More than half of the global population uses social media which constitutes around 4.5 billion users around the globe. A reason why over 80% of SMBs and 98% of enterprise-grade businesses leverage social media platforms to boost their brand identity and attract fresh leads.
A social media lead is a prospect who interacts with your business account, page, or post on social media and shares its personal details, demographic info, or contact info with you in exchange for any valuable piece of content, promo code, or a range of other things they deem important or valuable.
This blog post will discuss why social media lead generation is important for your business and how to implement an effective social media lead generation strategy.
What is Social Media Lead Generation?
Social media lead generation involves strategic planning and implementation of some impactful approaches on renowned social media platforms to attract, hook, and generate fresh leads.
It is vital to measure social media lead generation success in order to optimize your efforts and direct them towards fruitful outcomes.
As half of the global population uses social media platforms it offers a remarkable opportunity to convert more customers through social media by leveraging different effective strategies that we will discuss in the following blog post.
Companies that refrain from leveraging social media lead generation strategies to fail to set up an effective brand awareness campaign for their business. It is later followed by poor ROI and failure to capture the hot market.
The immense advantages of social media lead generation make it vital for a business to adopt this new need for survival as well as steady growth in 2022.
Below are some notable perks of incorporating social media lead generation strategy in your digital marketing plan.
Brand Awareness
Social media lead generation strategies let you boost your brand awareness and strengthen a trustworthy relationship with your potential customers.
As more & more individuals came across your business, account, page, posts, videos, or Ads on social media platforms, it will make your brand recognizable and authentic on your prospects’ side.
A strong and authentic brand image means more qualified leads for your business and higher chances of conversion & sales.
Spread your message to new customers
By using social media for lead generation, you can gain access to huge market size in your niche or industry. By offering relevant and engaging content through your social media pages or accounts you can deliver your brand value and message to the new customers.
Social media is undoubtedly the perfect medium to tell your brand story and outline your USPs in the most engaging way to the new prospects and engage them effectively.
Increase Web Traffic
By curating engaging social media posts followed by a link to your website or product page, you can divert the overwhelming traffic of social media to your website. It will boost your website traffic and engagement. The more users visit your brand website, the more potential customers you will get.
The number of website visitors directly translates into the number of opportunities your brand can have.
Better Communication with existing customers
You can post engaging written or video content to re-engage your existing customers. For instance, if you are a SAAS business you can post tutorial videos regarding new features or updates. By keeping your customers’ feed alive with your posts, you can improve communication with your existing customers and retain them for the long journey with your brand.
12 Effective Social Media Strategies for Lead Generation
The following social media lead generation strategies are a must to adopt for any business in 2022. Let’s discuss each strategy in detail.
1. Know your audience
It is vital to understand your target audience on social media to aim your social media ads and content toward the prospects who are more likely to become customers. A deeper and more accurate knowledge of your target audience on social media is one of the vital aspects of a successful social media lead generation strategy.
Create a buyer persona of your ideal customers you need to engage on social media. Start by understanding their demographics, interests, and expectations. Then craft your social media strategy around your buyer persona to generate more qualified leads for your business.
2. Choose the right social media platforms for your business
Not all social media platforms work equally for all businesses. For example, if you are a B2B platform, you will find it difficult to engage your ideal prospects on Instagram. In this case, LinkedIn is your cup of tea. Let’s discuss each social media platform and what its user base looks like.
Facebook – With up to 3 billion active users globally, Facebook is undoubtedly the leading social media platform for engaging and converting both B2B and B2C leads.
Instagram – Instagram is specifically suitable for the B2C domain. You can leverage Instagram to boost your brand identity and address the mostly B2C audience through visual and interactive content. For instance, if you are running a brand for cosmetic products, Instagram gives you exposure to the right audience for your cosmetic brand.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn plays a vital role in offering B2B leads and outranks every other platform in B2B lead generation. This is where the vast majority of your B2B prospects mostly spend their time.
B2B businesses can better leverage LinkedIn compared to other channels as its user base appears as representatives of any business, service, or NGO instead of private customers.
Twitter – Around 70% of Twitter users are male, whereas only 30% are females. Twitter is known as the dominant B2C social media marketing channel but over 70% of companies use Twitter for their inbound marketing efforts. Therefore, it makes Twitter (along with LinkedIn) a favorable social media for B2B lead generation.
