Lead generation is a key business term. In today’s evolving digital medium of business, lead generation has taken different forms. There are various methods to achieve quality leads and the best part is there are some extremely good ways to do so. With a solid, dynamic and steady lead generation process in place, any company — B2B or B2C — can create good opportunities. Businesses needed lead generation even before the age of the internet. Trade shows, door to door campaigns, cold calling and many such Glengarry Glen Ross type of marketing used to work really well (watch the riveting tale of 4 desperate salesmen in the film, if you haven’t yet). The salesman was the ultimate selling instrument. The Don Draper slicked back hair and razor sharp suits combined with a tongue working on butter and sugar would seal the deal. Not anymore.
As we progress into digital sales and advertising, some of these selling techniques have lost their significance. We see a mad rush to obtain leads. Anyone who downloads a whitepaper or a case study is classified a ‘hot lead’. The truth is far from this, and that is they are not even a prospect. Generating quality leads ensures that your sales team has a higher closing rate. Speed of conversion is again a valuable criterion, because we all know, time is money.
Social media lead generation- How times have changed
Step back a couple of decades and internet was in its infancy. Marketers were getting into the whole ‘digital’ thing. Over the years methods were refined and we use them to this day. The internet gave rise to the social media sector, one of the largest creators of wealth on the internet today. The power it yields is phenomenal. Things have changed from the old days, including how we see lead generation today.
Here’s a chart on how lead generation has changed over the years
The big 3 social networking sites and lead generation tips for each of them
The largest social media site in the world, Facebook, celebrated its 10th anniversary on the 4th of this month. From a site designed to connect students at a college to one of most celebrated online success stories today, Facebook can make a lot happen. It is the pinnacle of social media lead generation today.
Facebook ads
PPC ads for Facebook are what these are. They offer a highly targeted approach and generate quality leads. Demographic targeting is just as in PPC and you can cover location, age, gender, industry and so on. Getting likes are just the beginning. Promoted content is an effective means to be found by a specific audience.
Tracking is an important part of the process. Your Facebook page insight application is an effective medium to track ad performance and reach. Likes, comments, shares, post reach, engagement, post clicks and organic/paid reach are some of the criteria you should consider for your Facebook lead generation program.
With 218 million followers, Twitter is a marketing professional’s content syndication and conversation platform. It provides valuable opportunities to connect with the right audience and the engagement is extremely effective.
Promoted tweets, accounts and trends
Paying your way towards exposure is an excellent means of gaining a foothold onto Twitter. Twitter gives you the opportunity to target based on interests, keywords, geography and similar interests. You can run promoted tweets that are linked to a form that allows you to capture relevant lead information. One of the advantages of Twitter is the engagement you can generate while an event is underway. It is a great way to increase reach and target key audiences.
The professional network has risen in a quiet and understated manner. Today, majority of marketers consider LinkedIn as a major lead generation platform. It is 277% better at lead generation than Facebook and Twitter. Some of the reasons for effectiveness are that it allows you to promote your content according to company name, job title, skills, group associations and such other business terms. Just like the rest, LinkedIn provides promoted updates and ads. Tracking and analytics are always important and these allow you to know trends.
Google+ and Slide share make up the rest of the pack. These require extremely concentrated efforts and are in fact time consuming. That does not mean the social media lead generation is weak in any way. Doing an in-depth understanding of your target audience allows you to create perfectly crafted content that delivers quality leads. Eye catching content gets the job done effectively. Create brilliant and effective company pages, engage industry leaders in conversations, push your products and services in the right place to the right people and watch your sales team squeal in delight with the quality of the leads you generate.
Decode social media lead generation with us.
