Best Ways to Generate Leads on Social Media

Social media has its ups and downs, supporters and trolls but ultimately is an excellent tool to grow your business or brand. You may think you need thousands of followers to succeed, but that is only half the battle; in contrast to this popular belief, engagement on social media is the key. Think of it as the quality of followers rather than the quantity. In today’s modern world, information is everywhere, and it can be hard to know where to start. Here are a few steps to help you get started with social media:

Figure out Your Goals and Plan Accordingly

There are many reasons why you want to generate leads and equally as many ways how to do so. Maybe you need to build up your mailing list, gain subscribers for a weekly e-newsletter, or simply drive traffic to your online store to increase sales/bookings. Whatever the case may be, having a goal allows you to plan accordingly. After you have determined your goal, you will need to decide which platform is appropriate for you based on your objectives.. Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram are amongst the top platforms for lead generation but it is best to research each platform’s key features and choose based on your needs. Be sure to consider the demographic of each platform compared to your target audience. Once you have made this decision, ensuring your profile is in order is vital.

Understand Your Audience

If you do not ask, you’ll never know! So get used to asking for feedback from your current audience. Platforms such as Instagram have great features on ‘story mode’, allowing you to engage with your audiences such as polls, questions and multiple-choice quizzes. Analytics are built-in for easy-to-understand results that can be used to optimise growth. Asking your current audience what they want to see more of and even suggestions for new content is essential when generating leads for existing as well as new customers.

The following are the most important facts to know about your target audience:

Create Interesting and Useful Content

With so much information available to us every day online, it can be easy for your content to get lost. To put this into perspective, people share around 8.95 million posts on Instagram every day! Meaning your content needs to be attention-grabbing but also valuable and professional.

Getting to know your audience helps a lot with ‘what to post’. Now it is a question of ‘how and when to post?’. Here is a mini checklist to consider before posting:

Clear information — less is more! Keep things simple and sweet with a link to a website or a downloadable PDF for extra information.
Eye-catching formats — do not be afraid to use various content such as short entertaining videos, i.e. recent trends.
Incentives — Giveaways (small or large) are great ways to get existing followers to share your content and generate new ones.
Time zones — As you get to know your audience, where in the world they are (mostly) from can play a big part in when to post. Using a world clock to determine when is best to post can be very helpful.
Feed placement— Most people tend to scroll at the beginning and end of their day. Keeping this in mind will ensure your post looks at the top of their feed.

Create Easy-to-Navigate landing pages

If you have managed to persuade someone to click on your link, do not let them down with a lousy landing page. An excellent landing page will have a unified style and it is simple to skim. It should provide a clear framework for consumers and attempt to be as user-friendly as possible. Firstly, make sure it is relevant. It is easy for someone to close the window or forget why they clicked in the first place if there is no content associated with the product, service or information they are looking for.

If you’d like people to subscribe to your mailing list, ensure the form is very simple. Each additional question reduces the likelihood of someone answering it, so less is definitely more. According to studies forms that enquire for your age are more likely to be skipped; try to avoid delicate information that you are less likely to obtain.

Regular Analysis

Most popular social media platforms have analytical features that are pretty self-explanatory however, regularly engaging with your audience to get first-hand opinions is priceless. When it comes to generating leads, knowing what works and what does not is a game-changer and just because you like something does not mean it is helpful in your consumer’s eyes. Dedicating some time to look over the success of your posts regularly will ensure that you can refine your tactics.

Another way to check the performance of your social media platforms concerning website visits is to set up goals in Google Analytics. This will allow you to track which social media site is the most beneficial to your company. If you see that LinkedIn outperforms Facebook, for example, it may be wise to refocus efforts on that site.

In Conclusion

To conclude, capturing your audiences attention is vital for creating sufficient leads on social media but first, it is essential to understand who your audience is to gauge then what they want/need. Once you have figured this out, be sure to stick to only posting what your audience calls for, there is no point in posting for the sake of posting because engagement is the key to growth on social media. If your content is up to scratch, ensure your website/other landing pages are just as good and better. Ensure you regularly get feedback from your audience and pay attention to the analytics of each post to guide you in the best direction for future posts.

As with most things, there is not a single formula for generating successful leads on social media but being on top of content production as well as the consumer’s needs sets you up to eventually find exactly what works for you and your brand.