When most companies think of social media marketing for their business, they immediately associate it with brand building, and not Sales. After all, no one actually buys products because of a Tweet, right?
Wrong.
The fact is that social media is much more than just a medium to grow your brand & connect with your customers. When implemented correctly, you can actually use sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn for the purpose of lead generation for your business. And the cheery on top is that social media lead generation is cost effective & drive results:
- 1.Socialmedia has reduced 45% of marketing costs of businesses.
- 2.Increased in revenue with 24% of businesses when usingsocial media for lead generation.
Now the question is how would you take your social media marketing campaigns from customer service & branding tool, and convert them into auto lead generation mechanism?
Connecting Social Media & Lead Generation
Firstly, let’s take a look at the concept; the process of Lead Generation is to convert your target audience into customer. It’s not directly similar to selling. Consider lead generation as turning out intelligence on your customers. You’ll get to know:
- Your target audience interests
- A sort of products you could potentially sell to them
- How to eventually convert them intopaying customers
Back in times, lead generation activities involves sending out surveys in the mail or filling forms in the back of a magazine. But, evolution of the internet has completely changed the way for businesses to get leads- for the better.
Now-a-days, the factor such as valuable content, paid advertising campaigns, video marketing, and email opt-in are accountable to bring potential customers in your lead generation sales funnel. Since the whole process is conducted online, it is quick, easy to track & has possibilities for data you can collect for each lead is amazing.
Here’s how social media sites play its role. Social media does this practice easier as users are able to promptly share the content, the because of out-an-out number of active users on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now is the time when 40% of people spend their more time socializing on social media than face to face. So it would not be wrong to say that social media is the perfect place to find your target audience & turn them into new sales leads.
How to use Social Media channels to generate more leads
One of the worst mistakes that marketers can make right from the start is trying to get leads from wrong social media channels. To conquer this step, you must need to know your target audience. With over one billion active users, it’s easy to make a choice that Facebook is the best option. But that’s not always the case.
For B2B marketers, 44% lead have generated through LinkedIn, while 39% have done through Facebook. Twitter stands third with 30%. You must need to figure out your target audience and accordingly the social networks they are using. Your lead generation technique is going to partially depend on which social media site you’re focusing on. Here are some ideas to get you started with your mission of lead generation over different channels:
Generating Leads with Facebook
Generating remarkable amount of leads through Facebook is usually going to mean running paid ads at some point. The changes to Facebook’s algorithm have made it more difficult to get organic reach. The best part is that Facebook Ads are budget friendly as compared to other networks like AdWords. The average cost per clicks (CPC) for Facebook Ads is:
- Facebook:$.80
•AdWords: $2.50
While you are running paid ads or trying to turn existing followers into leads, here are some tips that can help.
- Contests
Contests are ahuge hit on Facebook for years. The upside is they catch a lot of The downside is that the leads you get through the contest aren’t always the most right because you’ll have lots of freebie seekers. But nonetheless, it’s a good way to gather emails. Shorstack is a great tool for you to setup Facebook contests & collect your leads as it integrates with major email marketing tools like AWeber and MailChimp. - 2.Create a Custom Tab.
Facebook allows you to setup custom tabs on your Page, making it a great spot for contact forms. You can use different apps to set these up like Pagemodo and Static HTML. These forms are a perfect way to generate leads on Facebook without redirecting your followers to an external site. In order to get more eyes on these tabs, you must link to them in your posts or while you’re running paid ads.
- 3.Treat your page like a Website
Stop considering your Facebook Page as just a way to get Likes. Turning your Page to a lead generation tool will impact the type of content you post, kind of ads you run & even the tabs that you set up.
Generating Leads with Twitter
Using Twitter to generate leads is still kind of new thing. Prior to Twitter Cards hit the scene, most of the businesses has no idea about how to get started with getting or tracking leads through Twitter. But nowadays, you’ve probably notice that Promoted Tweets (ads) are given a little more priority in your stream. If you want to use Twitter for more than just building your audience, follow these tips to get leads.
- 1.UseTwitter Cards
In 2013, Twitter released its new Lead Generation Twitter In most case studies, companies are likely to generate new leads using lead generation cards.
Here are some tips for using Twitter Lead Generation Cards:
- Use an impressive image.
