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Why your business needs social media lead generation
The term “social media lead generation” is often used interchangeably with “social marketing.” However, there is a difference between the two terms. Lead generation is about generating qualified leads. Social marketing is about engaging with customers through social networks. So, what does this mean for your business?
Lead generation is different from social media marketing because it focuses on generating qualified leads. This means that companies must identify potential customers based on demographic data and psychographic information. They then use tools such as email lists, online forms, and webinars to contact those people and ask them questions. After collecting information, they analyse the responses and determine how best to reach out to prospective clients.
This process is called lead generation. Companies that do well in this area tend to focus on building relationships with their audience. They understand that one way to build trust is to provide value to their followers. If someone asks a question on Twitter, for example, a marketer might answer it directly. Or he or she could offer a free guide to help solve the problem. In either case, the person feels like his or her needs are being met.
Here are some helpful tips to generate leads from your business’s social media.
Which social networks to choose
The world’s largest social network is still the go-to place for consumers looking for information about brands and businesses. With 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is home to billions of conversations around topics like sports teams, celebrities, politics, and news. While Facebook does offer paid ads, the majority of your traffic will likely come from organic posts. If you want to reach your target audience, you’ll need to focus on building up a strong following on Facebook.
While Twitter isn’t quite as popular as Facebook, it’s still a great platform for driving awareness and engaging with potential customers. Twitter is usually associated with short messages, such as tweets, but it also includes longer-form content like blog posts and videos. Because of this, it’s a good choice for influencers and thought leaders to build out their personal brands.
Instagram is another popular social channel for sharing images and videos. However, unlike Facebook, Instagram isn’t driven by comments or likes. This makes it less of a conversation tool and more of a photo gallery. Still, Instagram is a great place to show off your product or service and include behind-the-scenes photos. Additionally, because Instagram is image-based, it works well for visual-based companies like fashion or beauty brands.
Identify your ideal customers
While every platform can be used to generate leads, it’s important to identify who you will target that will perform the best for your business and your brand. After all, the best platforms are going to be the ones where your target audiences spend their time. Whether your goal is to gain their email address or for them to fill out a form on your website, attracting them from the social media they spend the most time on is very important.
Buyer Personas
The next step is to start thinking about your ideal customer persona. This helps you understand the demographics of your potential buyers and how they interact with each other online, you can use Google Analytics to help you identify these demographics.
Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can determine which platforms will work best for generating leads. If your customers spend most of their time on LinkedIn, then creating a LinkedIn lead generation strategy might be the best option. On the other hand, if your customers spend most of their time on Facebook, then a Facebook lead generation strategy might be better suited to reach them.
For example, let’s say you run a plumbing business. Your ideal customer persona is someone who owns a home, lives in a city, and works full-time. They probably spend most of their time doing things like shopping, watching TV, reading books, and playing video games. Based on that information, you could decide to focus your lead generation efforts on Facebook because that’s where your audience spends most of the time. Or maybe you want to focus on LinkedIn because that’s the platform where your ideal customer spends most of his or her time.
With buyer personas in mind, you can now narrow down your list of possible platforms to three or four. Once you’ve narrowed it down, you’ll need to test out each platform to see which performs the best for your business.
Optimise your profile
You already know how important Facebook is to your overall social media strategy. And while it’s true that there are many ways to optimise your presence on the platform, one of the best things you can do is to ensure your Facebook account is up to date. If people aren’t seeing your latest posts, photos, videos, etc., chances are they won’t see yours either. So, make sure you update your status regularly and post quality content.
Twitter is another great way to connect with your audience. However, you want to make sure you’re sharing relevant information and engaging with followers. This includes posting about newsworthy events, industry trends, and anything else that might interest your audience. In addition, use hashtags strategically. They allow you to target specific topics related to your brand, product, or industry. For example, using #socialmedia to indicate that you’re talking about social media marketing.
Instagram is quite similar to Twitter in the importance of hashtags when creating content, especially when using topical days or trying to get your posts to reach a wider audience. This is also image based so the key to creating eye-catching, engaging content is good photography/graphics that give people a reason to stop scrolling look at your post.
This is very business focused so this is the most important social media platform to optimise if you are B2B, make sure your business contact info is always up to date, and don’t be afraid to message prospects if you think they have the potential to convert and make sure your content is mostly focused on running your business, business news and subjects that other professionals relate to. Of course, the odd birthday post is fine but people engage on LinkedIn for business purposes so always remember this.
Create clickable content
The most important thing you can do to improve your social media presence is to make it easy for people to engage with your brand. This starts with creating great content that engages your followers and encourages them to interact with you.
Infographics: Infographics are a great way to display and share content with your audience in an easy-to-read format, this is often used to show statistics or factual info.
Topical days: these are odd days such as ‘national cinema day’ (3rd September btw) and other random days that you can relate your business to.
