8 Powerful Social Media Lead Generation Strategies

Lead generation is a very important marketing strategy for every business, but many of them find it to be incredibly difficult to get high-quality leads consistently. They find it to be extremely challenging to come up with creative ways to catch the attention of new customers, especially in industries that are crowded with big and small companies already.

If you are also facing this problem, then social media lead generation is the strategy you need.

Social media marketing is a popular method for marketers to use as a lead-generation tool because it provides an inexpensive way to generate leads and sales by fostering relationships with current customers and generating inquiries from potential new customers. If you do it properly, the return on investment in social media marketing that you will get is going to be significant.

In this article, we will look at some of how you can generate good leads from Social Media.

Let’s start from the basics.

What are leads?

A lead is a potential customer that is interested in a product or service. Leads are important for businesses because they can ultimately lead to sales and provide them with new opportunities to make money.

The goal of a marketing campaign is to find as many leads as possible and convert them into customers.

Which social media networks are great for generating leads?

Though potentially every social media network can be used to generate leads, not all of them are equally powerful for lead generation. Hence, it is important to research which social media sites provide the best opportunities for geneating leads based on your company’s target market.

From Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to Snapchat and Twitter, there are many social media platforms with different appeals. Therefore, you need to spend some time to find the one that works best for you!

Spending time marketing on the wrong networks can result in a significant loss of time, effort, and money, so you need to determine the right social networks for your company even before you start your first campaign.

Which social media networks should you focus on?

With so many social media networks out there and new ones popping up daily, it can be difficult to choose which one to focus on. So as a rule of thumb you need to be present in the social networks thatch most of your target customers use.

The social media networks that you need to consider for lead generation will depend on your business goals and where your audience is.

Start by doing some market research.

• Decide your business goals.
• Analyze your target market and its characteristics.
• Find out what your competitors are doing.
• Determine who your ideal customers are.
• Be clear about what you want to accomplish with your campaigns by creating goals for each set of audiences.
• Understand what kind of content your audience is likely to consume.

It’s also important to consider what type of company you are to determine the best social media platform for it.

For example, if you own a local restaurant, it will make sense to promote your business on Yelp and Facebook. But if you work in finance or real estate, LinkedIn might be a better place to focus your time and effort.

Why should you generate leads from social media?

The use of social media to generate leads has seen a rise in the last decade, with major growth coming in recent years.

The number of social media users has increased by a whopping 490 million in the past 12 months at a rate of 13% year on year.

Almost 40% of the customers we have spoken to have stated that they prefer to interact with businesses through social media for getting company information, product details, and even after-sales support.

Naturally, companies that embrace this trend are likely to see their bottom lines grow.

Types of lead gen activities

Social media is a wonderful way to stay connected with an audience and with the masses in general. It is also a way for people to find out about your company and your products and services. This can be accomplished by doing certain activities on social media such as writing posts with keywords or hashtags in them so they can be found easier.

Social media lead generation can be done in two ways:

1. Direct Method

Direct social media posts are posts about your business that have the goal of generating leads. This is a form of marketing where marketers can target individual customers, enabling them to reach potential leads with relevant content. Direct social media lead generation has many benefits including more real-time information on customer behavior, an increase in website traffic, and higher conversion rates.

2. Indirect Method

Indirect social media lead generation is a strategy for brands to get their message out without making it seem like they are advertising. Brands will display posts and images that relate to their product or service but will do so in clever clever ways that don’t come off as aggressive or “salesy.” This helps keep the brand professional and trustworthy while still getting the word out about what they have to offer.

Techniques for social media Lead generation

The following are some tips that will help you get started with generating leads on social media.

1. Make your brand trustworthy

The cheapest way to generate leads from social media is the organic way. When people trust your company, they will willingly contact you to buy your product and services.

You need to start by creating a compelling profile on every social media network you sign up for. This will give your company online visibility and credibility.

There are many ways to craft your profile, but it all boils down to deciding what information about yourself, and how much of it, you want to share publicly.

Share your mission statement, list of services, hours of operation, contact information, and more with the world.  You can also add an RSS feed on your Corporate Profile page so that your followers can get updates about your business.

You can set your logo as the profile picture of your company page. The cover picture should be a professional-looking one that needs to have some connection with what your company does or the products and services it offers.

Visitors to your social media pages will invariably look at your profile first. When they think that you are a great company, they will call/mail you, send direct messages, or even sign up for your newsletter. Once this happens, you can nurture these leads and make them buy your products.

2. Create valuable content to engage your followers

It’s not enough to post all your content and hope that it goes viral. You need to create a well-researched and strong content strategy for social media lead generation.

A recent study by Buzzfeed found that two-thirds of people on social media have an opinion about a company, and 40% of those people would change the way they behave with a company based on their impression. With so many people watching your Instagram profile for content, it’s important to create posts that will engage your followers. These posts can be as simple as a photo or video, or as complicated as a live stream.

The following are some strategies to help you engage followers on social media.

• Post regularly.
• Respond to comments.
• Be sensitive to the views of your followers
• Seek feedback
• Be open to negative feedback
• Respond to suggestions
• Answer pre-sales and post-sales queries
• Provide support if any user is facing problems with your products/services.

Doing these consistently will help you to earn the trust of your followers and many of them will eventually become your leads.