- Statistics help
- Make your copy moreengaging, as you only have 140 characters
- 2.Track Brand Mentions
Are you paying attention to what people are saying about your company on Twitter? If not, you might be missing out on easy leads. In some cases, you could even be losing out on making sales. That’s why it is important to have some sort of social media monitoring tool setup that enable you to track the conversation & never lose out on a missed opportunity.
Some examples of what you can track are:
- 1.Mentions of your company name
- 2.Common misspellings3.Industry related keywords.
- 4.Mentions of your competitors
- 3.Create Events.
There is some creative way of generating leads on Twitter like Twitter chats, Ask Me Anything (AMA) and other time-sensitive events. The key thing is to apply some sort of call-to-action for each campaign. For example, Blog Elevated is a community for bloggers, focuses on an annual Blog Elevated event. It uses weekly Twitter chats every Tuesday which carry out two things:
- 1.Prompt great discussion for bloggers about relevant topics and challenges they face
- 2.Introduce people to the brand’s event.(a.k.a Lead Generation)
By hosting an event on Twitter which is related to your industry, but not directly about your company, you’re presenting free value. And in turn, people will be curious to know more about the company hosting the event, which can convert into new leads for you.
Generating Leads with LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the top social media site for B2B lead generation. Since it’s, the network is served toward professionals & networking, it’s the act as an organic lead generation tool. But that doesn’t mean that you can just go into it blindly without any purpose and objective.
- 1.Offer a Free Sample.
It’s a very powerful approach that can result in highly qualified leads for you. LinkedIn Premium gives businesses the opportunity to discover suitable leads based upon job role & other measures, then contact them directly with InMail feature. What’s great for B2B companies is that it lets you get past the gate keepers and go directly to the decision makers.
2.Combine LinkedIn & Inbound Marketing with LinkedIn Publishing
Inbound marketing is no doubt an effective technique. Running ads and making sales calls is still working, but the figures show that inbound marketing is where it’s at. In fact, inbound marketing drives 54% more leads into your marketing funnel than traditional outbound tactics.
One of the techniques that comes in inbound umbrella is content marketing. LinkedIn’s The rapidly growing Publishing platform LinkedIn, is the perfect place to:
- 1.Show your expertise as a thought leader.
- 2.Offer valuable content about your industry that professionals will see.
- 3.Gain leads in the process
- 3.Get on Slide Share.
LinkedIn is acquiring SlideShare which is one of the best things happened for the marketers. SlideShare is a platform for sharing content which is focused around slide decks, and they gain a lot of traffic. After buying SlideShare, LinkedIn merged it into the site so that your accounts can be connected. Here’s how you can use it to gain leads:
Focus on creating slide decks which are highly suitable & is of interest to your target audience. Make sure that your SlideShare and LinkedIn accounts are linked so that your presentations are visible on your LinkedIn Profile or Company Page. Most importantly, must have some sort of call-to-action tab either inside your presentation or at the end.
Generate leads from Instagram
Instagram is still in its advance stages in terms of its options for marketers. It doesn’t directly serve with marketers & advertisers like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Pinterest do. But still stand out as a great platform for generating leads.
- 1.Don’t Ignore the Comments
Instagram is not only about vanity. Getting loads of likes on a photo is cool, but if you are not observing with the comments people are leaving, then you’re missing out great leads. Since Instagram is not exactly for deep conversations, but taking time to respond to the people who are engaging with your photos shows that you care, which in turn makes people more likely to buy from you.
- 2.Use video
Instagram allows you to upload short video clips. This enables some really interesting marketing tactics, which is helpful for lead generation. The concept of generating leads using video works for the reasons as:
- 1.The video is creative and more engaging.
- 2.It provides description about how to buy the product.
Though you can’t post clickable links in your captions, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t include a URL. As an effective technique, to use unique URL’s that can be tracked, so that you can monitor your ROI.
- 3.Create Unique#Hashtags.
This might has happened to you many times, while browsing Instagram you had notice certain hashtags keeps popping up. You’re are sure what it’s actually about, but a lot of people you follow are using it. So you can look into it & find out what hashtag has to do with certain brands.
It’s the way how lots of people find about new companies. It’s similar to the new word of mouth advertising, but via social media. People start using hashtag, then it’s just keeps building & spreading. Your role is to come up with a hashtag which is not directly about your company, but can be tracked back to you.
Social Media Isn’t limited to Branding Anymore……
This article definitely helps you in unlocking the benefits of social media channels for the purpose of lead generation. So stop considering the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn as just a branding tool for your businesses, and start using them strategically to generate more leads to your business.
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