.
Paid social media is highly effective for targeting your specific audience and generating leads on social media. With the paid ads, you can use precise targeting options of paid social ads to target a particular audience that is most likely to be interested in your product or service. Promote content on the specific subject matter, provide special discounts and give limited-time offers on your products and services through these targeted ads.
Social media platforms offer social lead ads for an effective lead generation process. Once you have exhausted organic lead collection measures, you should look over social lead ads. Let us discuss leads ads for some social media platforms.
For marketers, Facebook has a specific lead ad format, and these are basically promoted forms. Leads collected by these ads can be synced directly to your Customer Management System (CMS). These can be downloaded as well, so your sales team can follow up whenever needed. For lead nurturing, Facebook's retargeting tools are especially useful. To employ Facebook lead ads, make sure to install Facebook Pixel on your website. It makes tracking leads and measuring how they cost much more effortless.
Like Facebook, Instagram offers lead ads specifically designed for marketers to help collect information and data about potential customers. Instagram also provides the option to partially pre-fill forms. Email address, full name, phone number, and gender sections can all be pre-completed in these ads.
LinkedIn has an ad format just for lead generation, called Lead Gen Forms. These ads are available as Message Ads and Sponsored InMail on the platform. LinkedIn also uses profile information to pre-fill sections, just like Facebook and Instagram.
According to Wordstream, a typical website conversion rate is 2.35%. With LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, the average conversion rate is 13%. LinkedIn Dynamic ads also have direct call-to-actions to help generate leads.
YouTube has this particular format to help advertisers take a specific action like generating leads. These ads offer call-to-action buttons that link to a site of your choice. When creating these ads, select "Leads" as your goal.
Other social media platforms like Twitter and Pinterest do not have specific formats for lead ads. However, both platforms have paid ads options that can boost social media lead generation.
If you don't want to use paid ads, you also have the option of attracting leads from social media content that your audience is already consuming. How so? By sponsoring shows, content, and YouTube channels that are popular with your target audience.
By sponsoring, you can get a reputable content creator to talk about your brand, product, or service even for just a couple of minutes. This can be more engaging and reputable than forcing ads in front of an audience that might not even engage with it.
One of the biggest advantages of sponsored content is that content creators and influencers help provide a form of social proof and reputation that doesn't come with paid ads. Content creators also connect your sponsorship message seamlessly and organically into their content, helping it reach audiences who might otherwise actively click away from an ad.
Hosting Virtual conferences and webinars are a great way to attract a highly relevant and interested audience while establishing your expertise and authority in your industry. These mediums are a great way to generate relevant leads on social media. People will need to provide their contact information to sign up or join the virtual conference or webinar.
Host a webinar on topics that you can be authoritative on and that are relevant to your industry and your brand's area of expertise. You can use the event to generate plenty of content opportunities by posting on social media about the event. You can also generate compelling lead magnets after the event and repurpose content.
Referral campaigns are a highly effective way to double your sales leads. These campaigns provide an incentive to your leads for referring their friends, family, or colleagues. This allows the referred people to learn about your products or services and potentially become additional leads while giving rewards to the already existing leads and customers.
Some examples of attractive incentives include a gift card, a free gift, or a discount in exchange for the referrals. For instance, MasterClass came up with a referral campaign that allowed people to get a free annual membership when they get one as a gift. They then promoted this campaign through social media in the form of organic posts and paid ads.
You can generate leads by effectively listening on social media platforms. Monitor the conversations happening on socials and see what people are saying about a specific topic, your brand, or your competitors. Through this, you can identify opportunities to generate high-quality leads for your business.
If you see someone complaining about a competitor's product or service, you should provide them with an alternative. Similarly, if people are asking for recommendations around your industry, they would love to hear your suggestions. People asking about your brand or products will love your proactive approach to social media, making an excellent first impression.
Social media is a great platform to generate leads organically and with paid ads. With the ideas mentioned above, you should be able to see a significant boost in lead acquisition. Don't forget to measure the impact of your lead generation efforts and continue to look for opportunities to improve.
Content marketer by day and book nerd by night, Momina works at Mailmunch as a Marketing Communications Specialist. Momina eats, sleeps, and breathes content marketing. Her expertise ranges from ideation to production to distribution of content, thanks to 4+ years of experience in the B2B content marketing sphere.
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Hamna Abid
August 9, 2023
Hamna Abid
July 18, 2023
Momina Asif
April 20, 2021
