How to generate leads on social media
Social media is often looked at as a channel for promoting content and strengthening relationships and your brand’s reputation, but why aren’t we as marketers treating it as a lead generation platform as well?
The customer journey has changed with digital marketing tactics entering the arena and now different marketing channels can serve multiple purposes and work together to improve demand gen, lead gen, lead nurture, and customer retention.
Lead generation is an important part of every marketing strategy and fortunately we have so many opportunities available in today’s landscape to collect and nurture those leads. And social media is one of those opportunities.
You’ll want to look at both the networks you’re already on as well as networks you don’t have an active presence on to ensure you’re reaching the largest audience possible with your lead generation efforts. Lead generation on social media should be focused on: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
Ready to learn how you can use on social media to generate leads?
8 ways to generate leads on social media
1. Use your about section wisely
Most social media accounts let you create a custom bio, share a specific link, or build out an about us section. Facebook makes it easy with their CTA buttons on pages where you can customize your CTA and drive users to a specific lead capture page. Use these free resources on your brand’s social media pages to send users to targeted landing pages where you can collect their info.
2. Run a survey
It’s a two-for-one! You can poll current customers and prospects as well as get new leads by hosting a survey. Discover how they use your product or service, what their pain points are, what they want to see developed in the future, or even ask what stopped them from buying.
You might want to tie in an incentive, like a discount code or chance to win a gift card upon completion of the survey. You should also ask for permission to use their email address to send them a welcome email or invite them to download a great piece of content.
You can also use your survey results to learn more about your customers or prospects, create specific content based on what they told you, and develop stronger website copy to overcome their pain points and direct them to the right solution.
3. Host a sweepstakes
Everyone loves entering giveaways or contests on social media and many will gladly trade their email address for a chance to win something or get a freebie. Offer entrants the chance to earn extra entries by sharing the contest with their following or by following your brand on different social media networks. On the thank you page, you could direct them to a gated piece of content or have it trigger a lead nurture email series.
Easily track the results of your sweepstakes by using a specific hashtag and tracking those leads in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool as entrants from this contest or sweepstakes.
4. Refer-a-friend
Have your current followers share the love for you and drive new leads by running a referral campaign. Most often these are done with discounts or bonus points for loyalty programs when their friends or family use their link.
You need to offer your customers and their friends something valuable, like a free gift with purchase or a strong discount, otherwise most won’t waste their time and they certainly won’t feel compelled to tell their friends about your brand if you’re offering weak perks.
5. Access to exclusive content or a discount
Your content has to be valuable, relevant, and clickable to be shared on social media in the first place, but if you really want to earn that click and that social media user’s contact info, you might want to provide exclusive access to content – like an ebook, video, or podcast – that’s gated.
Another spin on this is to offer discounts on event registration or an automatic upgrade to the next ticket tier. Assign each social media channel its own tracking code so you can see which platform sent the most event registrants.
6. Partner with an influencer
Reach new audiences and find new leads by partnering with an influencer. This grants you access to their following and can help send leads that may not have otherwise found your brand. This can be done in tandem with the idea above of creating exclusive content with this influencer, that they have to fill out a form to access.
7. Livestream or chats
Go live or host a Twitter chat (create a good hashtag to improve visibility) and during the event you should share links to gated content or resources that will help you collect leads as you establish your brand as a thought leader. Maybe you host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) with your CEO or go behind the scenes at an upcoming event and promote content related to that event.
After the livestream or chat has concluded, create a recap blog post that links to all the relevant resources you shared during the event and perhaps a secondary CTA for people to sign up for emails or enter a lead nurture campaign.
8. Paid lead ads
Social media is a pay to play space and if you really want to run a lead generation campaign, you might need to invest some money into it with paid ads. Most networks offer social lead ads with the sole intention of generating leads!
Many of these ads are done with promoted forms that can sync with your CRM or downloaded into a spreadsheet that you can upload to your contact database. With Facebook, you will have to do a little website coding work to add your Facebook Pixel to your site, but it’s worth it to have a seamless experience.
LinkedIn is another great resource for lead generation, especially in the B2B space. These can be done with Lead Gen Forms or Sponsored InMail, and the forms-style makes it even easier for the lead as it’ll pre-fill information from the user’s profile.
These are just some ideas to get you started with social media lead generation and you might find one or two really work with your audience and one or two are big misses with your audience. Like any marketing tactic, be sure to measure your results and analyze the data to find the right combination of tactics to improve your lead gen efforts.
How do you generate leads on social media? Share your marketing tips in the comments below or give me a shout on Twitter!
