November 8, 2021

How to leverage social media platforms to generate leads

Generating leads is no easy task, but social media can certainly help you tremendously. Here are some ways you can generate leads through social media.

Andre Oentoro

Reading time: 4 minutes

When it comes to generating leads, marketers have a lot of options. You can rely on your website or blog, you can send out emails to prospects, or you can use social media.

Well, given the skyrocketing popularity and effectiveness of social media marketing, it proves to be an effective lead generation strategy.

Social media apps are no longer just used as platforms to interact with friends online. With more than 3.78 billion users worldwide, marketers have used this to their advantage and social media has now grown into a powerful lead generation tool for many businesses.

Collecting leads through social media will help you find people who are actually interested in your brand, increase your social media reach, and build a strong brand presence.

In this article, we’ll dive into some best practices for generating leads with a solid social media strategy.

Social media as a lead generation tool

“Why social media?”

Other than the fact that billions of people are using it, social media platforms provide you with a budget-friendly way to interact with your customers so you can start generating leads without spending too much upfront costs.

This is important especially for startups and small businesses that can’t afford expensive PR or marketing efforts.

What’s more, social media allows you to interact with your customers directly, making it much easier for you to engage, build a more meaningful connection, and convince them to eventually purchase from you.

59% of marketers choose social media the most effective marketing tactic for improving lead generation. Source: eMarketer

So, it should come as no surprise that more than half of marketers (59%) choose social media as their main tool for collecting more qualified leads for their overall marketing campaigns.

How to generate leads through social media

Generating leads using social media takes so much more effort than just simply creating a social media account and being ‘there’. You need to have a plan of action to convince more prospects and really get the most out of your social media activities.

Here are some tips on how to generate leads using social media strategy.

Strengthen your social media profile

First and foremost, you need to make sure that you have a trustworthy and professional social media profile so that you can be recognized as a brand online.

Your profile should explain who you are and what you do. Also, provide contact details so your prospects and customers can easily contact you, visit your website, and join your email list.

Make sure to use the same profile image, header photo, and background across all of your social media accounts — this helps you build brand recall and maintain brand consistency.

Consider adding a link that directs viewers to your website or landing pages to further push them down the sales funnel.

Create valuable content

Content is key when it comes to building a solid social media presence. After all, the main reason why prospects want to connect with your brand is that they’re interested in your content and how you can solve their problems.

You should regularly post educational, valuable content on your social media platforms that help prospects figure out the best way for them to take action — whether it’s scheduling a demo, watching exclusive social media videos, or downloading an ebook.

You can also create gated content to collect lead information. This is a great way to generate more marketing qualified leads and build up your email list at the same time.

Build relationships with influencers

Social media platforms have now become the main channels for influencers. And you can use that to your advantage by collaborating with influencers for your lead generation strategy. This is a great way to get your content in front of a relevant audience.

Working with influencers also provides you with some added validation for what you’re doing. When an influencer shares and talks about your company’s products or services, this can help to develop or improve your brand awareness.

Since influencers appear like real people compared to brands, they seem more genuine and trustworthy to your customers, easily closing the gap between a company and its target audience.

You can get influencers to host giveaways, ask them to leave genuine reviews about your products or services, and offer discounts as means to collaborate with them for your lead generation strategy.

Invest in social leads ads

Generating leads is an ongoing process that requires patience and time, especially if you heavily rely on organic and free lead generation strategies.

If you have an extra budget for the campaign, the best way to get more leads is by investing in social leads ads, such as Facebook Lead Forms, LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, Instagram Leads Ads, and more.

With social leads ads, you can run ad campaigns that target people who are likely to be interested in what you’re offering and drive them towards signing up for your product or service. Since it’s highly targeted, you might see favorable results much quicker as compared to organic lead generation.

For even more powerful retargeting, you can use automation tools such as Novocall — which allows you to integrate click-to-call to your Facebook Lead Forms. This way, your prospects can request callbacks from the Facebook Lead Forms itself.

Novocall integrates with Facebook Lead Forms so you can easily capture lead information.

Once prospects sign up, make sure you nurture them by providing value through your blog or email newsletter. This will help build a strong relationship with your leads, and if done right, can eventually turn into sales.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has given you a better understanding of how you can generate leads through social media.

Generating leads is a cumbersome task — as succeeding with a lead generation strategy requires excelling across multiple domains.

You can’t simply blog a few times a month or schedule a few cold calls and call it a day. In this digital marketing world, you also need to build a strong social media presence and a well-defined sales funnel.

All of these activities require you to be proactive, creative, and sometimes even a little bit lucky. But, if you can successfully implement each activity as part of your lead generation strategy then the rewards will be worth it in the end.

Andre Oentoro

Andre is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos.

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