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Target your audience with special offer adverts
Social Media Ads allow marketers to target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviours, location, age, gender, and even relationship status. You can use targeting to reach people who are likely to buy your products or services.
Targeting lets you narrow down your audience by selecting criteria such as gender, age, interests, geographic area, relationship status, education level, occupation, and many others. Once you’ve selected your audience, you can select how you want to show your ad — whether it’s to everyone, just men, women, 18–29-year-olds, etc.
We suggest you take into account the following factors:
- Demographics – How old is the target customer? Where does he or she live? What industry does he or she work in?
- Psychographics – Does the prospect feel lonely? Is he or she looking for advice?
- Behaviours – Are they active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.? Do they follow brands?
You can also set up different campaigns to test out different ad formats and pricing options. For example, you could run one campaign to promote your latest sale while another focuses on generating awareness about your brand.
To make sure your ads perform well, monitor your performance closely and adjust your bids accordingly.
Offer the right incentive
Offering discounts is one way to encourage customers to buy products or take action. But it isn’t always effective. For example, you might offer 10% off a product, but the customer doesn’t care about the discount code because she already bought the item. Or maybe the discount is too low. You could offer 20%, but that won’t motivate her either. So what do you do?
The answer lies in understanding how consumers make decisions. If someone buys something without thinking about the price, chances are he’ll just accept whatever deal you give him. He’s not interested in making smart choices. In contrast, if you give him a good reason to choose your product over another, he’ll probably go ahead and purchase it.
So what makes a good incentive? Here are some things to consider:
- Make sure your offer is relevant. A discount is only useful if it applies to a specific product. Otherwise, why should anyone bother buying it?
- Give a clear explanation of the benefits. People don’t like surprises. They want to know exactly what they’re getting.
- Make sure there aren’t better alternatives. Sometimes, there are cheaper options out there. Don’t assume everyone wants to pay full price.
- Be transparent. Tell people up front what they’ll receive if they sign up for your program. This helps prevent disappointment later on.
Polls and Surveys
Use polls to gather information about your customer base. You’ll know what they like and dislike, what makes them happy, and what frustrates them. This information helps you make decisions about future product development and marketing strategies.
Surveys are similar to polls, except that they ask people questions directly. They’re great for gathering feedback from your customers, prospects, and employees.
Polling tools include SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and Typeform.
Contests or sweepstakes
Social contests are a great way for brands to gather data about their audiences, and build relationships with those audiences. They can help you find out what types of products and services your customers like, how often they use your product/service, where they live, what devices they use, and much more. This type of data helps marketers make smarter decisions about future campaigns and promotions.
A good contest will require people to give up some personal information, this can include email address, phone number, name, location, age, gender, occupation, income level, hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes, favourite movies, TV shows, music, books, food, pets, family members, etc. If you want to ask for something else, it might be best to do it in the form of a survey rather than a contest. You don’t want to scare off potential participants.
There are many ways to run social contests, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. If you decide to run a contest via one of these platforms, you’ll need to think about privacy issues. Make sure you know what information you’re collecting and why you’re collecting it. Also, make sure you understand the legal implications of running a contest.
You can read our guide to running a successful social contest here.
Launch a referral campaign
Referral campaigns are one of the most effective ways to grow your customer base and build your brand awareness. They’re also relatively easy to set up.
Incentives like discounts, freebies, giveaways, etc., help to encourage customers to refer friends and family members to your business. This helps you expand your customer base and build relationships with people who might become future clients.
Social media marketing is another powerful tool for promoting referrals. You can use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., to post about your referral program. People will see it and think “Hey, I know someone else who could benefit from this!”
The key here is to make sure you’ve got a solid referral program in place. Make sure there are clear rules around how many referrals you’ll accept, what the terms are, and whether or not you’ll give out rewards. If you don’t, you risk losing potential customers because they won’t want to be associated with your business.
Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers can provide great value for businesses because they reach a very targeted audience. A social media influencer is someone who has a large following on social media channels such as Facebook or YouTube. An influencer can provide better quality leads because she has already built relationships with her followers. She knows what makes them tick, and she can use those insights to connect with them.
Influencers can also help you build trust and credibility among potential customers. If you want to sell something, you need to establish yourself as trustworthy. This is where influencers come into play. By partnering up with an influencer, you can show off your expertise and gain the trust of your audience.
Finally, influencers can help boost your conversion rates. When it comes to advertising, you always want to make sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. In marketing, we call this “conversion.” Conversion refers to how many people actually buy your product or sign up for your service. One way to improve your conversion rate is to partner up with an influencer. You’ll pay less money per lead, and you’ll generate more leads.
Need some assistance generating social media leads?
Generating leads on social media is not always straightforward, it will take some time and you won’t suddenly wake up with 100 leads overnight. But by implementing and experimenting with these tips it should help you start to see some results. Remember no business is the same and to measure your success by your own goals and achievements. If you would like help or advice to help your social media lead generation, take a look at our social media management services.
