05 Mar
Social Media is not always the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to gaining valuable leads for your business. Although companies are recognising the benefits they can get from having a Social Media presence that addresses areas such as communicating with their customers, many are still not aware of what a powerful tool social media can be when it comes to those all-important leads.
In this post we’ll discuss some key ways you can use Social Media to pull in even more potential customers, and how to tailor your use to get the best possible results.
So, what is Social Media Lead Generation?
When it comes to lead generation, the days of only or mostly traditional advertising are long gone. Since the advent of Google in particular, the scale and scope of digital lead generation has increased at a dizzying rate.
It’s now possible to reach a huge number of customers using smart social media strategies at a fraction of what a traditional national advertising campaign might cost.
Social Media lead generation can help you to connect to your customers by engaging them across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram – building awareness and trust with your target audience.
It can also be incredibly cost-effective – with only a mere 6 hours per week on one channel, 66% of marketers say they found lead generation benefits. Another study by ‘Quick Sprout’ found that social media’s ‘lead to close’ effectiveness was significantly higher compared to outbound marketing. Twitter and Facebook are the most popular tools to use, with Twitter accounting for 82% of all social leads and 40% of marketing professionals citing Facebook as a core part of their business marketing strategy.
The bad news is that as marketing techniques have changed over the last few years, so have the habits and mindsets of your potential online customers.
Because your target customers have such a huge amount of information to process when they go online, attention spans have markedly decreased. In addition, customers have become accustomed to ‘filtering’ their online experience – and ignoring messaging and advertising that doesn’t tie in with what they are searching for.
This is why it’s important to have a social media strategy that builds engagement, as well as showcasing what your business has to offer.
Below are 5 tips that can help you generate leads though social media.
Five-Step Social Media Lead Generation
Build Relationships
As we’ve discussed, building great relationships with your customers is vital to your social media presence. You may already be using channels such as Twitter or Facebook to share details of products and services with your customers, however generating leads means you need to become more active.
Creating interesting and helpful content regularly, and engaging with your customers by being responsive to them, helps to build awareness and trust of your business and what you have to offer. When it comes to B2B leads, LinkedIn is a great way to build networks and find new clients. Ensure your profile is up to date and you take the time to interact with business leaders and grow your influence on this channel.
Develop Your Brand
Because Social Media has such a reach it’s important to identify your business brand and keep growing that brand with all your interactions. This means choosing the right platforms for the industry you’re in, as well as choosing content that’s relevant and will be of interest to your target audience.
Knowing what your company voice will be, and keeping on message, is important to create a strong brand, as well as using visuals that customers will be able to associate with you. You can use custom templates to ensure your posts stay within brand, as well as choosing which kinds of colours and images to consistently use.
Finding your voice is about knowing what your business values are, and the type of customers you attract. Who are your target audience and what kind of writing will best reach them? Knowing your customers and posting content that speaks to them is a huge part of developing a great brand that customers come to trust.
Use Savvy Social Media Ads
Advertising through social media is a great way to target the people who are interested in your product. Depending on the nature of your business and who you want to reach you can use a range of channels which can offer highly targeted adverts to get your message to the right people. The most popular channels for these types of adverts are: Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.
You can use your ads to draw people to your products or services, as well as linking them to gated content, which we’ll explore shortly. Targeted ads are a great way to save money as they help you to send messages to the people most likely to be interested in your service, rather than blanket targeting many people who may be uninterested in what you have to offer.
Offer Quality Content
This one might seem obvious, but it’s important that you keep your social media channels up to date and relevant. Make sure the basics are always correct such as contact information and opening times and the core parts of the services you offer.
Offering informative and entertaining posts that add value to your potential customers is key. Don’t write content for the sake of creating a post, make sure you are on message and the content you offer is well-written, with advice and information that your customers will find useful. As we’ve discussed, attention spans are getting shorter and consumers are developing the ability to ‘tune out’ information that isn’t immediately engaging – so try to keep your content sharp, on brand and informative.
Build High-Value Gated Content
Gated content is content that you offer potential customers in exchange for something from them. Usually this takes the form of asking for a subscription or information such as their email address or answering a short survey before they are able to access the content.
Because of this, gated content has to be perceived as adding value to the consumer, or they will simply click away without taking action to get past the gate.
Great gated content can take the form of a short EBook, a video talk and explainer, a short course or a high-quality PDF that shares useful information. By creating landing pages on your website that you can link to via social media ads, you can entice potential customers to engage more deeply with you – and capture the important information you need (such as their email address) to further engage them with your business.
