Are you looking for ways to generate leads but don’t know where to start?
Then stop on social networks.
Social networks, if you do not use them yet, are the so-called gold mine to increase your leads. Being on popular social networks like Instagram or Twitter is just the first step.
And how else can you use your brand on these platforms to increase your audience and potential customers? Let's get it right.
If you combine your marketing strategy with some non-standard methods, you can find the right combination for generating leads on social networks, which can have positive consequences for your business.
Why use social networks?
Despite the effectiveness of social networks as a platform for interacting with the audience and potential customers, most entrepreneurs, nevertheless, are skeptical of them.
Before moving on to lead generation methods, we will consider the main reasons that will not leave you in doubt about the need to use social networks for your business.
Reason 1: you have an active audience awaiting interactions
The Internet continues to grow in size and number of active users every day, and with it the number of potential customers on social networks is growing.
According to the German online statistics portal Statista, by 2021, the number of users of social networks worldwide will reach 3.1 billion. These channels have tremendous potential for generating leads and increasing your brand awareness.
By connecting to your target audience and increasing your activity on social networks, you can attract new potential customers and strengthen ties with existing ones.
Reason 2: you can increase incoming traffic
If you want to attract more traffic to your website, you can try combining social media marketing with your search engine optimization strategy. This will increase your chances.
Promoting the content that you create for your site through social networks increases the chances of its visibility. New visitors can become regular customers. The main thing to remember is that your content on the site matches what you publish on social networks.
Reason 3: you can use different platforms depending on your strategy
Using social networks also allows you to “adjust” your strategies by selecting the appropriate channels for their implementation.
Instead of using a universal approach, you can reach out to your audience through various platforms to understand which of them are used most often.
You can use the information to analyze the content of social networks and determine what your audience likes the most. This will help increase the number of active links to your site.
Looking at the long term, it will also help you create relevant content that will increase your chances of successful lead conversion, thereby optimizing your sales funnel model.
Reason 4: social networks are collaborative
If you notice, social networks give a lot of chances for cooperation. Have you heard of popular people?
These are people with a large number of followers who act as authorities in their niche. Now it’s fashionable to call them “brand ambassadors”.
Collaboration with such people will definitely help you improve the image of your company on social networks. And if you stumble upon a professional, then you do not have to spend a lot of time or resources.
The name of such people will have enough weight among your audience, and you will certainly feel a positive effect on yourself.
And now let's move on to the very non-standard methods for accessing social networks and generating leads.
There are many common beginner-centric social media strategies to help you get started. A good way to determine what works best is to audit social networks and fill in the blanks.
So, here are four unique strategies to start with.
Strategy 1: create a free online course
One of the best ways to demonstrate your experience in your field is to organize an online course.
Why, you ask? Now think about it from the point of view of the client. Your audience should see in you a kind of authority and expert in the products / services that you sell. Demonstrating your knowledge in a particular area, you create a magnet for lead generation.
Here are some tips to help you with this:
- Allow enough time to develop ideas. Brainstorm and put all your ideas on paper. This is very important before you figure out how to present it all.
- Examine your audience before creating a course for it. What do you want students to know? Think about how it can lead them to your product / service?
- Review your competitors' courses. You don’t want to spend your efforts on creating what has been around for a long time? Competitor analysis will also help you determine the UTP for your audience.
- promote your course on the social networks you use. This can, again, increase the number of leads and, thereby, increase traffic to your site.
Strategy 2: Offer Online Competitions
In fact, various interactive quizzes and contests are still very popular on social networks.
Interactive content is often called the future of digital media marketing. Did you know that the most read article in the popular online newspaper New York Times was just an interactive quiz and published in 2013?
There is some undeniable appeal in this way of attracting customers. On Facebook, for example, contests have become a popular way to interact with your audience. So why not create a marketing campaign on some kind of social network?
However, it is always easier said than done. Therefore, here are some recommendations for thinking about how to launch your contest on social networks:
- Your budget will vary depending on your goals and the reach of your target audience. Therefore, you should establish a budget and investment costs corresponding to the number of potential customers that you want to receive from the competition.
- come up with something exciting, something that will attract your potential customers. What will be the prize? Will it be a gift card or a product / service that your company offers? And do not forget about your goals regarding lead generation.
- It is necessary to determine the timing of your competition. Think about whether it will be long or, conversely, fast. The number of people who will participate depends on how many opportunities you give them for this. If the competition lasts too long, then this will be perceived as a kind of power struggle that your company is waging.
- promote your competition in those social networks where you plan to do the corresponding newsletter for the audience.
Strategy 3: offer customer service on social networks
Interaction with your customers by providing them with customer service - this is the golden strategy that many brands and companies use.
You might think: “There is nothing unusual in this strategy!” But in reality it all depends on how innovative your approach to customer service is.
Social networks give you a direct channel for interacting with your customers so that you can answer them any questions. But how unique you decide to use this communication channel is up to you.
For example, you could:
- use AI-based chatbots to simplify the process and thereby free your customer service manager to solve more urgent and important tasks;
- create some kind of forum for your audience where people could communicate and discuss something with each other;
- Create interactive FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) to solve problems of your customers in video format as a replacement for text formats.
In general, social networks work great for interacting with customers and significantly improve the quality of their service.
Strategy 4: Create Short, Attractive Videos
Customers love visual content.
As you know, visual effects stimulate feelings well and cause positive reactions, which helps to engage the audience and further interact with it. This is especially true for users of social networks who are so fond of visual forms of communication.
You can use this information, and based on this, develop your content. For example, video marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase social media engagement and generate leads.
There are various tools and services for video editing, created specifically for these purposes, which will help you in your endeavors.
It is very important to remain customer-oriented and remember the following:
- create short, but at the same time spectacular videos that can attract and concentrate on themselves all the attention of the audience;
- customize your content specifically for the social networking platform that you are going to use. For example, restrictions on videos that apply on Instagram are different from those on Facebook;
- Use the correct keywords and hashtags. Apply your SEO experience here and choose the right hashtags to attract the right leads;
- go live as soon as you get some important announcements, or you just want to chat with your audience in real time, or tell them about your company. This feature is available on most social networking platforms.
Do not underestimate the power of social networks.
If you want to increase your leads, then the first step you must take is to figure out exactly what tools and means you have.
Social networks offer many benefits to your marketing and engagement strategies. Knowing these benefits is just the tip of the iceberg.
The active use of social networks and the involvement of audiences in them is an ongoing process that must be constantly monitored in order to get the right amount of leads as a result.
As mentioned at the beginning, this is the gold mine that needs to be found. But if you want to mine gold, you need to know where to dig first.
With a well-built promotion strategy on social networks, you can achieve a high return on investment and maximize the number of leads, which will bring your company to a new level.
