Hands up if you’d like more business leads online.
Or more visitors to your website?
I’m guessing most of us, right?
When you’re running a business, gaining leads online and meeting potential clients can seem like a constant, uphill struggle.
Perhaps you’re spending thousands each month on traditional marketing methods, wading your way through an SEO quagmire, optimizing your website for mobile and trying your hand at newsletters and monthly emails.
All of these methods have proven success rates, but is there anything else you could be doing?
Did you know that you could have the answer right there in front of you? Business and social media go hand in hand.
Why? Because social media is a proven way of generating new business leads and getting more traffic to your website – for more information on legal industry lead generation, click the link.
Want to know more? Read on to find out how to generate more business leads online with social media.
How to Generate More Online Leads with Social Media. Your Straightforward Guide
Run a competition
We’ve probably all entered an online competition at some point. A night away, a prize, a consultation etc.
These kinds of competitions require us to usually like the social media page of the company who is hosting the competition, like the post, share the post and even comment on the post itself, tagging other people.
This is a simple, straightforward way of getting your business recognized and into the newsfeeds of other potential clients.
When people see you hosting a competition or they have been tagged by someone else, they’ll check out your social media pages and even click through onto your site.
You can run the competition for a certain amount of time or draw the winner when you reach a certain amount of Facebook likes or follows. Even if people don’t win, they may opt to purchase a product from you anyway!
Targeted ads
Social media allows businesses to create strong marketing campaigns that are specifically aimed at your target demographic or a geographical location.
In simple terms, you’re creating ads which – for a fee – will be shown to a certain group/type of people who may be interested in your services. It’s specific, accurate and also a cost-effective marketing practice that gets results.
The results of these targeted ads are easy to interpret, and you can tailor any future social media marketing ads to your results.
Stunning visuals
If you have an Instagram account, then one of the best ways to build more leads using your social media account is by creating visually stunning posts that catch the attention of scrollers.
Using hashtags on your post that are relevant will also get your posts noticed by the right people! You’ll need to ensure that your description is clear and accurate, and you either tag products on the image – which will link directly to your website – or you can make it clear in the description that a relevant link can be found in the bio of your main page.
It doesn’t matter which social media platform you prefer, there are plenty of marketing options for each platform, which will get you the results you want!
Conduct Polls
Running polls and sharing poll results on social media is easy.
The ability to poll your social media followers is one of the many advantages of using Instagram to generate leads online.
When the poll was completed, 100% of the respondents answered, “Yes.”
Generating leads online is easy!
Instagram tells me who responded. I contact them using Instagram’s direct message feature and market that “one-size fits all” solution to them.
They’ve already indicated they believe the solution exists. This puts them at the bottom of my sales funnel.
[More information about how you can make money using sales funnels can be found by clicking here.]
Use Social Media Influencers
Facebook’s Raelyn Tan has over 5,000 members of her Turbo Blogging and Business Group.
Each Tuesday she allows you to promote two products and services.
On Instagram, Favour has over 40,000 Instagram followers. Each Saturday, she allows you to promote to her Instagram followers.
Other social media influencers might help you as well. Today, many social media influencers barter instead of accepting money.
Monitor Your Competitors
If your competitors are generating leads online and you’re not, check out what tactics they are using.
For example, are they posting videos on social media? Then, you should be as well.
Are your competitors using custom GIFs? You better head over to GIPHY and start making some custom GIFs that extend your brand.
Monitoring your competitors on social media is easy.
Using the number of likes and comments as a barometer, compare your competitors’ social media success to your own.
How much engagement do you need on social media to be successful at generating leads online?
You should have an engagement rate of 7%. If you’re not sure how high your engagement rate is, use this Instagram engagement calculator.
Use Instagram Stories
Make sure your Instagram Stories are accompanied by hashtags so interested people can find your content.
Collage
Thanks to the new collage feature of Stories, you can show several product images or ebook covers in one Instagram Story.
Since Facebook owns Instagram, with one collage, you can promote 4 products on two social media sites.
Using the Swipe Up feature, you can send people to the URL where they can make a purchase.
This is applicable to Instagram users with over 10,000 followers. I have sold ebooks this way. Using the Swipe Up feature, I take people to where they can buy my books on Amazon.
If you don’t have 10,000 Instagram followers, use the Instagram Sticker “Link in bio” on your Story. This lets people know there is a live link to where they can purchase in your bio.
Countdown
I find my Instagram followers get excited when I count down to a blogging event or the start of a sale.
Many bookmark the countdown to return to later. This expression of interest puts them into my marketing funnel. I can follow up using the Instagram DM feature.
Use Google Analytics
You need to promote your products and services where your target audience is.
Are they on Facebook? Then promote in relevant Facebook groups.
Google Analytics answers the question, “Where is my target audience?”
Here’s how:
Go to Google Analytics.
Go to Acquisition/Social/Overview.
Scroll down.
Look at my report:
For the week of February 6, Quora.com brought me over half of all my social media traffic.
I should certainly be at Quora making sure people are aware of my content. When they come to my site, I can use content marketing to let them know about my products and services.
Unfortunately, I’m not able to self-promote at Quora. Instead, I’ll promote in relevant Facebook groups that allow promotion since Facebook came in second.
If you believe one week is not long enough to make a decision about which social media site to use to generate leads online, you can change the date range at the top of the screen.
Wrapping Up: How to Generate Social Media Leads Online
In closing, in this Digital Age, more marketing is done online than ever before.
Social media isn’t going anywhere. In fact, new social media sites are popping up all the time.
Takeaways:
This post gave you 8 actionable steps to generate business leads online using social media sites.
Readers, please share so other marketers discover this action plan for generating leads online.
I look forward to your views in the comments section. Do you have any tips for using social media to generate leads online?
Related Reading
Social Leads: How to Drive More Traffic in 2020, 4 Ways
Authors: Julia Evans and Janice Wald
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