Social Media Lead Generation-- Yes, It Can Happen!

Alright, you’ve gotten your social media profiles all set up for your business and you’re ready to start generating some salessssss baby! But let’s hold up a minute…

While brand awareness is a crucial first step in potentially generating leads, you need to move BEYOND brand awareness and engagement on your social platforms in order to generate leads.

First, let’s talk about the difference between social media lead generation versus social media lead nurturing.

Social media lead generation: These are the activities undertaken by your business on social platforms to acquire new leads. Ok, great, so how do you do this?! This happens by feeding leads into your sales funnel, qualifying the leads through different channels (think email, phone, even CHATBOTS) and then converting these prospects into actual sales.

Social media lead nurturing: Nurturing leads on social media is exactly what it sounds like; you’re nurturing that lead by building relationships! You want to highlight how your product or service can potentially solve a problem of theirs, or even simply just pique their interest. Maybe they signed up on your website to receive your newsletter or followed you on all your social platforms, but they aren’t necessarily ready to make a purchase right at this moment.

Alright now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, here are a few more tips to consider when implementing a social media lead generation strategy:

1. Optimize your profile: Make sure that all the ways your potential customers can contact you are listed! That means phone, email, address, even a FAX number if you still have it. You also want to be sure you have an option for them to sign up for a newsletter in order to drop them into your customer list and start the sales pipeline.
2. Create clickable content: Make sure you have content that is going to entice someone to want to click to learn more, or click to shop, or click to be the first to be notified! Simply put: if you don’t create compelling content you won’t generate leads.
3. Offer the right incentive: Building on number 2, in your social content you want to give people a reason to share their information with you. Depending on what type of leads you’re wanting, the right incentive may vary. A few ideas for you: offer a discount code when someone signs up for your newsletter, provide gated content like whitepapers or even access to a private Facebook group where people have to enter their information!
4. Use social media influencers: If you’re really feeling frisky, try partnering up with a local, or even national, influencer depending on what your budget allows (because keep in mind, now a days *a lot* of these influencers do what they do as their only means of income!). A good influencer collaboration can help generate interest and even position you and your business as the authority in your respective industry. Some ideas: ask the influencer to strategically feature your product or service in their photos or videos, have them give an  honest review about your product, or even have them promote a unique discount code.

We all know that saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and the same goes for lead generation on social media! See what works and what doesn’t, and refine your strategy as you go with what’s working best to generate those quality leads.