How Your Business Can Utilize Social Media like LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube for Lead Generation
Whether it’s PlayStation, Wendy’s, Spotify, Nike, or Mcdonald's, every Fortune 500 company uses social media channels in some way to achieve their communication goals. Your company probably does, too. One of the most important goals of social media is usually lead generation.
Generating relevant leads on social media may sound far-fetched, but if you use lead-generation techniques on social networks skillfully, it can happen.
Lead generation on social media is a great opportunity because social networks such as LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram offer great potential. However, converting a "like" into a contact isn’t always easy.
“Regardless if your business is health care, insurance, travel, or shoes, people listen to and talk with other people on social media. You can generate interest via a tweet or a Facebook post just as easily as you can add leads generated there to your email lists.“ Andrews Wharton
Back to Basics - What is a Lead Again?
Lead Generation is about creating interest – it is about connecting with an engaged customer. That's it.
Leads are normally generated by the marketing department and then handed over to sales. Very often this happens via a landing page on your website. A lead is someone who has given us their contact details and is possibly (hopefully) interested in our products or services.
Getting leads usually only succeeds with really good content that convinces the prospect of our expertise and offer.
This can happen via one of the following content pieces, for example:
Whitepapers
Case Studies
Webinars and Podcasts
Presentations
Product Demos
Infographics
Why Does Lead Generation Work Well on Social Media?
The answer to the question is always going to be found in the User Intent. What does the user want on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and the like? Expectations will differ from platform to platform, but some similarities do stand out. Regardless of the platform, people want companies to be authentic and transparent.
Social Media Offers Content
People say “Content is King,” and on social media, it’s a fact. People want shareable content that offers added value. Social media succeeds only as long as there is content that people want to share.
Don’t be fooled: it‘s your content on social media that‘s the lead generation tool.
Social Media Offers Reach
We spend on average 147 minutes a day on social media (Statista). Two hours a day! You should take another look at the user behavior of your target group and fully exploit that potential.
Social Media Offers Targeting
In addition to organic posts, your content can be sponsored to further increase reach. Social platforms also offer numerous possibilities for Ads and special forms for lead generation.
Particularly useful is the Ad targeting feature, which lets you decide who will see your content. You can use targeting to reach your preferred demographic. This means that you specify to whom the sponsored post should be played by defining interests, occupation, age, location, etc.
“A paid social media advertising strategy is highly effective for generating leads on social media. With this strategy, you can use the highly specific targeting options of paid social ads to show your audience offers that are tailored to capture their interest.” Sprout Social
Social Media Offers Interaction
Social media isn‘t a one-way street. Social media is a dialogue. You can enter into conversations with your customers and employees, thereby gaining important insights.
Likes, number of followers, comments, and the sharing of your posts are extremely relevant. If you want to generate leads, the interaction rate of your community is an important indicator of whether they‘re interested in your content. With this information, you can create the right content, for the right people, and for the right platform.
Social Media Offers Proximity and Authenticity
Social media gives your business the chance to talk about more than your products or services. Take a more relaxed, less business-like tone. Your content can be more personal. Social media isn’t a hard sales platform, it’s a people platform.
Being accessible and personal is important if you‘re to be seen in a positive and trusted light. Without trust, your lead generation won’t work on social media or anywhere else.
Hot Tip: You don’t need to generate leads only on your company channels either. Many companies encourage their employees to generate leads over their private social media accounts as is the case with LinkedIn.
“Not every business can make the right connection with customers using a guy in a chicken suit. It may work well for your car dealership but might scare people away from your insurance company. So how, and where, do you generate interest? The answer is: everywhere.” Andrews Wharton
Being Prepared is Half the Battle – Do Your Homework
Before getting started, take a look at your objectives and your target group. The selection of the right social network depends on it.
You can only generate leads if there are potential customers in the area. Ask yourself:
Is my target audience here and are they able to access my content?
How do they use this platform – how will they interact with my content?
Can I use this platform or content to achieve my goals?
Leads can only be generated where potential customers are and via the content they want to see.
Warning: It‘s tempting to be everywhere and post the same content. Don’t. People don’t need to follow you on three different channels if you are posting the same content on each of them. Each social media platform has a specific focus. Use that to adapt your content to the focus of each.
Social networks – like Facebook and LinkedIn
Microblogging/Blogging – like Twitter
Photo sharing – like Instagram and Pinterest
Video sharing – like YouTube
Interactive media – like TikTok
Social media offers numerous opportunities to generate leads if you understand why your target group is there.
