USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR LEAD GENERATION

Hey guys, it’s good to have you back here again.

Before we talk about lead generation on social media, first let’s define what we mean when we talk about “leads”.

Leads are simply potential customers who have expressed some interest in your product or company and have provided the contact information you can use to follow up with more information.

Most businesses fail to innovate when it comes to lead generation ideas and one of the biggest misconceptions about social media platforms is that they don’t drive quality visitors. You may be surprised to learn that, compared to outbound marketing, social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate.

Your message is key when it comes to attracting the right leads and to get this right, there are many questions you must ask and have answers to, some are -

1. Who is your target audience?
2. What channels are they on?
3. How do they use these channels?
4. What channels will fit your products or service?
5. Are you going to set up paid ads?

Knowing all these and how it works is a good way to start building your plan instead of going in blindly.

If done right, Social Media is effective for gathering leads. You can do both types of marketing including organic and paid on a social media platform. Marketers can also promote content through groups/communities, or through sponsored/native ads.

Now that we know what lead generation is about here are some tips you should know to help you with the process.

1. Gated contents

This has got to be the most effective way to get leads that’s why I’m writing this first.

Everyone likes valuable content. If it’s valuable, interested readers will be willing to provide some basic contact information In exchange for new knowledge.

Promoting gated directly to your social media followers is one of the easiest ways to gather detailed information about prospects using social media lead generation tools like Paperflite, leadGainApp or PayByShare

Credit: learnleadgeneration

Also Keep in mind that gated content can take several forms, and you should experiment to determine what works best with your particular audience.

2. Run contest on social media

Organizing contests and giveaways are also an effective way to grow on social media. Here is something you would like to know about running a contest on social media, the prize up for grabs has to fulfil two important criteria. First, it has to be valuable enough that people will actually be interested in entering the contest. And second, it has to be valuable specifically to the people who have the highest potential to become your customers, and not much value to anyone else. At the end of a successful campaign, you’ll not only record increased engagement on your page, but you’ll also have collected data

3. Use Geo-Targeted search

Social media platforms offer location-based targeting option. This allows marketers to send promotions to a targeted audience. As a business using this platform, you can send gated contents to users and target with lead generation ads or polls to get feedback.

Geo-targeted social search can help you find these exact people and reach out to invite them to your business or direct them to a special offer lead generation form.

There are a couple of ways to geo-target your search some of which are using Twitter advanced search and Hootsuite.

4. Host Hangouts, Webinars and live videos

There are two approaches to generating leads with live video, hangouts, and webinars. The first option is to present the video as gated content, requiring interested viewers to register in advance by providing their contact information.

The second approach is to open the video up to a wide audience offering valuable information which then promises to give even more value in exchange for contact information.

You can also encourage live interactions from your audience, offering a reward for participation also attracts your audience and do well to follow up on the people who leave comments.

5. Social media advertising

Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn now offer ‘Lead Generation’ Ads. These allow marketers to collect direct leads with targeted marketing to social media users right on the platform. They don’t have to click those ads and move to a landing page to fill a form. The process is simple. Users click on the form and fill it. In response, they will either get an e-book or a gated content for free.

Here is a list of the best social media platforms for lead generation.

a. Facebook lead generation

Facebook has the lowest CPC rate and sellers are using it to market their products. Facebook is the most commonly used social media platform for lead generation.

With Facebook, there are three ways to get lead

1. On-page promotion
2. Off-page promotion
3. Paid promotion

Businesses can use lead generation or conversion ads to collect leads

b. Twitter Lead Generation

Just as our popular saying in Nigeria no one is safe on the streets of Twitter. This is a wonderful platform to get leads, with the right content out there you can your tweets can get to a lot of people either they follow you or not.

There are basically two ways to promote lead catching piece on Twitter-

i. Tweets/Retweets

Companies or Businesses can run a contest to get relevant leads. Also posting engaging content can cause your content to trend, and even go as far as increasing the reach even further.

ii. Paid Promotion

This is the second ways of promoting lead catching on twitter content on twitter. Promoting landing page post can also be done, twitter cards allow you to collect leads on-site and you can also upload on the Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

c. Linkedin Lead Generation

Linkedin, as we all know, is strictly for professional use only. Linkedin users are career-oriented which gives the platform the precise data about their interests and activities.

Just like other social media platforms, Linkedin offers paid advertisement for lead generation. Before this is done you will need to create a LinkedIn paid account after which you will be allowed to choose from three different ad types including text ads, sponsored content, In-mail ads.

d. Instagram Lead Generation

With over a billion users and a highly engaging community, Instagram is another amazing platform for generating social media leads.

Although the use of URLs is not allowed on Instagram which means that all content needs to be either in text, photos or hashtag. Users can add the link in the profile URL and with the help of link tree, you can add multiple URLs.

Another option to getting leads on Instagram is the Instagram lead ads.

The Instagram lead ads offer checkable lead link within the sponsored post allowing viewers land on the relevant page. It’s either you want your audience to install an app, generate a lead, shop a product or visit a website, you can do that with Instagram product ads.

Enough said already. Virtually everyone wants to improve their bottom line using social media. If done properly (targeting the right audience), lead generation can help you reach your sales target. Do not be afraid to go all out and generate enough leads because whether they all buy today or not, they automatically become potential clients.

I’ll see you in my next blog.