How to use Social Media to Get More Leads to your Business

Businesses use social media to build an online presence for their brand. While most people leverage it for brand building, the thought of using social media for sales might have seemed like an absurd and far-fetched idea.

How can you convince someone to buy your offerings with just one post, right?

Well, when used correctly these social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter can be useful for connecting with prospects and generating real leads.

In today’s time, where marketers are looking to go beyond the traditional approaches, social media lead generation is an effective strategy to add to your marketing plan. A strategy that requires limited resources, is cost-effective, and produces great results.

Social media channels reach and create an impact on a broader set of audience at a minimal cost. Therefore, through their sales leads they provide businesses with higher ROI (Return on Investment).

Social media platforms have become multi-purpose destinations for entities. From building brand awareness, to connecting with the current customers, to generating leads. They are one of the most viable and valuable channels currently.

Hence, to stand out in this competitive environment and to thrive in this fast-paced economy, the need to boost your social media game has become inevitable. To improve your lead quality and quantity, continue reading our blog to know the tactics for achieving the same through social media platforms.

This is a guest post from Ashutosh who works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com

1. FIND THE PLATFORM WHERE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS

To begin with, you will have to select the appropriate platforms where you think you can find your target audience.

Build and leverage on the networks that your customers actually use. While there are no specific platforms that ensure success, you will have to test out what works the best for your brand and decide accordingly.

You can begin with the most popular ones including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Familiarize yourself with the demographics of various social media platforms that you aim to use. 

2. OPTIMIZE YOUR PROFILE

Your profile is the first thing that will make an impression on any new visitor. You aim to attract a new audience to your business and convert them into successful leads.

Hence, before making any other move, you should first get your profile ready on all the channels and maintain brand consistency. Ensure to have all the means in place for interested customers to contact you. 

Have basic information on your profile including;

• How can customers contact you
• Get to know more about your brand
• Sign up for newsletter or subscriptions
• Shop for your offerings

Your available contact details can be phone number, email, message, comments option, or anything else that allows the customer to talk to you directly and for you to support the customer inquiries.

This means that you should add and enable the call-to-action buttons depending on the social media channel. For example, creating Email, Reserve, Place an order, or Sign Up buttons on your profile. Also, have your website/blog link in your Bio, so people can seek more information about your brand. 

3. PROMOTE GATED CONTENT

Your followers on social media will seek valuable content from the brand. You might want to share information about your product, insights on the industry, etc. Your content has a direct impact on the purchasing decision of potential customers.

Share the links to your gated content on social media to get more leads. Ask your followers to eventually sign up for receiving more pieces of content from you. This way you can get them to fill out a lead form and collect information about them.

The content gated could be;

• Relevant blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Research work
• Reports
• Invite-only webinars
• Anything that is valuable for your customers

Seek their knowledge gap or understand their problems and needs and create content on those topics. It will help to fill in the customer’s knowledge gaps and make a purchase decision.

4. USE SOCIAL PAID LEAD ADS

While we rely on methods to increase organic traffic, for boosting your effort, you can access the social lead ads. There is the ‘Lead Generation’ ads option available on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. 

Through this, you can target the right audience on these platforms and collect leads directly. These ads do not have a click that takes the users to a landing page, instead they click and get a lead generation form to fill directly on the platform.

By doing so, you can provide an incentive like an ebook or gated content piece to them. The process of this is very simple and saves the time of the users. Here, because you have to invest money, make sure you target the right platform and go after the correct audience. 

5. RUN CONTESTS AND OFFER INCENTIVES

Though every business these days is running contests and you might feel it is overdone now, it still creates an impact on the follower.

With contests, you can

• Promote your offerings amongst your followers
• Get more leads who can add to your business
• Build brand awareness

Participants can reshare about the contest on their profile leading to an increase in your reach. 

You will have to give people something in return for them to take an action in your favor. Give special offers, host sweepstakes, or do giveaways. Through contests, you can ask them to share their information.

You can also collaborate with influencers or brand partners for a wider reach of your contests. Not all participants in the contests will be your leads, you will need to filter people and nurture the relevant ones. You can offer discount codes or reward points to encourage leads to make a purchase. 

Business in their lead generation process on social media, work on increasing their brand awareness, reach out to the active audience, get new prospects, and increase website traffic.

All these tactics enable you to reach out to potential prospects and convert them into sales. Use your social media channels to aware and engage your audience. Once you get a lead, work on nurturing the lead through the sales funnel.

Lead generation or selling on social media is about connecting and not closing a client. Here the focus is on delivering value to correct prospects and engaging with them. We hope that you improve your social media lead generation by using any or most of the above-mentioned tactics. 

AUTHOR BIO

Ashutosh works as a Product Manager at Refrens.com – India’s most powerful platform for freelancer’s finances and growth. He has helped some renowned technology companies with their product. In this blog, Ashutosh shares some tips and tactics to generate blog ideas from Social Media