How to Use Social Media to Drive Lead Generation
January 25, 2021Are you ready to take your social media marketing and lead generation to the next level? If so, then you will want to start taking a conversion-oriented approach to social media. In this post, we are going to look at some ways you can use social media to drive conversions, create leads, and increase social media sales.
Lead Strategy #1: Add Links to Your Profiles
This one seems like a no-brainer, yet lots of businesses do not use the spaces allotted for website links on their profiles and pages. Simply showing your audience where they can find you can improve social media lead generation. In addition to the obvious fields, there are others that can help visitors to your social profiles navigate to your website. These include:
- The website field and bio for your Twitter profile.
- The website field and short description for your Facebook page.
- The Publications and Projects section of LinkedIn profiles.
- The links and introduction section of Google+ profiles and pages.
- The cover photos on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn profiles and pages.
For profiles and pages that allow you to have more than one link, you can optimize for leads and conversions by having one link to the homepage of your website and one to a landing page geared towards converting social media visitors into email subscribers, leads, or sales. These links should be in place before you start promoting your social media profiles. If you have already started your social media strategy add them as soon as possible.
A great example from Autosend:
Lead Strategy #2: Grow a Relevant Audience
A high-quality audience is important if you want to drive social media lead generation. Your business most likely does not need a million followers. Nor does it need fans that are bought in packages or acquired through iPad giveaways (unless you actually sell iPads). Unless you are trying to create the next ICanHasCheezburger, the only followers and fans you should strive to gain are relevant ones.
Relevant social media audiences are those that are going to be interested in your products and services and likely to convert into leads. If you want to buy followers and fans, you should use official social media advertising such as Twitter Promoted Accounts and Facebook Ads. These allow you to create ads shown to your business’s target demographic and connect with real potential customers.
If you want to use giveaways to grow your audience, then use relevant giveaways. If you offer a web analytics service, then give away a free year’s subscription to your platform. Unlike the people who would enter a contest to win an iPad (and never visit your page again), those who entered to win a free year’s subscription to your platform would be the ideal audience to sell to later.
Lead Strategy #3: Provide Value
One way to help grow a relevant audience and keep your relevant audience engaged is to provide value. The key to providing value in a way that encourages website conversions is to create content and conversations related to your business.
A retail store that sells pet supplies could easily do this by going out on Twitter and searching for people in their region asking questions about pet food, pet toys, etc. Each question that they answer could lead someone to discover his or her website, see them as an authority on pets, and eventually go shopping at their store. This is an ideal way to drive conversions with social media.
Service providers, such as wedding photographers, could do the same. They could simply go into local wedding groups on Facebook and answer questions. By providing tips on how to take great photos, they will likely attain great leads.
A great example from When I Work (shameless plug):
Lead Strategy #4: Promote Content with a Call-to-Action
Another way to provide value on social media is by creating and sharing valuable content from your blog. People prefer to consume content over advertisements on social media.
If you are sharing great content your audience is more likely to click through to read it. When they do, make sure you have an informative post followed by a strong call to action to get the visitor to go from reader to lead or customer. Getting a lead on your site may be the biggest hurdle, but giving them a clear path to conversion is what seals the deal.
Lead Strategy #5: Get Fans on Your Email List
The next best thing to getting someone to convert from social media into a lead or customer is to get someone on your email list, another medium through which you can work towards conversion. You can do this as a part of your content with a call to action promotion strategy.
You can also do it by creating lead magnets specifically geared towards encouraging people to submit their email address to your list, such as informative ebooks or reports. Whenever you publish a new lead magnet, create a landing page for it that focuses the visitor on nothing but submitting their email address. Then promote that landing page to your social media audience.
A great example from Groove:
Lead Strategy #5: Create Highly Targeted Ads
In addition to organically promoting your business to drive conversions, you can use social media advertising to reach the right audiences. If you know your ideal customers well, you should have no trouble creating ad campaigns that are shown to highly targeted audiences that are more likely to become leads.
Facebook, for example, will allow you to target single men in a certain age bracket who live in San Francisco, are interested in exotic sports cars, and are CEOs of tech companies. LinkedIn, on the other hand, will allow you to target men who live in San Francisco, are CEOs of tech companies, and who are members of groups like exotic car owners and enthusiasts.
The goal of a highly targeted ad campaign is to have a small reach of people who are the perfect fit for your customer demographic. When creating social ad campaigns for lead generation they should drive visitors to conversion optimized landing pages. This strategy should ensure that you are spending a smaller budget on a higher-converting audience.
Lead Strategy #6: Use Remarketing
Another way to use social media advertising is remarketing. So far, Facebook and Twitter both allow you to create custom audiences and tailored audiences based on visitors to your website that have had a cookie placed on their browser. You can use these cookies to match ad campaigns to specific pages people have visited.
Remarketing is the reason you can go to Facebook after browsing Staples’ website and see the same desk you were browsing in your news feed. Because you are targeting audiences that have visited your website, you stand a much higher potential to convert them into sales.
In Conclusion
As you can see, you have many opportunities to optimize your social media presence for lead generation and conversions. Be sure to take advantage of all of them to ensure your social media campaigns result in positive ROI.
About the Author (Guest Blogger)
Sujan Patel, VP Marketing, When I Work
Sujan Patel has over 12 years of digital marketing experience and has helped hundreds of clients increase web traffic, boost user acquisition, and grow their businesses. Now as the VP of Marketing at When I Work, he’s applying the tactics and strategies he’s learned and developed over the years to take the company to the next level. Get more exclusive growth tips from Sujan at 100daysofgrowth.com.
