Social media has opened up a new and innovative way for businesses of all sizes to connect with their customers. If approached in the right way, social media can be an incredibly helpful tool in generating quality sales leads. Listed below are five pointers to help you get started towards generating sales leads through various social media platforms.
- Find your target audience
- Keep up the conversation
- Create interesting content to share
- Don’t hesitate to ‘call to action’
- Throw in some freebies
Similar to any marketing strategy, finding the right ‘target audience”, remains the all-important first step to be taken before embarking on a social media marketing plan. Very often, companies may have thousands of followers/fans but very few leads. This is because most of their followers/fans are not the right “target audience”. For example, if you are a B2B company, having a LinkedIn presence can prove to be more beneficial than a Facebook page. One option to counter this problem is to opt for Facebook ads, where you can select the audience to whom you want your ads displayed, based on their occupation, interests, age, and location. Alternatively, you can try finding high profile sales leaders in Twitter, and start following their followers. This will help you gain retweets, which will gain you even more followers.
Constant customer engagement is vital for a healthy social media presence. Customer engagement should go beyond regular posts or updates. Responding to comments lets your customer know that you are interested in them. Facilitate conversation by starting a discussion thread on your Facebook page to which everyone can respond. Try hashtagging your Tweets with industry-related topics that will appeal to your audience. Also, most important of all, is to never talk about your products/services all the time. People could get bored and choose to hide your updates and comments. Choose instead to connect with your audience on a deeper level by providing them with vital information about what they really need.
Generating leads successfully with social media depends a lot on creating great and interesting content, which is directly relevant to your target audience. The rule is to create content that users will be able to relate to. Michelle deHaaff, in her blog titled, 7 Steps For Creating a Social Media Marketing Plan, encourages companies to utilize different online assets to see what they can leverage for full social media engagement. She advises using location, people, stories, images, video, audio and words to create interesting content that fans and followers would love to share. Additionally, make sharing easier by installing social media icons that help users share your content.
If lead generation is one of your social media goals, you should never refrain from including calls to action, from within your social media marketing campaign. Don’t forget to periodically encourage followers to set up a meeting with you or order from your e-commerce site. Upload attractive pictures of your product with the contact details placed right below the image. Also, be sure to embed a contact form within your Facebook page that encourages prospective customers to contact you.
Everybody loves freebies and including some via a Facebook contest can help generate leads. Think about what your ideal customer really wants and how you can be the one to provide it. You can use gift vouchers to encourage customers to visit your store. Product samples on the other hand can create customer loyalty. If customers genuinely like your product or service, they are definitely going to come back for more.
