If you’re using Facebook and LinkedIn to help grow your business, focus on lead generation to make sure the engagement you build results in sales.
Social media platforms can be powerful drivers of traffic to your business website. They can also be valuable hubs that let you connect with customers, building relationships along the way.
It’s tempting to get caught up in views and engagement metrics. It is understandable that many businesses get excited when posts get a lot of discussion and shares. However, if you’re trying to grow your business, you can’t forget to connect social media engagement to sales.
How to create a lead generation strategy
- What is lead generation
- Why are Facebook and LinkedIn crucial in lead generation
- Benefits of LinkedIn for lead gen
- LinkedIn Lead Generation Forms
- Benefits of Facebook for lead gen
- Facebook lead ads
- Which social media platform is right for you
Learn how to get leads on social media to increase sales
To sell on social platforms, you need to generate leads as well as engage your audience. This will ensure you create a healthy flow of potential customers to your sales team.
A lead is anyone who shows interest in your products or services. They may show their interest by providing their email address or communicating with you in other ways. A good or qualified lead shows interest in what you sell and has a need or desire to purchase.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of actively trying to attract people to your business and converting them into qualified leads you can pass to your sales team. Your sales team can then take over and, hopefully, convert them into customers. The more high quality leads you can attract, the better chance your sales team will have of closing more sales.
In a social media lead campaign, a company creates an online advertising strategy with the goal of generating leads from its social media platforms.
Why are Facebook and LinkedIn so crucial in lead generation?
You will want to choose social media platforms for your business that have large audiences and superior targeting capabilities.
Depending on the type of business you want to promote, Facebook and LinkedIn can be useful. Both offer ad features within their platforms that you can use specifically for lead generation.
LinkedIn lead generation
Once known primarily for job hunting, LinkedIn has become a robust networking site where business connections are built for far more than just career growth.
A newsfeed full of valuable content helps professionals stay up to date on relevant industry information. While reading, they naturally expand their awareness of new companies and solutions in their markets. This is where a great deal of opportunity lies for business-to-business (B2B) selling.
Benefits of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is home to a huge network of professionals, most of whom are looking for business contacts and solutions. Many of these professionals are high level decision makers who could engage in financial discussions with you. LinkedIn has 740 million members in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. It also generates three times the conversion rate of other platforms.
It’s best suited to B2B marketing and has features that can help you target audiences based on their professional status rather than just demographics. LinkedIn also has useful features, like in-mail advertising, to help you reach out to potential leads.
Why LinkedIn might not be right for your business
Advertising on LinkedIn can cost more than on other platforms. The qualities that make it valuable for B2B make it less effective for business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. The in-mail advertising feature has also given it a reputation for off-putting inbox spam.
LinkedIn Lead Generation Forms
LinkedIn has created lead generation forms to help businesses attract high quality leads from their ad campaigns. These lead-capture forms give you a way to collect information from potential leads with little effort on their part. The forms are pre-filled with accurate LinkedIn data from the user’s profile. This allows them to send their information easily with few clicks.
Why does this matter? The easier you can make this step, the more likely it is that someone will provide their information instead of clicking away or hesitating.
What can you do with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms? You’ll be able to generate high quality leads and ensure seamless information capture. You can use these metrics to prove the return on investment (ROI) of your campaigns, track the cost per lead and measure your success.
Facebook lead generation
Facebook has an enormous user base and is improving the ways it helps you connect with customers. From expanding Messenger options to introducing Facebook Live, the platform continues to be a leader in providing ways to engage your audience.
Relationship building is important when connecting with customers via social media, so creating a personalized experience allows you to sell while remaining authentic. These added features allow small businesses to improve their service, reach more people and improve each interaction with customers.
Benefits of Facebook
Facebook is mainly used by individuals to connect with friends and family. It’s an affordable platform for B2C companies that want to reach users who are purchasing for themselves, family members, friends and acquaintances. Facebook boasts more than 2.74 billion monthly active users and more than 1.82 billion active daily users.
Moreover, Facebook has deep targeting capabilities built around demographics and interests. These targeting capabilities can help you reach customers likely to be interested in your products. The company has improved its Messenger app by offering extra features for businesses to better connect with and serve their customers in a personal way.
Why Facebook might not be right for your business
Facebook is not well suited for many B2B companies, especially large enterprise brands where purchasing decisions are made over a long period of time and by groups instead of individuals. Most challenging, Facebook’s algorithms make it difficult to garner organic views.
Facebook lead ads
Facebook offers lead ads that simplify the process of advertising while offering a solid ROI. Targeting leads by a broad range of parameters allows you to reach potential customers who are likely to be qualified leads for your business.
What can Facebook lead ads do for your lead generation? Realizing that many users will need to fill out forms on a mobile device or a desktop computer, Facebook allows customers to simply tap your ad to have a form pop up. This form will auto-fill their profile information so they can easily send it to you for you to follow up.
Which social media platform is right for you?
If your sales are primarily B2B, you’ll want to use LinkedIn for lead generation because the leads you get are more likely to be good ones. You’ll be able to target based on professional information and connect with people when they are ready to talk business.
On the other hand, if your sales are mostly B2C, you will want to look at Facebook for your lead generation. These users are more open to purchasing on the platform and may even engage with your content and share it.
Increasing your sales will always mean keeping a healthy pipeline of leads flowing to your sales team. While social media engagement can increase your visibility, it’s important to look for ways to generate leads with your online marketing.
A company that invests in lead generation on social media is likely to benefit from increased visibility and market presence, higher numbers of followers on social media accounts, more opportunities for customer service, easier collection of customer reviews, and increased revenue.
If you’ve been struggling to generate leads on social media consider booking a consultation with us today.
