Small-business owners should approach social media with care. Without a marketing plan, social media activity can turn into a gargantuan time suck, drawing your attention away from critical business functions, like selling more of your products and/or services. Perhaps the best small-business social media objective is lead generation, and here are tips for how to do it:
Have Good Offers to Market on Social Media
Social media is loud and crowded. If you’re going to promote your business on social media, have something to promote that turns heads. A good offer has several characteristics:
- It is easy to understand
- It offers something of significant value
- It has limited availability
- It is easy for people to get more information or order
If your social media message is, “Buy from us, we’re great!” you’ll get sneers, not cheers. However, if your message is, “Try our new product during the month of May for no charge,” you’ll get plenty of interest.
Integrate Social Media Marketing
Now that you have your social media communities interested in trying your product for no charge, link that message to a landing page designed specifically to explain the offer and provide a phone number and form for people to inquire further or order. When people submit a form, you can email them a confirmation and invite them to subscribe to your email newsletter.
This is just a simple example of how social media can be part of a broader effort to generate leads. If you rely only on social media communication, you’re unlikely to amass many conversions, because you aren’t giving them a conversion pathway.
Have a Specific Content Strategy for Each Site
Your communities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., may have different characteristics or be essentially the same. Either way, you’ll want to create unique content for each platform and have a different approach for each.
For example, you might use Facebook for conversation and more of a “soft sell” approach, and use Twitter exclusively for communicating special offers. Over time, people will fall into a rhythm, staying connected with you on Facebook for engagement and on Twitter for alerts on good buying opportunities.
By giving each of your social media sites a clear identity, you make it easy to explain to customers and prospects — in live conversations, webinars, emails, sales brochures, a dedicated social media page on your website, etc., why they should connect with you. In short, give each social media site its own value proposition.
Social sites with a clear purpose facilitate rapid community building of relevant followers. If your Twitter site is for broadcasting special deals, people interested in special deals will sign up; if your Twitter site stands for nothing, people interested in nothing will sign up. Clearly, your ability to generate leads improves when your community is interested in whatever the given site is intended for. You’re far better off with an engaged community of 100 than an indifferent community of 10,000.
Track and Test
Tracking leads generated by social media can be tricky, because it is almost impossible to follow the various communication paths and timeframes involved between your original social media post and a conversion. However, by having unique offers for each of your social media sites, you can at least determine whether, say, lots of people are converting on your Facebook offer, and few are converting on your Twitter offer.
If one social platform is not generating leads, don’t give up. Repetition is important in any form of marketing, and six months to a year is a good time frame to test the social media marketing waters. By all means, test different offers. Perhaps a simple change like offering 15 percent off rather than 10 percent will make the difference between no conversions and 10 per month. Just remember to test only one variable at a time — otherwise you won’t know what change led to the improvement or decline in leads
Now it's your turn and leave your comments below.
Brad Shorr
Brad Shorr is the B2B marketing director of Straight North, an internet marketing agency near Charlotte, NC. His articles have appeared on Forbes, Moz and Carol Roth.
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Great tips, it’s all about the testing!
Great post and tips! Thanks for sharing. I will definitely follow thru. Cheers!
~ Sonny
Thanks this is a fastastic information! time i do some great testing! let see what works best!
Love the tip about specific identities for each site when using social media for lead generation. Didn’t really think about social media this way until now. Thanks for sharing!!!
Thanks for the great tips.
I enjoyed the systematic way in which you explain effective social media marketing to generate leads. How do you feel about putting all of the product info on the social media site in the absence of an established webpage. Of course, successful leads result in increased site traffic but is it plausible to generate and capitalize on that product interest by using these same tactics solely on the social media platforms?
This is awesome….Thank you so much
Great article on Social Media Marketing. Also having a targeted lead magnet that offers a ton of value in exchange for their email address. Address a problem, provide a solution.
This is an enlightening article. I especially appreciate that FB may be a “softer” approach due to being more conversational whereas TW may be where the actual sales promos go because it’s “facts only” and limits the characters allowed. This article has added another level to my social media knowledge base. Thank you, Brad!
these are awesome tips to use social media for lead generation.
Great information on social media. I will be doing some testing. Thanks for sharing.
I love the idea of using different platforms for different kinds of selling. I’ve just gotten into twitter and it’s a whole other ballgame for me. Thanks for the excellent information!!
Thanks for the article. Very useful information. It takes a lot of patience and focus on your approach but it will pay off.
Great post and great tips on how to utilize social media my friend.
I agree that social media can be a huge time suck without a plan Brad. I agree we need to track and to test. As you said it is not always clear to follow where leads or sales come from via social media. Thanks for some great advice.
This is excellent info for me the clear identity on certain social media platforms now I’m getting into instagram will help.
Thank you
Social media is the new frontier and if we want to be at the head of the pack we need to learn this stuff.
Thank you for this post
I can’t think of a better way to reach the right people for my business. Learning how to use social media is a fantabulous way for people to learn lead generation!
great stuff. appreciate this tips a lot.thanks.
Giving each social media platform a clear identity is an amazing take away from this post I will begin implementing right away.
That right there was a huge mistake I have been making. Thanks so much