Leads. Prospects. Sales. The tapering end of the Sales funnel is what every business-owner (& devoted employees too) dreams of. There are many ways to turn your leads into customers. But, how do you generate those leads first?
While crafting a marketing strategy, one should keep the demographics of their target audience in mind. Having a clear concept of your target audience: their needs, their likes and dislikes, their affordability and various other verticals; helps master an effective Social Media strategy.
Here is a detailed infographic about Social Media Demographics.
And, below are some ideas that can help Social Media be a powerhouse of High-Quality Lead Generation:
LinkedIn as a Medium
LinkedIn is the most professional front of Social Media. People on LinkedIn are always looking for leading products, candidates or jobs.
To use LinkedIn to your advantage, try this:
- Follow Influencers and expand your Network
- Create a group of potential leads (You can leverage this to increase connections with the target audience)
- Create regular exceptional Content
- Comment and engage in discussions (cross-promotion in similar groups)
- Tools: LinkedIn Ads and Slideshare
With these efforts, you can sell yourself and your business as a pioneer in your respective field.
The collected fan following will act as a boon during product launches and promotions. With all businesses on LinkedIn, you never know when you find your match !
Facebook as a Medium
With almost 2 billion people on Facebook, an audience for all demographics is available. Establishing your presence with a personal and transparent Facebook business page increases interaction.
There are four types of Advertising with Facebook:
- In the News Feed (On Desktop)
- In News Feed (On Mobile)
- Right-hand Sidebar (On Desktop)
- Audience Network (On Mobile)
It also has a feature of Facebook Retargeting where in your Advertisements are displayed to the people who had visited your page earlier.
Optimize your Facebook Page similar to a Sales page. To observe effective results include CTAs like :
- Learn More
- Sign Up
- Download
- Book Now
- Shop Now
With customized News Feed Preferences, Facebook easily targets your desired audience. And, you need not worry as Facebook Ads are inexpensive than Google Adwords.
Results of Facebook Marketing include:
- Website Clicks
- Post Engagement
- Page Likes
- Website Conversions
- Mobile App Installs
- Video Views
Instagram as a Medium
Instagram Ads can be used for both brand awareness and direct response objectives. Instagram has different Advertising verticals like:
- Photo Adverts
- Video Adverts
- Carousel Adverts
- Stories Adverts
Instagram Ads are available for purchase through Power Editor, Adverts manager, Instagram Partners and within the App itself.
Instagram uses Facebook targeting. Targeting is carried out using location, demographics, interests, behaviours, Custom Audience, Lookalike Audience and Automated targeting.
Advertising on Instagram is very easy. Just follow these four steps:
- Create a business page and profile on Facebook
- Decide the Objective, Audience and Format (using Adverts manager or Power editor)
- Decide a budget
- Publish your Ad
Instagram boasts of more than 1 million advertisers per month. Within March to July 2017, community of businesses using Instagram to promote growth, grew from 8 million to whopping 15 million.
Twitter as a Medium
Twitter can help with lead generation using Twitter Cards that are similar to Facebook Ads. Innovative ways to create a buzz with Twitter include :
- Use Twitter Chat for Interaction ( Ask me Anything, Topic Discussion, etc.)
- Twitter Cards (adding cards improve Quality score of your Ad)
- Summary Cards ( Images are optional ) for Links
- App Cards for Applications Installs
- Player Cards for Embedding a video
Twitter charges for its adverts on the basis of quality score of your Ads. Quality score is a concept where you need to pay more if your Ads have less engagement. Ads having more engagement rate have to pay less. This is abided to ensure quality content.
Define a tailored Audience. This can be achieved by sorting following categories:
- Gender
- Language
- Platform
- Carriers
- Location
- Keywords
- Followers
- Tailored Targeting (Website Visitors)
- TV Targeting
- Others
Tribune Publishing constitutes of over 220 newspapers and websites. It is the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. This is what their Senior Manager had to say about integrating with Twitter as a social media platform :
“We love Lead Generation Cards, and we use them to drive subscriptions, newsletter sign-ups and even our sweepstakes campaigns.”
Lauren Kozak
Senior Manager, Social Media and Community Strategy, Tribune Publishing
Sharing of Blogs and Content Downloads help generate organic leads. With Twitter’s Lead Generation Card businesses can keep tab on their prospects. Try out manually optimizing marketing with Twitter, before letting the paid birds fly !
Pinterest as a Medium
Pinterest crossed 200 million monthly active users in September 2017. According to this survey, The number of shoppers on Pinterest and the amount spent by Pinners exceeds all other Social Media platform.
Pinterest is like a digital magazine which keeps its users updated about latest happenings. Using Pinterest, one can generate both:
- Direct Leads (Your content on Pinterest drives traffic to your landing page. The users are requested for their details in exchange for trial products, discounts, coupons and other encouraging goods)
and
- Indirect Leads (Sharing blog posts/Pins with CTA to landing pages helps generate indirect leads)
Lead Generation with Pinterest can be carried out easily with following channels:
- Coupons (Link to landing pages)
- Rich Pins (More Info than regular pins)
- Contests (works on psychology of excitement)
- Cross Promote (easy to share and view on other platforms)
Well, what can we say ! Pinterest is where all the interest is !
In the world of Web2.0, innumerable Social media platforms like Gab, Google+, Reddit, Snapchat, Tumblr, Viber, VK, WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp, Wikia and YouTube (this is the tip of the iceberg) provide a platform for marketing and subsequently a channel for Lead Generation.
Curating an analysed and planned strategy is all that simple marketing platforms of Social Media require!
This post was written by Diwakar Chaturvedi, a Digital Marketing Professional who has been working with a B2B company offering VoIP-based services for more than 2 years.
