How to generate leads using Social Media for your business

In today’s age, everyone is online from teenagers to senior citizens. It is a new way of socializing. Almost 55% of internet users use social media. Businesses are also moving online. For them, this is an opportunity to spread and reach out to more and more customers. Where to find people online? Well, SOCIAL MEDIA is the answer. Around 20% of the businesses have replaced emails with social networking platforms as the mode of interpersonal communication.

Many of us are already on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, though we mostly use them for the purpose of knowing what’s going on in our friends’ lives or for updating what we are doing, for businesses, it is a way to generate quality visitors and collect new leads. As per the statistics available, social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate compared to outbound marketing. 

Investment in social media is an essential part of the marketing plans of businesses. This marketing strategy helps businesses to increase brand exposure, attract web traffic, generate sales, reduce costs, and gain market insights. 

This article will help you up to your social media game. Here, we have specified the most effective tactics to help you earn quality leads through social media platforms. 

Read – How To Save a Video From Facebook Messenger

Enhance Your Profile

Before you go on to generating your next lead and post a social media campaign, ensure that your profile is up-to-date with means of generating leads organically. Make sure that your profile provides options to contact you, link to visit your website or blog, sign-up for newsletters, information on products/services, shop or place an order, leave feedback, post inquiries, etc. Correct contact details and having a system in place that supports customers’ inquiries through phone, message, email, and more is vital as it helps you to be directly in contact with an individual or an entity. 

This enhancement will depend on the features available on the social media site you are using or on the type of your business. For example, adding action buttons on Facebook or Instagram to view your products with price, or the book or reserve appointments or tickets. Add call to action or link in bio to direct your customers. 

Have Clickable Content

Without this, it is hard to get leads. This method is like providing direction to your viewers. The attention span on social media is short. With interactive content and a clear link, people know where to go click. This tempts them to visit your blog link or website link and generate traffic there too. Make sure that the page they are landing on is user friendly and relevant because they might click with an expectation of corresponding content. A landing page is a way to convert your lead to your customer. 

Offer Incentives 

Depending on the type of leads you have got, use different incentives to offer them to make a deal. Spread your reach to offer incentives by collaborating with famous bloggers or influencers.

Gated content is the way

Once the audience has visited your page, they are aware of you, now it’s time to get them to act. Gated content is defined as content that is accessed when you complete an action to get through the gate. 

For example, the users have to share or like a post, or fill a survey, or sign up for an email list, give their name and number to watch a video, etc. Here the customer has to trust you to give their details and you have to ensure that the content you are providing in return is worth it. 

To do this the right way, first, decide on what content you are going to give away. Tell a story visually to capture interest by using gifs, stats, or more. 

Secondly, make sure you promote the gated content in a correct way, i.e. to not spam your audience with your continuous offers on their feed. Make a schedule, maybe once two weeks, or whatever suits your needs. The worth of the gated content can also be ensured by keeping it limited and letting the users know about its scarcity. This will prompt them to take immediate action as time keeps ticking otherwise. 

Discounts and coupon codes

This involves giving discount codes to the customer in exchange for filling a form, or sign-up to give their details, etc. This encourages the audiences to revisit the page for the incentive given, and ideally lead to making a purchase. This is a strong deal for businesses as it creates a sense of urgency in the customers to respond quickly. A unique code for each channel can also help you track which platform attracted more traffic. 

Referral Campaigns

‘Refer-a-friend’ is a great way to keep your customers engaged. Create offers that benefit both the referrer and the referees. It can be a cash incentive, discount, or a gift card. This urges the customers to recommend your business to more people in their network. That’s how virality comes.

Holding contests or sweepstakes 

Everyone gives a chance when you offer them something for free, try giving freebies, holding sweepstakes, or offering giveaways on social media. Include an entry form for participating in this, it will get you important customer data. Encourage the participants to share the offer with others, this will create more awareness with every mention you get. 

