Social media is the second largest referral traffic driver after search. About 25.6% of all website visits come from social media. This makes it one of the best places to get traffic to your website.
All major social media platforms have tools that can help you reach your target audience. Not only can you drive traffic to your website but you can even generate leads and get conversions. You need to leverage them well and target the right audience to maximize your results from social media.
Let’s take a look at how social media can help you generate high-quality leads for your business.
1. Target Niche Audiences
Social media is primarily used by people to connect with others and for entertainment. However, by getting your posts in front of the right eyeballs, you can generate leads. That is why it is essential to target niche audiences.
You need to show relevant content to the right group of people to push them to give you their information. If you target the wrong audience, all of your marketing efforts could be in vain.
It is, therefore, essential that you figure out the right target audience. You can do so by defining their demographics, locations, and interests. These are the people whom you will target all of your marketing efforts.
To track the progress of your sales pipeline on social media and other channels, you can use a CRM like Salesmate. It allows you to add, assign, and track the progress of your sales. You can even get detailed insights into your performance.
2. Share Gated Content
Gated content is content that’s hidden behind a virtual wall. To access it, you need to provide some information, like your contact details. A great way of getting leads through social media is by sharing gated content.
All you need to do is share a link to your gated content on social media. When potential readers open it, they’ll be directed to a form where they will need to provide their information to access the content. As with any landing page, make sure that you design it using landing page best practices.
Some may, of course, navigate away from the landing page without giving you their information. However, those who are truly interested will give their information to you and become qualified leads. This is especially true if your content is relevant to your industry or products.
There are a variety of options for gated content. You could create white papers, webinars, case studies, videos, blog posts, and more.
Additionally, the influx of visitors to the landing page will also help improve your search engine rankings. You can track your rankings using tools such as Pro Rank Tracker.
3. Paid Promotions
All major social media platforms offer the option of promoting your content through advertising. You can specify your target audience and create your advertisement right from scratch and promote it. Whether your goal is to generate engagement, leads, or even get conversions, there are ads for it all.
Based on various demographic and geographic factors along with interests, you can define your target audience. By using a highly-targeted audience, you can reduce your advertising costs and even get more leads as the ads will be more relevant to them.
However, platforms such as Facebook have come up with ads specifically for lead generation. Let’s look at how they can help you even further.
Facebook Lead Ads
Facebook lead ads serve as a great way to get leads for your business from Facebook. They work just like gated content. The audience will need to provide their information in exchange for your content such as white papers, coupons, or even newsletters.
What makes the offer even sweeter is that all of the information can be filled in right there on Facebook. The potential customers wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of navigating away to your website.
At the same time, Facebook auto-populates the entire form with the user’s information. This makes it even easier for them to give you their information.
You also get to choose which information you want to gather. Ensure that you ask for just enough information to make the lead useful. Asking for too much information may scare the lead away.
These ads can also appear on Instagram if they meet the design requirements of the platform. However, unlike Facebook, the form can only be pre-populated with the email, phone number, gender, and full name of the user. To make it more convenient for users, it is best to ask for only these details on Instagram.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms
LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms make it convenient for users to share their details with businesses. The forms are pre-populated with data such as education and work details. This saves users the hassle of having to type everything in manually.
Just like Facebook, businesses can select the fields for what information they want to collect. According to LinkedIn, you should try to stick to only three or four fields. That way, you can generate leads directly from LinkedIn.
4. Use Custom Hashtags
Hashtags were introduced on Twitter to gather similar content under a common category. However, they were quickly adopted by Instagram and Facebook as well. You can use them to your advantage for generating leads.
You can conduct hashtag research for Instagram and Twitter using platforms such as Hashtagify to find trending hashtags. This tool also allows you to check their popularity and shows you the top influencers for each hashtag as well.
Based on your research, you can choose the ones that best fit your campaign and grow your business.
By incorporating these hashtags into your posts, you can increase their reach. Additionally, you can come up with branded and custom hashtags. These can include your brand name or slogan and can help you improve brand awareness too.
The more relevant that your hashtag is, the better your chances of generating leads from that post. That is because a relevant hashtag might help you reach your exact target audience.
5. Organize Contests
Social media contests can not only help you generate buzz but can also help with lead generation. However, whenever you’re launching a contest, ensure that the prize is valuable and attractive enough to your target audience.
It should motivate users to provide their information right away to participate in the contest. At the same time, it should be relevant to your target audience so that only those who are genuinely interested will register.
You need to ensure that both of these conditions are met so that you can generate quality leads from your campaign.
A prize such as the premium version of your product or a free upgrade may be useful. This is because only those who are genuinely interested in buying from you will participate in the contest.
Some of the ways you can organize a contest on social media are:
1. Fill Out a Form on Your Landing Page
To register for this type of competition, the user has to click on the ad and navigate to your landing page. On this page, they will be asking to fill in their information to participate in the competition.
While the number of leads you may get in this contest might be less, they will be highly-qualified ones. This is because they took the effort to open your landing page and fill in the form to participate.
IKEA, for instance, organized the IKEA College Style Quiz that took people to a landing page and asked them to fill in a form to participate.
2. Retweet/Share/Comment/Follow
These contests require minimal effort to join. And due to this reason, you might get many participants. However, since they only share the information that is already public, you may not benefit much out of it.
Additionally, asking for likes, shares, and comments may also lead to penalties if done frequently. This type of contest is best for generating buzz and getting more engagement. However, for high-quality leads, you should use landing page forms.
Warner Bros. Pictures recently organized a contest to promote their movie, Detective Pikachu, on Facebook. While this doesn’t get them leads, it does help them generate buzz about the film.
Final Thoughts
Social media can be used for a variety of purposes and lead generation is one of them. By targeting niche audiences and sharing gated content, you can increase your chances of getting high-quality leads.
Additionally, paid promotions and custom hashtags can help you reach a more targeted audience as well. You can leverage contests to generate buzz about your brand and products. At the same time, they can help you with lead generation.What are other ways through which you can generate leads from social media? Let us know in the comments.
Author Bio:
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant for 15 years with an emphasis on Influencer Marketing in the last 5 years. He is specialized in sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, Influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
Social Media Profiles == >
https://www.facebook.com/ShaneBarkerConsultant
http://www.twitter.com/shane_barker
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiD3HGr_vpDp0ApavL-bEGA
https://www.instagram.com/shanebarker/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanebarker/
