If you want to get the very most out of your social media endeavours, you need to invest as much time and effort continually engaging your audience as you did attract them in the first place. How can you use social media lead generation for your business?
So often, we spend time (and sometimes money) to promote products/services, spread awareness, increase reach, generate creative content and run campaigns. But we forget that following up after these actions is just as important.
Clicks, comments, likes, website visits and shares are all indicators of leads. The best part is these leads can then be turned into ‘hot leads’ in just a few steps.
Think of it like the ‘Butterfly Effect’ in the chaos theory – which to be honest feels exactly that with the constant changes and noise on social media. In the Butterfly Effect, it is believed that “A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome”*.
Anyway… If you’re wondering how to use social media lead generation? How to turn those leads into customers? And how to retain those customers going forward? You’re in the right place! That’s because we’re about to provide you with some tangible tips to help you attract leads, convert them into customers and keep your followers engaged.
7 ways to generate leads on social media:
- Optimise your profile: Ensure you have a suitable mugshot, updated contact information, relevant call-to-action-buttons and clickable links in your bios.
- Create clickable content: Use attractive copy; mobile-friendly, relevant images; and be sure to add a URL if you are promoting something on your website. >>> You can read more about this in ‘How to convert social media marketing to sales’
- Design user-friendly landing pages: Always consider loading speed, context, product information/images, encouraging copy and the aesthetics of your page.
- Use social lead ads: Most platforms are monetised and you can create lead ads (paid reach) on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
- Provide offers and incentives: You can boost your reach by holding contests, offering discount codes or exclusive content (depending on your industry).
- Personalise offers: While not easy, a simple trick would be to remarket and retarget leads using paid reach on different groups, based on gender, age or links they have clicked on.
- Measure, review and enhance: Analytics gives you insights into the top and lowest performing content, allowing you to quickly and easily see what’s working and what’s not. Use these insights to double up on the stuff that’s performing well and/or invest more in the social media platform that is generating more leads.
7 most effective tactics for improving lead generation:
According to a recent survey by Ascend2, the primary strategies for generating higher quality leads are (in descending order):
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Website personalisation
- Content/video marketing
- Marketing technology/CRM
- Event/demo registrations
- SEO/paid search
Engage and retain your converted leads
In a nutshell, here at Cambridge Social Media, we receive leads through our website (email registrations), friends’ referrals (to like our page or join the group), people finding us on Meetups.com and more.
We then engage our leads by:
- Creating relevant content for our social media channels (with emphasis on our top interactive channels)
- Answering and responding to our audience
- Leveraging one of our biggest assets, our private Facebook Group, where we regularly engage the exclusive members
- Sending out monthly newsletters with our news and updates on talks and more
- Running and hosting monthly meetups with experts (and currently weekly live sessions).
- Connecting members with others that can offer help/expertise and advice.
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Hopefully, you’ve now got a clearer idea about how to generate leads on social media and nurture them so they become paying customers.
If you want to find out more about leveraging social media and making it work in your favour, head over to our website – www.cambridgesocial.media – and consider signing up to our newsletter, meetups and/or workshops.
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About the author:
Thana Asaad has over 7 years of experience in social media marketing, strategising digital marketing efforts, growing online communities and building insightful reports. Having spent most of her career between Beirut, Khobar, and Dubai city she had the opportunity to work with international brands such as Daniel Wellington and Unilever, and leading agencies like Merkle.
She has moved to the UK only last July and has already become an active member of the Cambridge community. She currently takes on independent projects delivering search engine optimisation SEO, campaign strategies, and content writing services.
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* Lorenz, Edward N. (March 1963). “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow”. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. 20 (2): 130–141. Bibcode: 1963JAtS…20..130L
