Have you ever thought about generating leads from social media?

No?

You may be missing a huge opportunity.

With a user base of 3.78 billion (as of 2021), social media presents countless lead-generation opportunities to marketers.

When done right, social media marketing can help generate tons of qualified leads for any business. That’s why 79.3% of marketers believe it to be an important part of their overall digital marketing plan.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Buffer

If you haven’t yet utilized social media for lead generation, you’re way behind the curve. You’ve most probably already lost high-quality leads to your social-savvy competitors.

But, fret not.

I have you covered in this post. I’m going to explain six quick and effective ways of generating leads from social media platforms.

Are you excited to learn more?

Let’s get started.

6 Guaranteed Tactics for Generating Social Media Leads

Social media may not be your preferred platform for B2B leads, but maybe it should be.

Why?

Because when used for B2B lead generation, social media platforms (especially LinkedIn) give a high ROI of 229%.

If you’re a savvy marketer, you won’t ignore that number.

To start generating leads from social media, use these seven tactics:

1. Lead Magnets

Incentivizing people to share their information is a trick that works exceptionally well on social media.

Why so?

Because social media users are active deal seekers. They are often on the lookout for lucrative deals and discounts. In fact, many of them follow certain brands solely for bargain hunting.

If you become a valuable resource for your followers, you can gradually convert them from social leads to loyal customers and even brand advocates.

To leverage this tactic for generating leads from social media, you can create compelling lead magnets like:

Gated Content

Create helpful content on topics that are of interest to your target audience and ask your audience to provide their contact information to access that content.

It can be anything from research reports to templates, case studies, and ebooks. Essentially, it should be a valuable resource that is not available freely on the web.

Write on trending topics, similar to what Forrester does in the downloadable guide below. They connected AI to remote working, both of which are relevant in the current times.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Twitter

One more thing.

Pay special attention to your content quality. You don’t want to turn away potential customers by serving them shoddily-written content. Use editing apps like Grammarly or Hemingway App to proofread your content.

Also, keep your gated content forms short.

Don’t tire users by asking them to fill a lengthy form. Just collect information that’s most important, like name and email address. You will have other opportunities to gather deeper customer insights with the help of a chatbot if you play your cards right.

Free Tools

Another lead magnet that works well, especially for B2B social leads, is free tools. Identify the challenges faced by your target audience, and then create tools to help solve those.

Aggressively promote your free tools on social media. Direct everyone who clicks to a landing page, where you ask them to submit their information to get tool access. Voila! That’s a simple yet effective way of generating leads from social media.

You get more than just leads by leveraging this tactic.

Like what?

  • Customer trust: By providing useful free tools, you build confidence in your business.
  • Conversions: You create conversion opportunities by taking users to your website.
  • Competitive advantage: Not many of your competitors would be offering free tools.
  • Upsells: If users like your tool, they may opt to invest in paid premium features.

As mentioned above, don’t ask users to fill in long forms. Instead, just ask them to provide their email address to use the tool or see the results. Simple!

Trial Offers

Offering free product/service trials is another excellent way to generate leads from social media. Getting a full-featured trial just for the cost of an email address does sound like a great bargain.

Know what’s even better?

A trial offer that requires no credit-card details. That kind of offer builds the confidence of new users and may even encourage them to share the offer with their friends, generating more leads in the process.

Shopify nails this tactic. They collect the email addresses of new users by offering them a 14-day free trial of their e-commerce platform.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Shopify

Generating leads from social media has never been easier than this!

2. Social Media Ads

Ads are one of the best ways of generating leads from social media.

Ads are powered with sophisticated targeting features, allowing brands to reach relevant audiences with precision.

To make your social media ads more impactful, tailor your ad copy to match your target audience’s interests and needs. Use time-sensitive language to create a sense of urgency and guide people down your sales funnel efficiently.

You can also geo-target your ads to reach audiences in specific locations where you plan to expand your business. This way of generating leads from social media can fuel your sales funnel effectively.

What else?

Use the custom advertising features offered by the social media platforms to launch your advertising campaigns.

For example, Facebook allows advertisers to make dynamic lead generation ads. In these ads, the creative and copy change according to the target audience’s interests, similar to how retargeting works.

If a user has expressed interest in your business but hasn’t submitted their information, a retargeting ad with the right hook can trigger them to take the next step. A person who visits your blog regularly but does not subscribe may need a little nudge to commit, which retargeting ads can help achieve.

As you may have guessed, this tactic needs you to closely watch your audiences’ actions so that you can show them an ad at the right moment. To do that, you can build a sales funnel using a tool for building sales funnels.

Identify users in the top, middle, and bottom of your funnel and create compelling ad variants for them. Lastly, feed your ad algorithm into your Facebook ads engine and retarget lost prospects until you win their trust. What a simple way to get leads on Facebook!

You can also use lead generation ads to get a higher ROI. These ads come pre-populated with each target user’s information so that they can finish the sign-up process quickly.

