Have you ever wondered how you can generate leads for your business on social media? Well, this is the episode for you!
But first, let’s take a reality check. What type of business are you in, and how many prospective customers are there in your marketplace? This will impact your ability to generate leads from social media.
If you are a business with a long customer lifecycle, i.e. if it can take leads months or even years to convert to paying customers, then social media shouldn’t be purely used as a lead generation for your business. It’s likely in this scenario that using your services is a high-risk and emotional decision for your clients and one they might not make every day. Person to person sales and rapport building will play a huge role in convincing people to do business with you so don’t expect social media to change your world and your business.
However, there are ways to tweak your content and social media strategy to generate leads for your business, so let’s get into those!
Let’s start with creating social proof
Create content for your accounts that shows how you do business and how well you do it. A great way to do this is to let your customers speak for you. Try including case studies and testimonials, or highlighting high profile clients you have worked with.
Another way is to showcase your key results, maybe you have set a record or benchmark in your industry, have a significant market share, won awards, or have a high volume of repeat or referral clients. This kind of social proof will allow you to build credibility with your audience and show your expertise.
Remember to stick to the 80:20 rule when it comes to content that self-promotes. People can switch off quickly if they think you are trying to sell them something so ensure around 80% of your content is based on providing value to the audience and only 20% is promotional.
Next up, show your expertise: the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle
It’s possible to send a strong message without sounding like you are boasting or bragging. This is called the ‘show don’t tell’ principle. Show your audience your expertise and skill by creating high-value content that will be of interest to them. This content should be informative and educational, teach them something they don’t know to build trust with them.
For example, if you are a real estate agent this could be creating a regular report on the local market, sharing your expertise about the local area, or showing your skills as a negotiator.
Number 3: ask for the sale
This is a basic principle of sales that I’m sure you’ve all heard of. Ask for the sale by adding a call to action to your promotional posts. Add a link to your website or a clear and easy way for potential clients to reach you. And in your post caption ask the audience to contact you for more information, add that call to action to spur them to get in touch.
Another idea is re-targeting warm leads
If you haven’t heard of retargeting, this is a marketing tactic where a business shows ads to a warm audience to convert them to paying customers. On platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, you can show ads to people who have visited your website, even down to specific pages they have visited.
You can also upload your database of contacts such as email addresses and mobile numbers and target ads to these people too. If you’ve already gone to the effort of making the first contact with these people, don’t let them slip through the cracks and never hear from you again, move them down the sales pipeline with a retargeting ad.
Finally, set up as funnels
Unless you are an experienced Facebook Marketer this is not something I suggest you go alone, as you will most likely end up costing your self a lot of money. An ad funnel is a series of ads that nurtures the customer from the awareness to the conversion phase.
There are many different funnels you can set up, but at a basic level your sequence could look something like this:
Phase One: Brand Awareness
You are trying to attract as many people as possible who could do business with. Your targeting should be as broad as possible to encompass all your potential clients. The objective is to establish awareness of your brand and/or a need for the service you offer. A video ad could work quite well at this level.
Phase Two: The Consideration Phase
At this level you want to narrow down the people you’ve draw in in phase one to identify the who might be considering the services your offer or your competitors. This could be a retargeting ad to people who’ve engaged positively with your first ad, for example they’ve watched your video for more than 30 seconds or clicked the link in your ad.
Phase Three: Conversion Phase
The objective here is to convert the audience to a lead, obtain their contact details or prompt them to contact you. This could be done with another ad or it could be done via email if you’ve captured their email address in an earlier phase.
This is just a basic overview of what an ad funnel might look like for your business, your funnel could have many more levels to it. Keep in mind it will take time to crack your funnel and get some leads coming in. This is also not a tactic you want to undertake with a small budget but it’s up to you to work out how much a lead is worth to you based on the transaction value of your business.
So, there you have it! Those are our tips on how to generate leads on social media and we really hope they help you to build your business.
Have you seen our previous episode of The Digital Chronicle? It’s all about using Instagram Stories to take your social media marketing to a new level!
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Chronicle Republic Communications is a boutique Sydney marketing consultancy for real estate, property and interiors professionals. We specialise in social media, content marketing, email marketing, blogging, search engine optimisation, social media advertising and much more!
If you are looking for social media for real estate, property or interior design our digital marketing experts can help you bring your brand’s story to life.