3. Social Listening

Social media has become the hub of word-of-mouth marketing, and it now allows companies to initiate conversations with customers and prospects directly and convert them into leads.

Social listening provides valuable insight into your buyers’ views of your products or services, their likes and dislikes, how they’re talking about other brands in the industry, and what other types of companies they’re interested in.

The best way for a company to get social listening done is through a dedicated team that is trained in the art and deciphering what type of information may be valuable to the business.

You can use tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to do social listening and monitor brand mentions. Read this article to know more about how you can use social listening to grow your brand.

4. Create compelling offers/lead magnets

With so many resources on the internet competing for customer attention, it can be difficult to capture someone’s interest and convert them into long-term customers. That is why lead magnets are so effective.

A lead magnet is an offer that usually does not have a monetary value but instead provides some type of valuable information. It can be something as simple as a free whitepaper or a more complex eBook. It can also be a video, webinar, checklist, or any other type of media that you know your target audience will find irresistible based on your research.

A lead magnet is the first thing potential customers see, and it can be your first touchpoint with your potential customers. If the lead magnet is irresistible, customers will happily give you their contact information in exchange for it. You can then nurture those leads to turn them into paying customers.

Surprisingly, out of the vast number of people who have a business, only a small percentage use it as an active strategy for social media lead generation. This is largely due to a lack of understanding about what a lead magnet is and how it can be beneficial for any business.

So, if you can create the right lead magnet, you will have a higher probability of generating leads by outsmarting your competition.

5. Engage with influencers

The use of influencers to generate leads is a new trend for marketers. It’s an effective way to reach high-potential leads because the influencer has already built credibility with their audience.

Using influencers for lead generation is a win-win-win. The customer gets a product they love, and the company gets its name out to new people in the market. Because of this, you must know what to do when they ask for an endorsement or mention your products in their blog post.

 Companies should use influencers to reach these potential customers and generate plenty of leads.

Here is an example of how you can do social media lead generation through Influencer Marketing on Instagram:

• Step 1: Sign up on Instagram
• Step 2: Search for the popular hashtags in the industry your company belongs to
• Step 3: Find people with influence on the said hashtag
• Step 4: Send them a message
• Step 5: Engage in a conversation with them and solicit a response.

6. Social media ads

If you are finding it difficult to grow your follower base organically and reach out to new people?  Then social media advertising is the answer to your problems.

Social media advertising allows you to focus on consumers who are interested in your company’s products or services before they have even reached out to you.

Most Social media networks now give marketers multiple ad formats to reach out to potential customers and generate leads. When using ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn (to name a few), marketers can tailor every detail of the ad, so it is more likely to be seen by people who are interested in their product.

Social media ads are also relatively inexpensive. With a simple click of a link, you can build a campaign on Facebook with a daily budget as low as $5.00, and it can be as low as $1 in countries like India. Plus, you have access to all of Facebook’s targeting features, including age, location, interests, and even device type.

You can use these ads to get your brand, noticed by customers, boost traffic and sales, and for social media lead generation.

7. Run lead generation ads

A specific category of ads that you can run on social media is Lead Generation Ads. These ads are quite distinct from any other type of advertising on the internet, as they are specifically meant for social media lead generation.

The use of lead-generation ads on social media is a strategy that many businesses employ to grow their customer bases. Lead-generation ads typically come in the form of videos, quizzes, and content such as blog posts and articles. These ads are often, as well as those that fit the demographic of the business.

Compared to other types of ads, lead ads are more interactive and can be targeted to those who have shown interest in related products or services or crafted for specific demographics, locations, or age groups. This makes them an ideal platform for promotions, product launches, and more!

Because they are highly personalized, these ads give the user the feeling that the brand is speaking directly to them, which in turn creates an emotional attachment to the company. This increases the chance of getting a response from those manifolds.

Once the user fills up a form that opens when they click the ad, the information is sent directly to the advertiser, who can then follow up with the customer through calls, emails, or retargeting ads.

8. Lead generation through Retargeting Ads

Wondering how to stay on the top of the mind of your potential customers or re-engage with cold leads? Retargeting ads are what you need.

Have you ever checked out a product on a website, and then seen the ads for that product on many other websites you visited? If you were wondering how that happened, then let me tell you that you have been subject to retargeting by the company which sells those products.

Companies like Facebook and Google make it easy for advertisers to target past visitors and customers with ads on their platforms. These ads often display an image of the item that was originally seen, along with the original cost.

When retargeting has been successful, it can result in higher sales than would have been made without these ads. Also, by deciding to retarget certain customer segments, brands can boost the performance of other marketing efforts by focusing their resources on customers that have already shown interest in their products or services.

Conclusion

You must put consistent efforts into social media lead generation to get the right results. But with the right strategy, you can create a steady stream of new visitors and potential buyers and the effort will be worth it.

Always remember that continuously engaging with potential and current customers is key to driving traffic, generating leads, and increasing sales. There is a multitude of ways to engage your customer base, but the most important aspect is to make sure that you are sending out a consistent brand message. This can be achieved by including links to what you offer on your website and offering exclusive discounts or promotions for existing customers.

Also, social media lead generation takes time, and you must not lose hope if the results do not come quickly. Be consistent and you will reach your desired goal.

As always, we are ready to lend you a hand with our social media marketing services. Just schedule a call to get a free consultation from one of our experts.