Social media for lead generation is nothing new but done correctly it can enhance your organic reach and save you money on paid advertising. Social media platforms are amazing for increasing brand awareness and engaging with followers but can also be used to generate leads and subsequently sales conversions.
When used correctly, social media is a powerful marketing tool for lead generation. Businesses have reported that the use of social media to generate leads decreased their expenses by 45% and increased their profits by 24%.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation helps businesses to better understand their potential customers by gathering information about customers’ interests, what products would appeal to them, their pain points, and how to convert them into paying customers.
This information can then be used to drive conversions. In other words, leads make customers’ aware of your business and bring them into your sales funnel. Then your sales team can finish the process by closing the deal.
One example of a lead might be when a customer provides their e-mail address to access a gated whitepaper. This e-mail address can then be used by the marketing team to contact this customer with promotions or other products they might like. In this example, the customer’s e-mail address is the lead.
How are leads generated?
As the marketing landscape becomes increasingly more digital, it has become easier and quicker to generate an extraordinary amount of leads. Online examples of leads include gated content, e-mail opt-ins, newsletters, paid ad campaigns, and video marketing. Technology allows us to process the large amounts of data, which improves our ability to understand customers and drive conversions.
What role does social media play in lead generation?
Social media is one of the most effective online tools for easily and quickly generating leads. The average customer spends 9 hours on social media and 40% of customers more frequently communicate online than in-person, which produces a large amount of data. On a daily basis, 500 million tweets are sent, Facebook content receives 4.5 billion likes, and 95 million videos & photos are uploaded to Instagram. If channelled properly, businesses can use this data to create quality leads.
In order to connect with the right audience, it’s essential to carefully consider the different social media platforms. The best platform for your company depends on your customer demographics. While Facebook may seem like the obvious choice, B2B companies often have better results on LinkedIn as it’s seen as a more professional platform.
How to generate social media leads
How you go about generating quality leads will largely depend on the social media platform you use.
Facebook Lead Generation
Facebook’s new algorithm has made it difficult to organically generate leads and you’ll probably need to invest in paid advertisements. Thankfully, Facebook ads are relatively inexpensive. It can still be beneficial to generate leads organically through creating contests with cool prizes or using custom tabs for direct conversions.
Instagram Lead Generation
While Instagram hasn’t yet reached its full potential for marketers, it’s still possible, if not slightly harder, to generate leads. To do so, make sure to connect with customers through responding to their comments. Entertaining video campaigns can be a great way to generate leads as URLs can be provided in the text section. Another useful method for increasing brand awareness and leads is to establish a unique hashtag.
Twitter Lead Generation
Twitter is another platform that has started to receive more attention from marketers looking to generate leads. This is largely due to the fact that Twitter has started to make paid ads more visible to users. Some methods for generating leads on Twitter include the newly released Twitter cards, tracking any brand or competitor brand mentions, or hosting time-sensitive events.
LinkedIn Lead Generation
LinkedIn is commonly accepted as the ideal platform for B2B lead generation. LinkedIn Premium can help business identify and connect directly with potential customers (individuals or companies). For successful lead generation on LinkedIn, marketing ideas include offering a free sample, uploading thought articles and whitepapers onto LinkedIn’s publishing platform, or featuring presentations on your profile with Slide Share.
These are just some ideas for successfully generating leads on social media. At Social Ant, we can help you sharpen your social media skills or even design social media campaigns for your business. Check out our full range of services by visiting our website.