According to LinkedIn, their lead generation forms have an average conversion rate of nearly 13%, which is relatively high by advertising benchmarks. So, capitalize on these money spinners and start generating leads from social media efficiently.

3. Social Media Influencers

While ads can generate decent leads, social media influencers can provide qualified and engaged leads. Generating leads from social media influencers has more benefits than you can imagine.

Like what?

Influencer marketing isn’t disruptive like ads. It targets people through the content they are already consuming and not through unwanted ads. The opt-in can make a massive difference when it comes to your lead generation rate.

If you can get your target audience’s favorite content creators to talk about your brand even for a few seconds, your lead generation rate will skyrocket.

To find the right influencer for your business, you can seek the services of an influencer marketing agency or professional. They can help you with influencer discovery as well as contract negotiation and relationship management.

Once you get your chosen influencers on board, have them create sponsored reviews, contests, and content to promote your brand.

What’s more, YouTube Influencers can create videos to interweave your promotional messaging in their content seamlessly. They can offer exclusive subscription discounts and deals to get more sign-ups.

For instance, note how Gopuff has partnered with an Instagram influencer, Tavishi, to generate leads and sales for their service. The influencer has also added a discount code to make the offer even more enticing.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Instagram

With a single masterstroke, the brand gets added exposure, credibility, and high-quality leads.

Not only that, influencer-generated content is a valuable source of social proof. It can be repurposed into content for your website, emails, and marketing materials to generate even more leads. That’s why generating leads from social media influencers is a winning strategy.

However, you need to find the right influencer for your campaign. You can leverage an influencer auditor tool to check their fake followers and choose the right influencers with genuine followers.

4. Sign-Up Only Virtual Events

Virtual conferences and events are a great way of generating leads from social media, especially if you include a pre-registration process.

They also help you establish industry authority and flaunt your expertise in front of a highly engaged audience. If your content and presentation are impressive, you can earn new leads through word-of-mouth marketing post-event as well.

Is that all?

No.

Virtual events present multiple opportunities for content marketing. You can post in-event updates to keep your social media followers engaged.

You can also repurpose content presented during events into whitepapers, infographics, short videos, and interviews. By gating all of this content, you can keep generating leads from social media long after your event is over.

For buzz-worthy events, the promotion starts well in advance. Create visually appealing, high-quality videos for your event. Create a sense of urgency by including countdowns in your event-related posts.

Need an example?

Take a cue from Search Engine Journal.

They host an e-summit every year to share insights from the digital marketing world. They invite the best brains in the business and promote their virtual summit aggressively on social media.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Twitter

SEJ attracts relevant leads who can easily convert into paying customers later. It’s no wonder that they top the list of brands that excel at generating leads from social media.

5. Referral Campaigns

Referral marketing is another effective way of generating leads from social media.

You can simply incentivize your customers and followers to refer their friends and families who might be interested in your products/services. The more people learn about your brand, the more likely they are to sign up or purchase from you.

Is there a catch?

Sadly, yes. Asking for referrals is a tricky affair. You don’t want to come off as inauthentic.

That can be counterproductive to your lead generation efforts. In trying to win new leads, you can lose the trust of your loyal customers.

Here are a few proven tricks to avoid this pitfall.

First, reward your referrers with coupons, freebies, and loyalty discounts, and make it a win-win for all stakeholders.

For example, MasterClass offers a 1+1 scheme on their All-Access Annual Pass. The scheme is enticing – refer a friend and get your pass for free.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Facebook

As if that’s not enough, MasterClass goes one step ahead and creates urgency by time-limiting the offer. Quite naturally, they generate more than expected leads.

Two, get your timing right. Approach users for referrals at the right times, like when they’ve just completed a transaction successfully. If you ask them for referrals before winning their trust, don’t expect great results.

Third, promote your referral campaigns through status updates and stories. Pictures and testimonials of happy referrers can be a magnet for potential leads. It also adds to your program’s authenticity.

Follow all the above best practices and improve customer relationships to start generating leads from social media.

6. Social Listening

With effective social listening, you can identify hidden lead-generation opportunities.

Such as?

Using social listening allows you to join conversations relevant to your brand – like someone looking for product recommendations. Or you can provide prompt support when someone voices issues with your product.

Use robust social listening tools like Mention to monitor your brand mentions. Or set them up to track industry-related keywords or competitors’ mentions.

Then, respond appropriately to user comments and try to guide users towards your lead-generation pages.

Sprout Social does a great job of generating leads from social media by leveraging social listening. In the Tweet below, they recommend one of their tools (with a no-strings-attached free trial) to a user tweeting about the poor performance of their current tool.

6 Ways of Generating Leads From Social MediaImage via Twitter

That’s a smart way of generating leads from social media without breaking the bank!

Ready for Generating Leads From Social Media?

With the above strategies, you can become a pro at generating leads from social media.

Don’t forget to monitor the performance of each tactic so that you get actionable insights for your future social media marketing campaigns. 

What kind of tactics do you use for generating leads from social media? Share your feedback in the comments below.

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