“Almost no one does business with a total stranger. Use Twitter to build relationships. Relationships follow you throughout your career. They follow brands, too. Start chatting with people today.” Bridget Willard
How to Generate Leads from Social Media
Golden Rule: Lead Generation on Social Media Only Works with Content that Interests Your Target Group
Studies show that when a lead first contacts sales, 60% of them have already made their purchase decision. How? People have several touchpoints along the marketing funnel. That call to action is a result of six or seven posts, not one. There are no one-click sales.
So, instead of a single post selling your webinar, create multiple posts with some of the highlights as "snackable content" or easy-to-consume content. Create interest. Create shareable content.
Sell the solution, not the product. On social media, the focus of your content isn’t downloading your white paper or signing up for your webinar. The focus is on providing people with information. If the information is essential and relevant, they will click.
Successful companies listen to their audiences. They are innovative and offer new features people want. Your content should offer variety in order to keep your community growing. A loyal and growing community brings in leads.
“Look for lead generation opportunities with effective social listening. Monitor social media conversations and see what people are saying about a certain topic or a competitor brand. This will help you identify any opportunities to generate high-quality leads for your business.” Sprout Social
How to Generate Leads from Instagram
Instagram has more than 1 billion users. It’s big! However, many businesses fail to use the platform for lead generation.
Instagram is known for its giveaways. Accounts that host regular giveaways and contests can grow faster and generate more leads than accounts that don’t. You can run a giveaway to generate leads by turning your followers into email subscribers and potential customers.
Instagram giveaways motivate people to participate to win a prize. The typical length of a giveaway is 2 to 3 days. If you are collaborating or offering a more expensive prize, then it can go longer.
Your goal should help you determine the entry criteria for your giveaway. If you are looking to increase your community, then you could ask people to tag a friend. If you are looking to generate leads, however, then you would ask them to comment on your post and sign up on your landing page.
How to Generate Leads from LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms are an add-on you connect to your Sponsored Content or Sponsored InMail. The forms will collect contact details directly from LinkedIn.
The Lead Gen Forms are beneficial because they are already filled in with the user’s LinkedIn data. All they need to do is add their email to sign up. This makes the process quick and easy, increasing your conversion rate.
How to Generate Leads from YouTube
Adding YouTube cards to your videos is a great way to help you generate leads from YouTube.
YouTube cards are interactive cards that you may have seen, towards the end of a video. The cards allow you to share links in the video. You can add up to five cards for each video. The trick is to add cards after the halfway mark, to retain your audience's attention.
The cards should link to relevant, high-value content. A landing page with a downloadable whitepaper for instance. YouTube cards are a call to action you can use to send your audience to the desired page on your website.
Get Back to Basics and Think Outside the Box
Review user numbers and analytics, set your goals, and work out content formats that your audience wants to see there before you get started. Take the time to test the content. Ask yourself, what works for you and your team when you are on social media? What formats speak to you?
Think outside the box, too – it’s not always the call to action that generates the lead, downloads the whitepaper, or signs up for the webinar.
People have several touchpoints with your business brand before they convert. It can be an image, a quote, a blog post, or something else that decides how a particular lead is generated or consolidates your community.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Don't give up if the first lead generation attempt fails. You’ll discover and fine-tune the following via trial and error:
What content appeals to my target audience?
What visuals work best?
How do I address my potential leads in the post?
With which targeting do I best hit my ideal buyers?
How often do I need to post?
Which platform are my customers using?
What times and days work best with my followers?
How much information do I need to reveal in the post to really encourage a potential lead to download?
Take the time to test these points. Take a look into your social and website analytics. Understand what makes your target audience tick first. Then make the best use of the algorithm of the social media channel in question.
Encourage your employees to share, like, and comment on your company post -- especially when you are just starting lead generation on social media. This serves to give your posts reach.
The higher the engagement rate (or interaction rate), the more people will actually see your social media content in your feed - that's how the social networks' algorithms work. And the higher reach also has a positive effect on lead generation on social media.
“If you’re collecting social media leads, you need to be collecting analytics insights, too. Set up goals in Google Analytics to track leads on your website. This will allow you to monitor which social media platform is the best source for your business.” Hootsuite
Generating Leads Through Social Media – Summing Up
Social media has become increasingly important for both B2B and B2C companies. Social media offers enormous potential to build your own community and generate leads there.
If you really want to generate leads, you have to be ready to exchange content for personal data. And the content needs to be helpful and persuasive before they download it.
You need to understand what expectations your audience has on any given platform, and to create content accordingly. Even before someone reads your text, they have seen your visuals – and they need to be understandable and enticing.
This is even more important when you’re using paid ads if you want your budget to work efficiently.
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