Organize contests and offer prizes to the winners, this brings excitement amongst your followers. Try and give your products as prizes to offer them a taste and leave a chance for them to come back for more. 

For all the techniques mentioned above, a little personalization in each can improve the quality of lead generation. Try using separate campaigns for different customers (for e.g. on the basis of age, gender, occupation, etc.), provide a tailored message accordingly. Try referring to the individual by their name instead of a common message for all, this helps in making the person that you are focusing on them. 

Have Your Own Customized #HASHTAGS

Hashtags work like word of mouth. When a unique hashtag keeps popping up, people tend to click on that and tend to follow the brand it is usually associated with. After which other people who know them check it out and start following and this way it keeps building and spreading. Here you have to try and create hashtags that are unique, personalized, and fun and about the brand, which when used by others it tracks back to you. This also helps you in differentiating from your competitors. Do not add too many of them, they need to be precise and targeted to gain visibility. Start with encouraging your existing customers to use them. 

A new feature similar to hashtags on some social media platforms is Geo-Targeted search, this allows brands to send promotions to a targeted audience by offering location-based targeting options. 

Talk, Build Connection and Get Feedback

Your audience can provide you with a good amount of knowledge when asked in the right way. Never assume what the followers care about or what they think of you. A great tip to up your game can be to follow themes, this keeps the customers engaged, and increases their retention in anticipation of what will come up next.

Through Polls  

Polls offer people a way to express their opinions. Ask them about how they are using your product, any pain points or inconvenience faced, or what they’d like to see more. A great way to get feedback, help you understand how your customers feel about the brand. 

Read – 6 Best Live Chat Software Tools Improve Your Customer Service in 2020

Live Chat and Video Resources 

Tweet chats, hangouts, webinars, live videos are great ways to interact with your customers. Keep the interactions fun and simple. This also attracts a large audience as the videos are easier to understand and helps build a connection. It helps you in engaging with them in real-time. 

You can talk about your product/service, brand’s value and emotions, solve their queries, answer other questions, event coverage, brand vlogging, and to get feedback. You can attach links or clickable content, this way by directing landing pages you can drive cross-channel traffic too. 

Try and make a list of the participants and give them a shoutout at the end for participating to encourage them and maintain engagement in the future. Compared to reading posts, videos tend to make a more lasting impact on the viewer’s mind. For webinars, try and have advanced registration, so even if the person does not attend, through the registration you can have their details. Try to make these options as open and as two-way as possible. 

Do a ‘Ask Me Anything’ event once or twice a year. An opportunity for customers to ask you anything they want and you provide them detailed answers. As this is mostly a one-time event it helps get traffic, solve the viewer’s doubts, and helps you get a position ahead of your competitors. You can also make a FAQ or Q&A page, or provide a chat box to users. The key here is, to be honest, transparent, and detailed with your answer’s content. 

Raise Your Voice

Go with the trend and current affairs. Customize your posts or ads in relation to the current trends or events happening around. People tend to lean more towards up-to-date content. Along with the awareness of the issue, it also helps promote the brand. If it is some controversial news or you are witnessing something wrong, present yourself as a responsible entity, bring out a voice, let people know your thoughts and opinions on the same. Present your stand and support something, this will bring engagement from the people who share the same views. Showing empathy and visibility of emotions help make a connection with the viewers. If they agree with your presented opinions, they will tend to share it more amongst their circle and this way will help get more leads. 

Social media is a very competitive space, but there is always space for everyone in that bandwagon. Regardless of your business size, always remember generating quality leads is more important than the number of leads. Businesses generating higher quality leads on social media have experienced an increase in the effectiveness of their marketing, they have also witnessed an increase in customer satisfaction, and eventually leading to reduced marketing costs and increased revenue. Some companies even claim that because of social media usage for marketing they have sustained a reduction in the time they spent on marketing their products/services. Make a profile because it’s never too late and if you have one use one of the above-mentioned strategies to take your business up a notch.  

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.