Creating a suite of tactics to target all digital areas in ways that resonate with your customers and reflect on your sales may be a great way to win those leads!
And lead generation describes the actual means of stimulating and capturing involvement in a product or service when considering developing product sales pipeline. The rise of platforms and the social media websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, pose a plethora of opportunities for businesses to exploit this facet of digitally mediated relationships, for instance, spreading awareness about your business and engaging with your prospective customers.
Lead generation through social media channels is simple, fast, and useful. According to a report by Quick Sprout, social media’s ‘lead to close’ chances are higher by 100 % when compared to outbound marketing. Twitter accounts for 82 % of all social leads, while 40 % of marketing professionals believe that Facebook is a crucial part of business marketing. The goal of lead generation is to leverage the available information about customers or potential employees and use it to identify similar prospects based on specific predefined attributes that best define a prospect for the business.
Let’s look at some of the critical objectives of lead generation and how businesses can use it to their advantage:
- To increase brand awareness: According to Statista, “there will be 3.02 billion social media users worldwide by 2021”. With almost everyone on social media nowadays, and researching brands, products, and services, getting your target audience’s attention is easier and relatively effortless to create awareness about your brand.
- To boost web traffic: The social media sphere is home to more than 3.4 billion active users. Social media is an excellent source to drive traffic to your website. They bring in ample opportunities to gain business visitors and convert them into leads.
- To reach out to new prospects: The best way to build an engaged audience base on social media is by focusing on the people who already know you. By sharing relevant content, promptly interacting with them, and acknowledging their feedback will help you expand your audience base and fortify your existing relationships.
Ways of advertising on social media platforms for effective lead generation:
Social media advertising takes targeting at a higher level. Every platform allows you to target a specific set of audiences, based on the demographics and their interests. This way, you can also keep your marketing expenses low and only pay when you get a lead.
Boasting the largest database of users than any other social network, Facebook is increasingly used to create promoted content using ‘Leads Ad.’ You can also include a CTA along the lines of ‘learn more’ or ‘sign up’ buttons similar to the gated content where potential customers submit their information in exchange for something useful and valuable to them. The fact that Facebook Ads automatically populates the lead form, including the user’s details such as their email address, etc. makes this feature very convenient. It eliminates the extra step such as re-directing the users to a landing page, and having them fill and submit their information with just one click –make sure you’re giving something valuable enough to get their info!
The most popular ways to generate leads with Facebook are:
- On-Page Promotions: Businesses can create their FB page. The people who like the page may be your potential leads.
- Off-Page Promotions: It’s promoting your lead generation content on Facebook communities, groups, and other pages.
- Paid Promotions: Businesses prefer paid promotions since it fetches them immediate results, and Facebook offers a range of social ads with a specific purpose as well.
Instagram is an enormous platform and has around 800M monthly active users, so there’s an opportunity for online lead generation. However, what also needs to be considered is that the audience on Instagram is mostly under 30, so only use this platform if you’re targeting that demographic. With over 800-900 Million monthly active users on Instagram, it’s the most popular social platform to generate leads. Through your ads, you can reach the exact audience you want using their precise targeting options such as location, interests, behavior, automated targeting, etc.
- Direct Message With An Introduction: Since you need to start the conversation somehow, DMs are a great way to grab your prospect’s attention. You can also add comments in the public comments section with, “please check your DM!” Or write to them saying, “I have the solution to your problem. Can I send you a DM?” People appreciate and tend to respond well when you ask for their consent.
- Offer Them Some Value: The right way to start a long term relationship is to focus on how you can provide them value rather than thinking, “what can I get from them.” Think on the lines of “how can you solve their problems” or “how collaborating with you may benefit them in the long run?” is something that should be thought out well before you make that move.
With around 700 million users, and more than 260 million monthly active users, the most extensive business network out there is undoubtedly LinkedIn. It is increasingly used as a B2B online lead generation tool. LinkedIn is the most resourceful platform when it comes to B2B social media lead generation because the majority of users are looking to build and promote their business network. People are open and more than willing to discuss business opportunities and use LinkedIn to find new approaches, products, and solutions that will help their business grow. Of those LinkedIn users who engage with the platform monthly, almost 40% access it daily.
Key take-aways to capture leads on LinkedIn:
- Targeting a niche audience: With the broadest reach of around 675 million active professionals on LinkedIn, target your prospects based on job titles, functions, industries, etc.
- Creating effective ads: LinkedIn ads are perfect for acquiring leads, building brand awareness, and event registrations.
- Regulating your expenses: You can control your spending with easy and flexible pricing options. You can also start and stop your paid ads at any time.
Twitter is a great and very resourceful way to connect with new prospects and audiences. Still, these visitors need persistent attention, and this can be done by ensuring that you have a proper lead nurturing process in place. It will take them from being your Twitter followers to paying customers. Most Twitter users are typically in the early discovery stages and will need a lot of time and convincing before they convert. Focusing on maintaining contact, and providing them with additional education-rich content, will help nurture their trust in you, and will drive them closer to your desired business goal.
You can create campaigns based on objectives, such as receiving more website clicks and conversions. By selecting a campaign objective, you can drive traffic to your landing page and have the user take some action, such as downloading a brochure, filling out a form, or even buying one of your products.
Key take-aways to capture leads on Twitter
- Increase the Click-through rate by attaching images or pictures, inserting trending hashtags of popular industry topics, by providing a link to a valuable free resource or by giving a link near the beginning of the tweet to catch user’s attention.
- Plan and outline your campaign objective, such as raising awareness, attracting new followers, or re-directing traffic to your website.
- One of the exciting ways to get more attention on Twitter is to ask questions- People have an instinct to look for answers whenever they are confronted with a question. Post consistently and try engaging personally with your Twitter leads.
- You can also use Twitter’s Direct Message Cards- a useful lead to building leads.
- Select your daily budget for your ads. You can start with at least $30/day to reach audiences throughout the day consistently.
Conclusion
The focus is on the use of social media to identify relevant profiles or “leads” for business in sourcing new employees or collaborators.
For marketers who are ready to move beyond brand awareness and engagement, social media lead generation is the best next step. Gathering leads on social media will not only help you find people interested in your company but also, these leads will help you keep in touch with potential customers. When it comes to improving lead quality, most marketers agree that social media marketing is the way to go! When generating leads with social media, it’s essential to reach out to your targeted audience using these popular channels. The four most widely used platforms mentioned above are a jumping-off point, and more so for B2B companies. Your social media platforms can be your very own gold mine of sorts!