By Shane Barker

Every business needs a regular flow of leads for sustainability. Social media is the best place to start generating leads and establish business credibility.  

In 2020, you really can’t ignore the power of social media because your target audience is already present there. It’s crucial that you follow the latest trends to make the most of your social media campaigns.  

Here are the top strategies for social media lead generation:

1. Leverage the Power of Storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful way to convey your brand message to your audience. Stories help people remember your brand.  

You can create images and videos relevant to the story, and share them on channels where your target audience spends most of their time. This will enhance brand visibility and raise the overall flow of leads.

2. Opt for Paid Social Advertising

There is nothing better than running social ads to reach your prospects at the right times. You can run ads on the below platforms for maximum social visibility:

 •            Facebook

•             Snapchat

•             Instagram

•             Twitter

•             LinkedIn

•             Pinterest

•             YouTube

Make sure you choose the right social platform depending on your target demographic group.

Once you run the ad, look for opportunities to make improvements so you can further optimize your results. A campaign that is not tracked cannot be effectively optimized for conversions. Hence, you need to track each and every social media ad campaign.

3. Use Social Selling

If you are still not using social selling then you are certainly losing business to your competitors. You need to undertake the below steps for effective social selling:

•             Optimize your social profiles across all channels where your prospects might be present.

•             Engage with your customers and listen to their grievances or concerns.

•             Use social listening tools to monitor every brand mention and respond to your customers or prospects as early as possible.

•             Establish a positive relationship with your prospects on social media.

•             Use Hootsuite Streams to identify leads from user conversations.

•             Provide value to your customers.

•             Use LinkedIn InMail to directly approach relevant prospects.

•             Use Twitter chats and groups to establish meaningful relationships with prospects that can convert into leads.

4. Use Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the best way to increase your list of loyal customers and is certainly the future of marketing.  

Under influencer marketing, you partner with an influencer who can effectively reach your target audience.  

Influencers directly affect the purchase decisions of their followers as they are real people with expertise in their concerned niches. Hence, having them endorse your products is a sure-shot way to raise the quality of leads.

Influencers may charge an advertising fee for endorsement but compared to other forms of advertisement, it can be rather inexpensive.  

5. Encourage Social Sharing

Social sharing helps to improve the overall visibility of your business and increases the number of leads.  

You can get more social shares using the following tips:

 •            Embrace employee advocacy and ask your team to share your content.

•             Promote your content via email marketing.

•             Use social sharing buttons on your website so visitors can easily share your content.

•             Encourage people to share your content by offering them incentives.

•             Invite influencers to write and share content on behalf of your business.

 Social sharing can also help improve your organic rankings. Improving your organic rankings is a great way to generate relevant leads, which will further improve your bottom line.

6. Focus on Live Streaming

Live streaming is an awesome way to generate relevant sales leads.

 You can use YouTube Live or Facebook Live to connect with prospects. Live videos are extremely popular on social media. All you need is a catchy title and interesting content to get the desired engagement.  

When you go live, stick to your topic and try to solve the real problems that your audience faces. Do not try too hard to sell your product. Instead, focus your video on helping your audience. In the process, you might find a way to naturally promote your product.

7. Run Social Sweepstakes

You should never underestimate the power of a social media sweepstakes. A social sweepstake is a marketing tactic where you require the user to take a particular action for a chance to win a prize.

 For example, you can ask them to like your page and go to your website to enter their information for a chance to win your latest product.

 Social sweepstakes are a great way to divert traffic to your website and start generating qualified leads. People who are interested in your products will be the ones entering the contest. Hence, the quality of leads will typically be good.

 Please note: Social sweepstakes must not require participants to spend money for an entry. Entry should be free. It’s better to run contests using products and this must not involve money in any form.

Final Thoughts

Generating leads via social media isn’t challenging if you know the right strategies.

The era of cold calling is coming to an end and pull marketing is taking its place. Never try to push your customers towards a sale. Instead, you should pull your prospects gradually toward the end of the purchase funnel.

Social media is the perfect place to boost brand visibility, drive engagement, and increase the flow of leads. You can use the social lead generation strategies discussed above to increase and improve the quality of your leads.