How To Generate Leads Via Social Media

If you are struggling to generate new leads for your business, it might be time to try a new place – social media.

A lead can be by anyone who has shown interest in your products or services. By consistently generating new leads, you can keep up your sales. Businesses rely on lead generation as it creates more website traffic, which may then result in these leads being converted into actual customers.

Leads can come from a variety of sources, but the focus of this article will be generating leads from social media.

Social media can work with your current website. Especially if your business is small, it offers leads a platform where they can easily communicate with you. Social media provides them with a sense of good customer service and responsiveness, and as a result, increases their chances of conversion.

Social media users are more engaged with their social media networks than any other communication platform, including email! 20% of business users have replaced email with social media as their main communication method, and more than 50% of marketers say they use social media for lead generation!

There are a few reasons behind this:

• Search engine marketing is harder now and gets harder with every new update.
• A campaign that would cost $1 on social media costs $4-5 on search engines.

Therefore, social media is becoming essential if you want to build and strengthen relationships with your customers at a lower cost. Social media marketing has reduced costs for 45% of businesses!

For your social media marketing to be successful, and generate leads, it is important to create effective content through sufficient planning and research and engage with your audience correctly. A straightforward way to conduct research is through surveys and keeping an eye on your competitor’s feedback.

If you have yet to implement a new social media strategy to generate leads, treat this article as a guide as it offers a few up-to-date tactics on how to successfully generate leads through social media.

To begin generating your business leads, you should:

• Step one – figure out who your target audience is, what demographic do you want to be targeting? The more specified your content is to your target audience, the better your results will be!
• Step two – choose your platform.
• Step three – what counts as a lead for your business.

When it comes to choosing your platform, in step two, there is a lot to choose from. It is important to choose correctly because each platform attracts its kind of audience, has a unique style of content, and is better at generating several types of leads.

The answer depends on the type of business you are trying to promote. Enough research will tell you which platform has the best demographic for your business. For example, 65% of Pinterest users are female, so you would not use that to advertise tool kits!

Sites that get the most traffic are the best ones to focus your attention on. Of all the social media platforms out there, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have the greatest amount of monthly active users.

After you have figured these things out, you can start to implement your strategies.

Examples of strategies to generate leads via social media include:

Marketers have rated LinkedIn the number one platform for lead generation!

LinkedIn has software that can help you find your target audiences by searching people by their job title, function, industry, education, interests, and more. Because of this, these leads tend to be much more valuable with better conversion rates.

Contests are a wonderful way to:

• Increase engagement
• Build brand awareness
• Increase your followers and subscribers, and collect rich data
• Improve your sales

An example of a contest is a free giveaway too, for example, ‘a follower selected at random.’ To be eligible for the giveaway, your customers must be following your page. This is a wonderful way of attracting followers that are interested in what you are selling, and therefore for generating business leads.

Photo contests are also an effective way to increase the reach of your social media profile, for example, ‘submit a photo, tag us, and the best wins a free product.’

This is an effective way to gain insight into what your audience cares about – you just ask them!

Polls allow you to question your followers, with the option of two different answers. They are also a wonderful way to receive feedback on what you are selling and what they would like to see improve and allow viewers to engage with your content. According to HubSpot, quiz or poll stickers are one of Instagram’s most popular story interactions.

IKEA USA used polls to see which kitchen designs their Instagram followers preferred which helped them gain valuable insight into what their customers wanted.

Having compelling content is crucial if you want to create leads! Having clickable content makes it much easier for your audience to buy what you are selling and create website traffic.

Here are some examples of how you can achieve this:

• Tag products in your Facebook shop
• Add a swipe up a link on Instagram stories
• YouTube cards and end screens

Issuing promotional codes and unique offers on products provides customers with an incentive to buy, and by involving a time limit, to buy quickly. Posting flash deals and discount codes are also an effective way of site traffic and engagement.

Discounts are also often a wonderful way to attract new customers because if your discount is good, then your current customers are likely to mention it to someone they know. This is great for your business because referrals and word-of-mouth are the top ways that people find brands!

According to HubSpot, 85% of consumers want to see more video content from brands!

Video marketing is a new trend in social media marketing that many brands are becoming accustomed to. Video marketing includes profile videos, Instagram stories, Instagram reels, and TikTok’s. You can create one or several small snippets to advertise what you are selling.

Videos can be fun, or they can be informative. Either way, it is a fantastic way for your brand to visually promote its products and allow your customers to learn about your product.

A live video is an effective way to engage with your target audience by answering questions and discussing topics.

When you go live on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, your followers are notified about it and have the option to join, and during your live stream, you can advertise and direct your watchers to your website, or a page where they can engage with your brand.

Live video is unique because it allows for real-time interaction. You and your audience can ask each other questions and share opinions instantly in real-time. This will inevitably create a stronger connection and a better relationship between you and your customer base.

Creating leads is great but building a system to generate leads that will give you actual results, with the least amount of maintenance possible, is the way forward.

A sales funnel involves a series of pages designed to guide each visitor towards the action you want them to take. It is effective because it filters out all leads that are more likely to convert to actual customers.

This makes your advertising go much further than it would with the traditional website method!

You can generate leads by creating and joining Facebook groups because the wonderful thing about this is that Facebook group users all have common interests. Therefore, this is an effective way to filter out your target audience from the rest.

With 1.4billion people using Facebook groups, there is potential here to reach a lot of potential customers. You can provide them with the latest updates about your brand, unique offers, and discount codes, receive feedback and directly speak with your customers.

Referral campaigns or referring a friend is an effective way to engage with your social media followers. 92% of buyers trust and listen to the recommendations of their friends and families, and referral campaigns will have your customers advertising on your behalf!

Uber often uses referral campaigns on their app by offering a discount on a trip to anyone who can get a friend to sign up. You can do this through your social media account by, for example, asking customers to refer a friend for a chance to win a gift card.

The bigger the win, the greater the incentive for the customer, and you could end up seeing your customer base grow significantly.

Using social media for generating leads can take getting used to and be frustrating at times, but if done right, it can be a source of high-quality leads for your business!