Are you looking for ways to increase your sales and ROI from your online marketing efforts? Here are 7 ways to generate leads through social media and effectively surpass your competition...
How To Generate Leads Effectively Using Social Media
While traditional lead generation methods, such as squeeze pages and paid ads are important, you now have a new secret weapon that not many small business owners are taking advantage of today. You can use social media for:
- Branding
- Marketing
- Market Research
- Engaging with your audience
However, its lead generating abilities are still underrated.
Are you looking for ways to increase sales? Below you’ll find 7 ideas on how to generate leads through social media.
1. Videos
When people browse social media, they are looking for information and entertainment at the same time. You will only have a few seconds to grab their attention.
If you check out the resources available from Facebook Business, you will see that videos do much better than text ads or sponsored articles.
Most people will check their accounts on the way to work or in their breaks, so they have limited time. An engaging and interesting video has a better chance of capturing their interest than a long article.
[caption id="attachment_6870" align="aligncenter" width="599"]
Image Credit: Redd Angelo[/caption]
2. Infographics
While infographics have been popular for a few years, they are not yet fully utilized by companies. You might have seen some fantastic examples of animated and video infographics that get shared on various sites hundreds of times.
With modern online tools, such as Canva, now you can create informative and attention-grabbing, animated infographics that will tell your audience what your brand is about, or educate them on your product or services.
3. Autoresponder Integration
You might be able to add your autoresponder code to your social media pages, depending on your account type. You can generate leads and get people to subscribe to your pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, or simply connect with people who might be interested in what you have to offer. You can then provide them with some free information that will turn them into prospects.
4. Competitions
An interesting way of engaging with a local or niche market is creating competitions and sharing them on social media. Whether you are planning on giving away something or want to create a fun quiz for your potential customers, you can get the word out about your brand and get interested in what you are offering.
Competitions are fun and can be shared across several social media platforms.
5. Paid Campaigns
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Image Credit: William Iven[/caption]
You might even get paid ads on various platforms. However, to succeed in digital marketing, you need to know your audience first. The good news is that you can easily set up a boosted post on Facebook and get instant statistics on:
- Engagement
- Time of day people check out your offers
- Audience location
- Audience occupation
- Audience interests
- Audience age
- Audience gender
You shouldn’t underestimate the power of Facebook advertising; you will not only get measurable results, but can also do your market research at the same time.
6. Sharing In Groups
No matter if you are a LinkedIn person or love Facebook and Twitter, you can find communities that are built around the industry or product, service you represent.
If you can establish yourself in the marketplace as an expert, you are more likely to be trusted by people, and - as a result - get more engagement, shares, and leads on your squeeze page, social media sites, or blog posts.
The more social media engagement you get, the better chance you will have to generate leads from your website and get people to recommend your business through word of mouth.
7. Online Support
A great way of capturing leads and turning them into customers is to provide online chat and contact on social media sites and your web pages.
Most people take time to make up their mind whether or not to buy from you. First, you have to provide information and answer some of the questions they might have before they can decide. Further, you can show that you are a real business that cares about customer support. Once you have gained the trust of your social media and website visitors, you will find it much easier to turn them into loyal fans or even customers.
Using social media for lead generation is an underutilized online marketing method. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other sites to connect with your target market on a personal level and establish your brand on the market.
Focus on fun ways to connect, and entertain while you are providing your potential clients a reason why they should buy from you and not your competition. Use the statistics provided by social media pages to tailor your campaigns and improve your conversion rates.
10 Replies
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Informative and very well written, Social media plays significant role in B2B lead generation and Appointment Setting
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Dan, Thank you for your kind words. Social media does indeed help with B2B lead generation. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your thoughts, ~Keri
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A very useful blog thanks for sharing.
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Kawsar, Thank you for reading, and for your positive words. Happy to know you found this article useful. ~Keri
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Thanks for sharing a great blog and already bookmarked this blog because this so helpful for me.. there are lots of tool for lead generation and I am using Leadsjack tool for getting leads.
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I really admire from infographics marketing, because its a core part in whole things, you get more and more engagement if you have a relevant sort of infographics then it will be shared automatically in different places.
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Shawn, Infographics can be a quite effective way to gain additional market share and brand awareness. In turn, that should lead to more sales, donations, subscriptions, etc. It is true people do engage with Infographics, but we should be strategic with use in content plans. Thank you for your comment, ~Keri
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Ms. Scraper, Glad you liked this article – Happy to be helpful. To earn credibility, it is indeed important to walk the talk. Good to know you are doing that by using and talking about your own tool. Thanks for your comment, ~Keri
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As always, Keri, to-the-point and informative as all-get-out. I’m curious about No. 4, setting up a competition for giving something away. I’m giving away a gift basket at my upcoming book signing at a local bookstore, but have no idea how I’d set up a competition for that. I’m sharing this with my followers because: 1) You always get straight to the point, 2) Your wizardly wisdom is just what I, and many of my fellow authors need. Thanks, and congrats on that #26 spot!!!
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Mary, Thank you for your kind words. I’ve seen the photos of the gift basket, and it looks like you have an awesome event planned! If attendees will only be engaged on-site for the giveaway, announce & prompt on social media to get people to the book signing. Then, be creative with a way to earn more entries and compete to win the big prize. Online contests are fun, and can be easily managed with an app that helps facilitate. Rafflecopter is one I’ve heard a lot of people like and have success with. There are others – A Google search will bring you many options. If you are only days away, then stick with on-site engagement. If you have a few weeks to a month (maybe more) to facilitate an online contest AND engage non-social media folks and get them to the event and engage them there, then I would recommend doing that – The ROI will be worth it. But remember, it is more work. Hope that helps, ~Keri
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