Unconventional Ways to Generate Leads Using Social Media 

Are you looking to generate leads but you’re a little clueless with where to start?

Look no further than the social media landscape.

Social media, if you already aren’t leveraging it, is an untapped goldmine for boosting your leads. Having a presence on popular social networks like Instagram and LinkedIn covers just the first step.

But how can you use your brand’s position on these sites to grow your audience and your leads?

That is the question this article will answer for you.

If you incorporate your marketing strategy with some unconventional methods, you can find the right mix for social media lead generation that can make all the difference for your business.

Why use social media?

Despite the effectiveness of social media as a platform for engaging with your audience and prospective customers, there is still a fair deal of skepticism surrounding it.

Before introducing the various methods you can adopt to boost your leads, here are the fundamental reasons why you shouldn’t hesitate to consider this medium.

Reason 1: You have an active audience waiting for interaction

The Internet continues to grow in size and number of active users day by day and with that, so does the number of potental prospects on social media channels.

According to Statista, the number of social media users worldwide is expected to reach 3.1 billion people in 2021. There is massive potential on these channels to generate leads and further your brand recognition.

Source: LyfeMarketing

By connecting with your key demographic and boosting your social media engagements, you can engage new leads and strengthen connections with your existing ones.

Reason 2: You can boost inbound traffic

If you’re looking to drive more traffic to your website, marketing through social media can combine with your search engine optimization strategy and provide the double-advantage here.

Promoting the content you create for your website through social media increases the chances of their visibility. New visitors can then be converted into long-time customers. The key here is to be consistent with both your content and social media engagements.

Reason 3: You can employ a mix of platforms depending on your strategy

Using social media also allows you to fine-tune your strategies by selecting the appropriate channels to implement them.

Rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach, you can appeal to your key demographic spread across different platforms by identifying which they use the most.

You can use the insights you obtain here to conduct a form of social media content research and determine what appeals most to your audience. This will help drive the number of actionable leads to your site.

Source: Leverage New Age Media

This will also help in the long run by helping you build relevant content that increase your chance for successful lead conversion, thereby optimizing your sales funnel model.

Reason 4: Social media is collaborative in nature

If you’ve noticed, social media is abundant with chances for collaboration. Have you heard of influencers?

These are people with a great number of followers and act as respectable authority figures in their niche. Think: brand ambassadors.

Collaborating with these brands can help you create a more authentic and strong image of your brand on these platforms. One of the pros? You won’t have to put in a lot of time or resources.

The influencers’ name will carry enough weight to make the difference you’re looking for.

4 unconventional strategies to go social and boost your leads

There are a lot of generic social media strategies for beginners out there that can get you started. A good way to determine what works best is to conduct a social media audit and fill in the gaps.

However, here are four uniques strategies that can help you create solid lead magnets.

Strategy 1: Create a free online course

One of the best ways to show off your expertise in your niche is to create an online course around it.

Why, you may ask? Think about it from a customer perspective. Your audience needs to be able to view you as an authority figure and brand leader for the product/service you sell. By showcasing the knowledge you have on that front, you can create a solid magnet for lead generation.

Some tips here to aid you with the process include:

1. Spend ample amount of time in the ideation process. Brainstorming and putting the ideas for your course to paper is important before you come up with the ways to sell it.
2. Know your audience before you create the course for them. What do you want them to learn? How can this drive them to your product/service?
3. Check out your competitors’ courses. You do not want to waste your efforts by duplicating their content. Doing a competitor analysis will also help you determine your course’s USP.
4. Promote the course on social media platforms you leverage. This can, again, increase leads both to the course and thereby boost traffic to your brand website by getting the word out there.

Strategy 2: Engage through interactive contests

Believe it when I say that interactive quizzes and contests generate a considerable amount of buzz on social media sites.

Interactive content is often said to be the future of digital media marketing. Did you know that the most read story on the popular online journal, the New York Times, was an interactive quiz in 2013?

There is some undeniable appeal for customers in engaging through these mediums. For example, Facebook contests have become a popular way to engage with the audience on the platform. So why not build a social media marketing campaign around one?

It’s easier said than done, however. A few guidelines on how to run your social media contest can get the wheels in your brain turning:

1. Depending on your goal and target audience reach, your budget will differ. Set a budget and investment cost that is in line with the number of leads you wish to generate from the contest.
2. Create an exciting premise that will hook your customers in. What is the prize? Will it be a gift card or a product/service related to your brand? Keep your lead generation goals in mind as you build this.
3. Determine the optimum duration of your contest based on the urgency-meter you want to set. The number of people that enter will be influenced by how much drive you give them to do so. If a contest runs for too long, it’ll be seen as a power-grab on behalf of your brand.
4. Promote your contest on the relevant social media platforms you want to invite the audience from.

Strategy 3: Offer social media-based customer service

Going social with your customer service is a golden strategy that has been used by a number of brands and companies.

You might think, “there’s nothing unconventional about this strategy!” but it all depends on how innovative your approach is to customer service.

Social media offers a direct channel of communication for you to engage with your customers and provide them the answers they need. How uniquely you choose to use it lies in your power.

For example, you could:

• Use AI-powered chatbots to streamline the process and save your customer service rep’s efforts for urgent/high-priority cases
• Create online communities as a forum for your audience to engage and discuss with each other
• Create interactive video-based FAQs as a replacement to text-based formats to address customer concerns

On the whole, social media works great with your customers–and particularly improves customer experience.

Strategy 4: Create short and engaging videos to keep customers hooked

Customers love visual content.

Visuals are highly stimulating to the senses and tend to generate positive reactions for engagement and sharing from the audience. Especially with regard to social media users who love visual forms of communication.

You can take advantage of this insight by developing content around this statistic. For instance, video marketing is one of hte most effective ways to boost social media engagement and generate leads.

The are various video-editing tools and services that exist for this purpose and can aid you with your efforts.

It’s important to stay customer-centric in your efforts and keep the following in mind:

• Create short but impactful videos that capture viewer attention in their limited attention span.
• Depending on the social media platform you leverage for this purpose, customize your content. For example, Instagram video restrictions differ to Facebook’s.
• Use the right keywords and tags. That’s right, your SEO-experience can be applied here to find the right hashtags to attract the right leads.
• Go Live when you have important announcements, want to engage with customers in real-time or give them an inside-scoop into your brand. This is a feature available across most platforms.

Don’t underestimate the power of social

If you want to generate and boost your leads, the first step you have to take is to understand the tools and avenues at your disposal.

Social media offers numerous benefits to your marketing and engagement strategy. Knowing these benefits is just the tip of the iceberg.

Employing and engaging actively on social media is a continuous process that has to be monitored effectively to get you the leads you want.

As mentioned in the intro, it’s a goldmine waiting to be discovered. But if you want to strike gold, you have to know where to dig first. .

With the right social media strategies under your wing, you can generate a high ROI and maximize leads: bringing your brand to the next level.

What social media marketing strategies do you employ for your brand? Have they helped you meet your lead generation goals? What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced? Comment and share with us below

Digital & Social Articles on Business 2 Community

(47)