3. Create valuable content that people will want to share
Content is the most crucial tool for your lead generation funnel.
According to research, around 60% of customers believe that content drives their purchase decision in several ways. By offering valuable and informative content on your social media in exchange for prospects’ contact info, you not only can produce qualified leads but also fuel your subscribers’ list that you can utilize for the lead nurturing process.
Ensure that you must offer valuable and relevant content in different content formats like eBooks, purchase guides, product tutorials, or customer case studies.
Apart from text-based content, another most vital content format for social media lead generation is video content. People prefer watching videos regarding different products, tutorials, or facts instead of reading detailed posts on social media.
Using well-crafted and informative video content you can deliver your message in less time with more impact on your targeted audience.
4. Use effective calls to action on your social media posts
A relevant CTA on your social media posts can play a remarkable role as it drives your social media traffic to your business site, skyrocket your conversion rate, and boost sales. Add clear and brief CTAs on your social media posts such as asking people to download an eBook from your website, sign up for the newsletter or webinar, book a consultation session, visit your website for a product demo, etc.
5. Use paid advertising on social media platforms to reach more people quickly
Businesses that leverage paid social media ads experience remarkable outcomes as paid ads are intended to target specific and the most appropriate set of audiences.
The process requires insightful data about your niche and customers to craft a data-oriented paid advertisement strategy on social media. A data-centric approach is vital to improving the overall ROI of your paid ad campaigns.
You need to keep measuring your social media lead generation ad campaigns and optimize them for better impact and efficiency.
6. Analyze the results of your social media campaigns and adjust as needed
Social media lead generation and analytics go in parallel. If you refrain from determining the current state and capabilities of your business, it is almost possible to make informed and rational decisions.
Leverage Google Analytics to set up objectives and milestones. Google Analytics allows you to track a record of your progress to discover which social media platform is generating more leads for your business.
7. Social Media Lead Nurturing
The lead nurturing process involves nurturing leads until they become sales-ready prospects as not all your prospects are ready to buy from you. Before throwing a sales pitch, you need to drive their interest and push them further down the sales funnel. You need to determine the stage of your prospects in your sales funnel and nurture them accordingly.
8. Integrate Chatbots for the quick response and lead generation process
Being always available when your potential customer needs your assistance is one of the most difficult but essential ways to keep their interest in your brand or product intact. It helps you maintain a dedicated brand image.
You can automate or streamline your social media lead generation model using chatbots. Chatbots allow you to provide people with instant assistance and necessary support, which will persuade them to consider your offers.
9. Build Social Media Communities around your services or products
People using social media love to take part in discussions and discourse. Therefore, setting up a social media community for your brand or particular product or service is a promising way to generate leads using social media. It will help you keep your target customers intact in a loop. For instance, you can arrange webinars or live Q/A sessions with your community members. At the end of these sessions, you can ask for feedback from your audience and strengthen trust.
10. Collaborate with industry experts and influencers for sign up drives
By collaborating with renowned social media influencers in your niche, you can drive engagements from their channel or pages to your brand.
When social media influencers become a voice for your brand, even the people who historically revealed zero interest in your brand or offerings start considering your brand. You cannot neglect the importance of word-of-mouth marketing as the only strategy that could turn your cold leads into qualified leads.
11. Host Giveaways, referral programs, and fun trivia to keep your audience engaged.
The most promising aspect of social media giveaways and fun trivia is that they serve as viral campaigns that produce an overwhelming online hype for your brand. Businesses that host quizzes, games, and other contests on social media platforms experience remarkable engagement on social platforms. You can use this strategy to increase your brand awareness and later drive this traffic to your website.
12. Post client testimonials and reviews to increase trust
Your hot leads just require a slight push to become a sale. To make your last move you can offer proven and successful customer case studies and convert your B2B leads effectively. Prospects who are almost convinced to buy from you just need a slight effort and trusted resource to finalize their journey with your brand. Client testimonials and case studies produce promising results by convincing your prospects that your products or services are the perfect solutions to resolve their problems.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned strategies and tactics are vital to make any social media lead generation strategy impactful. All you need to do is choose the right platform and the right set of audiences in your niche to drive maximum ROI from your lead generation efforts.
