With over 3.2 billion daily active users on Social Media, this technology has opened up incredible opportunities for businesses and brands to carry out branding activities as well as generating solid business and revenue. To put it into perspective, here are some crazy statistics that prove this technology’s power:

Social Media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing techniques, 83% marketers have trusted social media to increase brand exposure, 63% companies using Social Media have experienced more marketing effectiveness while 45% companies spend less on marketing since they began marketing on Social Media.

With smartphone usage only increasing across the world, along with data prices reducing, the number of potential customers a brand can reach through social media is skyrocketing, that too, exponentially. If social media lead generation is leveraged to its true potential, it can leave a great impact on any business. While conventional marketing mediums are effective, there are certain distinct advantages that social media has. Some of them being:

1. Social Media, through powerful analytics tools, gives accurate insights into the success of a campaign, helping marketers tweaking their campaigns to improve their performances. On the other hand, there is no way to effectively measure the impact created by let’s say, hoarding or a radio ad

2. It is very difficult for traditional marketing mediums to measure the return on investment (ROI)

3. If you leverage Social Media Optimization Services to boost your brand on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, it is possible to engage with your direct customers in real time, one of the most critical drawbacks of traditional marketing methods

4. Social Media Lead generation is very telling. It is difficult to identify the source of a lead in the case of traditional mediums. Social media gives you all the key information regarding your customers

5. Lastly, and arguably the most important advantage social media has is that it’s a lot cheaper than traditional marketing techniques, irrespective of the objective of the campaign!

Social Media Lead Generation Tips

This article shares some tried and tested tips and will help you if you are a business owner looking to make the most of this technology to not just engage with customers, but also to boost your business using social media lead generation.

1. Use different Social Networks: Every social media network has something unique to offer. It is for every business to understand how they can leverage each one to the best of their strengths and find a balance that leads to social media optimization and achieving tangible results.

I)  Facebook and Instagram are the perfect platforms to showcase your products and services as well as generate leads. Facebook has a variety of campaign objectives you can choose from and depending on your market research, you can place your ads on messenger as well as Instagram. Further, Instagram stories with their “swipe up” feature is an effective channel for social media lead generation if your target audience is young people.

II) Content on LinkedIn can be directed towards professionals. It can be an effective medium to represent the corporate values, achievements, networks as well as vacancies and requirements your company might have. Twitter, on the other hand, is mostly used by companies to address issues faced by customers.

III) Other mediums like YouTube can be leveraged by putting out videos that may be needed by potential customers.

2. Targeting Niche Audiences: One of the key differentiators between conventional marketing mediums and social networks is the ability to laser-focus content directly to your target audience, making campaigns much more effective. Before promoting on a social network, it is essential for a business to understand its target audience and identify important aspects like:

I) Geography: If you are looking for customers in your city, and you target ads across the country, it doesn’t make sense

II) Demography: Age group professions, languages spoken of your target audience must be thoroughly understood and targeted to achieve quality results

III) Detailed Targeting: For the best results of a social media lead generation campaign, detailed behaviors and interests like relationship status, devices used, of audiences must be studied. If you own an eCommerce business, one behavior that you can target on Facebook is “Online Shopping”.

IV) Retargeting and Lookalike Audiences: With retargeting, you can target those people who have already engaged with your content earlier. Further, if you have installed Facebook Pixel on your website, you can also target Facebook users who have visited your website. According to a survey, conversion rates increase by 70% after a user interacts with a retargeted ad. Once you have interacted with enough users, you can also build lookalike audiences on Facebook, helping you cover more ground.

3. Content Strategy: It is important that there must be a strategy and social media optimization behind the content that goes on each social network to achieve the best results. Each network must have its own set of objectives and content that caters exactly to them. Posting content randomly harms more than benefiting your cause and hampers social media lead generation.

4. Social Media Activity: The rule “Out of sight, Out of mind” should be remembered at all times. Make it a point to engage with your customers, track your mentions, react to them, have people write guest posts and share them. You can associate with Influencers to leverage their audiences as well. The more you engage, although strategically, the more your brand will grow and lead to more fruitful campaigns. One very popular way to generate leads is to push out contests. They will help you to identify your most likely customers and further, give you important details about them.

5. Social Media Optimization: If a user visits your page, they must be able to access all your information very easily. Follow general practices like adding a call to action button like shop now or call now, along with all the necessary contact information. If you have an eCommerce store, you can also include the shop section on your page.

6. Live Videos: With YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all giving users the chance to broadcast live content, it can be a great way to encourage user participation. Especially with Facebook and Instagram, people who have liked your page will get a notification if you go live, leading to increased engagement. There are many organizations that host Q&As, informative sessions, celebrity interactions on their pages to attract crowds.

WRAP UP

To sum it up, while social media lead generation has a lot of potentials to grow businesses substantially, it is also important to note that what might work for one project might not for another. Although these ideas are tried and tested and usually yield great results, you must continuously try out new ideas and concepts and find a mix that works best for your organization. If appropriate energy and talent are invested in this domain, social media lead generation will surely empower your business!