The Best Practices Of Social Media Lead Generation In 2021
Research shows that currently there are more than 3.6 billion people use social media, and this figure is projected to increase to 4.41 billion by 2025. This makes social sites and apps highly lucrative channels for businesses to find and attract leads.
Social has become a core focus for all marketers as part of their marketing campaigns for a business. Those who use social media lead generation strategies create better opportunities for brand awareness, conversions, sales productivity, and revenue growth. They build a community of followers who can vouch for them and take their brand name forward.
Read ahead as we explain the various ways in which you can generate leads through social media.
What Is Social Mead Lead Generation And Why Is It Important?
You need the information of potential customers to understand what attracts them the most and follow them. A lead is this information that individuals share through social media and includes names, employers, occupations, numbers, email addresses, etc.
Social media lead generation is simply the collection of new leads through various social media platforms. This lead generation is beneficial for B2B and B2C marketers, helping them identify social media users interested in your business. As a result, you get the leverage to use relevant content to target them and convert them into customers.
Lead generation is an essential tool to help you promote your business and spread brand awareness to build a loyal customer base. It enhances your social media presence, encourages user engagement, and drives more traffic to your website.
Social Media Lead Generation Strategies
There are various paid and free techniques that you can use to generate more social media leads in 2021:
#1 Profile Optimization
Every process needs a systematic approach. When you start your social media lead generation campaign, focus on how you can prepare to get leads automatically. One of the best ways to do so is through your profile which customers can use to communicate with your brand. This could be in the form of contact information, shopping links, newsletter sign-ups, etc.
- Contact Information: Provide your phone number, email address, messenger, or other contact means you and your team can support.
- Update Your Bio With A Link: You can use Instagram, Pinterest, Linked In, and Twitter to add a link to your bio on these platforms. In the absence of specific tools, you can also add a CTA to guide people to click on the right thing.
- Create CTA Buttons: Depending on your business and its goals and the social media platform, you use their different profile features. For instance, you can have a Signup Call-To-Action button for a newsletter subscription, a reserve button for an appointment, etc.
#2 Design Convenient Landing Pages
You have to ensure you don’t disappoint your leads once they use a link to visit your website. Use a relevant landing page and give them the exact product information you promised to avoid losing potential customers.
Design a scannable and seamless landing page to make it as personal for the users as you can.
Furthermore, if you add forms, make sure that they are simple and straightforward because more questions reduce the chances of someone completing it. If you ask too many sensitive details, people are more likely to avoid those questions. For instance, people generally skip the age question in forms.
It is best if you prefill maximum information with the data available to you to increase the chances of people completing a form.
#3 Sequential Retargeting Advertisements
When you use target ads to reach out to prospects, it is possible to lose them after a while. Retargeting is a great lead generation technique that allows you to win them back. For instance, if someone clicks on your ad and visits the landing page but doesn’t submit a form, you can retarget and encourage them to complete the signup process.
Retarget leads who visit your website via referral sites or search. Additionally, target those who read your blog posts daily but are not subscribed to your business newsletter. As a result, your lead generation attempts have a ten-fold higher click-through rate through these retargeted ads over the normal display ones.
It is best if you set up these ads in a proper sequence for more satisfactory results. For example, you could address some common objectives and issues through an awareness-stage advertisement. The inclusion of a consideration-stage ad using testimonials can be a great way to provide social proof to your potential customers and win their trust.
#4 Discount Codes
One of the best ways to promote brand awareness and increase demand is through discount codes and flash deals. When you include a compelling CTA with a time limit, you create urgency for people to notice your ad. Many companies use this technique to reduce cart abandonment rates and track which platforms drive the most traffic by assigning different codes to each of them.
#5 Social Lead Advertisements
Organic lead ads don’t tap into the full potential of acquiring targets, but social lead ads boost these efforts. While Twitter and Pinterest don’t have set formats for social leads, other social media platforms do. However, the former platforms do have advertisement options that enhance social media lead generation.
This social media platform offers a specific format for lead ads that marketers can use. Facebook’s lead ads are promoted through forms. Such ads collect leads which are then synced to your CMS or downloaded, allowing your sales team to follow up when they need to.
Additionally, make sure your website has Facebook Pixel installed to track leads easily and measure their cost.
Instagram also uses lead ads that help to collect information. You can use partial prefill forms to improve their completion rate. This includes the full name, email address, gender, and phone number that you can prefill in such ads through the collected information.
YouTube
YouTube uses TrueView for action ads so advertisers can drive some specific action, which includes lead generation. There are prominent CTA buttons in these ads that link to your preferred site. Select “leads” for your goal when you create these ads.
LinkedIn uses Lead Gen Forms, which is an ad format to generate leads. Such ads are available on the platform as Sponsored InMail and Message Ads. LinkedIn prefills sections using profile information similar to Instagram and Facebook.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Form has an average conversion rate of 13%, while for a typical website, this rate is only 2.35%.
#6 Live Streams Or Chats
One of the best ways to engage with the customer is through interaction and engagement with your followers in real-time. Through live events on social media platforms, you can answer questions, get feedback, and increase brand awareness of your product and services. These allow you to establish your business as an industry expert and build a good relationship with your target audience.
The content you generate in real-time goes a long way in increasing cross-channel traffic, bringing direct participants to landing pages, branded content, and offerings. HubSpot reports that webcasts and webinars are highly effective in promoting content for B2B marketers. You can also record these events and replay them later for higher reach.
#7 Gated Content
An excellent way for social media lead generation is through the promotion of gated content. Social media is a highly efficient medium to disseminate your content. Use it to create posts that direct people to your landing page and prompt them to give you their contact info. This allows you to generate more leads and nurture the ones you already have in the marketing database.
However, it is essential to use interesting content with images, stats, or gifs to compel your target audience to engage with your content visually. Generally, leads take a few seconds to decide whether they want to take you up on your offer and give their details. This is why your landing pages must be to the mark and minimally designed to avoid confusing them.
#8 Use Analytics
Creating techniques for social media lead generation is not the end of the story. You have to use analytics insights to see how these are performing and find ways to improve them.
Use Google Analytics to track your website’s leads by setting up goals in it. You can easily monitor the contribution of each social media platform and create your monthly strategies based on that. Similarly, social analytics tools help you identify which messaging and creative types perform the best in acquiring more leads.
Conclusion
In this digital era, where people spend a lot of their time on social media, businesses need to recognize its importance. Marketing campaigns must include social media lead generation as a critical strategy. This is key to eventually increasing revenue and building a more loyal customer base.
As outlined above, there are various ways for you to generate leads using social media. However, not only all of these will work every time and for everyone. As a result, it is best to understand your specific business goals and experiment to see which techniques work best for you.
Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/social-media-lead-generation-best-practices
