How Do Leading Brands Generate Actual Leads With Social Media?
You’ve been told for years that you need to use social media to drive leads, but what gives? If you’re like a lot of marketers, you pour energy into social media marketing but don’t get very many (if any) leads out of it at the end of the day. What are you missing?
The Social Lead Generation Struggle
The problem with social media lies in its power and potential. Businesses that otherwise have extremely limited exposure can build out a social media presence. Suddenly, they have the ability to reach millions of people in a very short time. However, it’s not just about developing a profile, sharing some content, and then watching the sales roll in.
Generating leads with social media is hard work. There’s a lot of noise on networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and you have to be strategic with how you go after prospects. If you’re signing up and falling for the myth that leads will magically gravitate towards you, you’re mistaken. It takes some work – a lot of work, in fact. In recent times, certain industries have really began to increase how much they’re spending on social media. This is especially true with those in the real estate industry, such as realtors and mortgage brokers. In order for this to pay off, it’s important that clicks result in leads being generated.
3 Strategies for Capturing Leads
Do you want to know how leading brands actually generate leads with social media? Here are some tried and true methods that require energy and effort, but tend to pay off in the form of actual clicks, sales, and conversions.
Drive Traffic to Landing Pages
You can’t look at social media as a destination. It’s merely a channel through which you filter traffic. In other words, everyone on social media isn’t someone you’re targeting. Your goal is to present something of value – something that’s enticing – that hopefully resonates with a small fraction of people. You then push these people further down the funnel and begin to walk them through the conversion process.
Practically, this looks like sharing content on a social networking platform, presenting a call-to-action, and then pushing people to a landing page where they can learn more or follow through on that particular action. This is very common with real estate agents, whereas they post pictures of houses and condos for sale on social media with the hope of the user clicking through to their landing page. This Scottsdale condos landing page from The Kay-Grant Group is one example of a page that has performed particularly well with social traffic. Notice how it contains a lot of valuable content in the center of the page, with an enticing call-to-action on the right side (“How much is your home worth?”).
Run Contests
Another highly effective method for generating actual leads via social media is to run a contest. Contests – such as this successful one Eggo ran a couple of years ago – are beneficial in more ways than one. Not only do the generate leads, but the social sharing component leads to a lot of good exposure.
Use Paid Advertising
A third practical way leading brands generate leads via social media is through the assistance of paid advertising. Facebook is the best platform for this, but you can also use a number of others, like Twitter and Instagram.
The key with paid advertising is to make the content seem as organic as possible. Overly promotional ads don’t work as well as ones that seem natural. That’s why a lot of marketers are investing heavily in paid promotion of past posts. They don’t look out of place and tend to generate low cost-per-click rates.
Focus Your Efforts
You’ve got to get a grip on your social media strategy if you want to see a return on investment. It’s easy to get distracted and go after everyone, but all that does is lead you to no one. Focus your efforts and implement a couple of strategies – such as the ones outlined in this article – and you’ll begin to see some tangible results.
