Statista have predicted that by the year 2021 there will be about 3.02 billion users on social media worldwide. Now those odds sound good to me.
Social media isn’t the first thing that generally comes to mind when you think about high quality lead generation. However, when used in a smart and forward thinking way, social media can be an incredible source for quality leads.
We’ve put together our top 5 tips for generating quality leads on social channels that you can try yourself.
1. Contests
Everybody loves a good contest. They’re great for exciting and grabbing the attention of your target audience.
Running a contest can be incredibly useful when generating high quality leads. You offer a prize in exchange for your leads’ entry of information. But you need to get smart about the prize you offer. You want to offer something that would be valuable to someone who you can see being a high quality paying customer in the future, but offer next to no value to anyone else.
Your prize has to be valuable enough that people enter, but not so generic that you get tonnes of information and no actual high quality leads. By doing this, you’ll stop time-wasters and increase your chances of being able to benefit someone who genuinely wants your help.
To get people to enter, the easiest way is to get the contestants to follow/like your Page and get them to share or retweet the contest. Alternatively, the way we find works best for attaining more worthwhile information and more interested prospects, is by having a click-through to a landing page on the post.
2. Live Video and Webinars
Live video and webinars are pretty new to social media, but are definitely on the rise. We’ve found that 80% of people prefer watching videos on social media rather than reading a post. They allow you to directly interact and engage with your potential leads right in that moment. It is worth keeping in mind that the more specialised your business is then the less leads you’re likely to generate this way… however, they will be more targeted.
There are a number of ways you can generate leads through live video and webinars. Firstly, if you market your webinar as gated content, then this means that people will have to sign up to watch and take part prior to the video starting. While this does allow you to gain their information pretty easily, you must already have quite a following before trying this because if you don’t no one will sign up to watch.
You can also promote some of your content whilst in a live video. When it’s relevant, it’s a great way to get people to download your content. You can direct people from links in the comments to another platform, such as a landing page for your new ebook. This technique allows you to market in a more personal and conversational way.
3. Custom Hashtags
Creating custom hashtags for your business is a really fun way to generate leads and increase your brand awareness.
Let’s face it, everyone is hashtagging nowadays. So you want to be unique with your hashtags and not too complicated. This will make it easier for people to discover your brand. Short and sweet we’ve found works best, but they have to be relevant.
Do you remember when Coca-Cola launched their personalised name bottles back in 2017? Each bottle also had the hashtag #ShareACoke printed on it. This hashtag absolutely blew up online with everyone finding their own names and the names of their friends and family. This marketing effort did so well, that Coca-Cola actually made a website to take requests for future personalised bottles and, as a result, their sales sky-rocketed.
If this sounds like something that would work for your business (and bear in mind it won’t work for everyone), then one thing to take note of is not to be too generic and encourage your existing customers to use the hashtag as well. Hashtags can work very similarly to word-of-mouth. If you see a company’s hashtag being used by someone you trust, chances are you’ll be more likely to trust them too.
4. Polls and Surveys
Polls and surveys are perfect for getting your leads to engage, and to find out what they think and what they want. They’ll literally be telling you what you want to know.
Polls offer your leads a way of presenting you with their opinion without too much commitment. And surveys give them a chance to provide you with their feedback. By doing this, you’ll be able to find out what your existing customers pain-points are and develop from them, as well as find out what your customers and leads would like to see from you in the future.
So, if you were to create a poll asking your audience out of your latest two blog posts which was more helpful, you can take those results and concentrate on writing more content like the blog with the majority vote.
5. Discount Codes
It’s a pretty obvious one, who doesn’t like a good discount?
This is another great way of increasing your brand’s awareness as people are far more likely to share discount codes with their friends. You’ll need a strong call-to-action with a time constraint to encourage urgency. Think about having a clear deadline or even a timer to do this, and don’t forget to make it look visually appealing by using an attractive template to grab the attention of your current customers and prospective leads.
Discount codes also allow you to monitor which social channels work best for you. You can make unique codes for each channel and track how frequently they’re each used. For example, if you create and promote the code ‘UNIQ1FB’ on Facebook and ‘UNIQ2T’ on Twitter, then look at the results which show that 20 people used the code ‘UNIQ1FB’ and only 5 used ‘UNIQ2T’, you’ll know that Facebook is attracting more quality leads for your business. This will be beneficial for you going forward as you can focus more of your efforts towards marketing on Facebook with better results.
If you like the idea of social media, but don't have the time to do it yourself, why not read our blog about how we can help do it for you.
