How to Turn Your Social Following into Leads

So you have been hearing about social media for years. You spent money and time getting more likes, followers, etc.

But, likes don't equal cash, and Mark Zuckerberg owns those likes. Not you.

Social media was the craze 3-4 years ago, but now people have millions of likes, followers etc. and nothing to show for it. Having lots of fans and followers does not mean that all of them can be termed as leads.

Don't focus on those numbers that are not really helping you. You need to focus on getting leads, and not a social following. Remember that social networks keep coming and going, and for your business to be sustainable, the focus should be on lead generation.

How exactly do you generate leads?

Social Media Lead Generation Tips

Integrate Email Marketing Into Your Lead Generation Strategy

Studies show that email marketing conversion rates are 300 percent higher than social media. Therefore, it is imperative to have this as your main lead conversion strategy.

Instead of giving away all your valuable content, simply ask them to fill out a simple form to get access to your best information.

You can then use an email marketing software such as GetResponse to convert your leads. This will enable you to send them both informative and marketing emails. When done well, email marketing will help you make repeat sales to specific leads who have warmed up to your content.

To get people to sign up, you need to have a strong lead magnet. This is a piece of content that convinces your leads to enter their name, email address, and more details. This enables them to access that content. Studies show that courses perform better as lead magnets than eBooks. However, be it a course, a journey, an eBook, an event, a webinar, a video, etc., get a lead magnet that can work great with your audience.

Once your leads sign up, you can slowly nurture them so that you can eventually convert them into sales. This can be done through a series of automated emails (known as an autoresponder series) or well-prepared broadcast emails.

Use a Lead Generation Tool

As stated before, email marketing is currently one of the most powerful forms of marketing known to man. However, how do you get people to sign up faster? That's where a lead generation tool, such as OptinMonster comes in.

This will help you design beautiful forms that you can place on different parts of your site where they can deliver the highest conversion rates. You can also measure the effectiveness of each form and perfect it further. Most marketers advocate for the use of multiple forms on a site to boost conversions.

Apart from just creating the beautiful forms, you can have different types of pop-ups on your site. These include:

Page takeover: These are forms that fill the whole web page. Once your social media leads click on a link to your site, the whole page is blocked, and they get a form where they can give an email in exchange for your lead magnet. Some people will simply close the takeover form. However, many will sign up to your mailing list where you can then warm them up for conversion.

Exit pop-up: Averagely, 70-96 percent of visitors who leave a website never come back. You can use an exit popup to get them to subscribe before leaving. This is a pop-up that only shows up when a visitor is going to click on the “close tab” button. It, therefore, does not interfere with the content such as the page takeover. It can get you lots of conversions from people who would never have returned to your website again.

Sidebar form: This is a form that rests on your website's sidebar. A lead generation tool will help you design one that is so catchy that leads would just want to sign up and see what's in store for them.

Header form: The header form is usually placed on a website's header.

These are some of the forms that you can place on your site with the help of a professional lead generation tool.

Expand Your Reach

Numbers don't lie. Therefore, you need to always measure the impact of your campaigns. Each audience reacts differently to the content it receives. You need to take note of what your audience loves, improve your strategy and ultimately increase your reach.

You can use a tool such as Start a Fire to expand your reach. This tool adds a branded badge to whatever content you recommend. For example, if you share a wonderful news post with your audience, as they read that news piece, they'll see a branded badge showing other posts that you recommend from your blog. Therefore, with every share, you'll increase chances of people clicking back to your blog. When people re-share those links, they'll enable you to reach new audiences.

Remember that at the end of the day, you don't want to just get a lot of likes, loves, shares, follows etc, you want to expand the reach of your brand. This way, even if your favorite social platform dies out, your brand remains.

Beyond the Leads

A total of 94 percent of B2B buyers say they conduct some form of online research before they buy a business product. Therefore, if you are a B2B business, you want to go beyond the leads. You want to know your leads.

Leadfeeder is one of those tools that can help you know your leads. It shows you what exactly your users are reading on your website. It shows you which businesses are reading from you and gives more detailed information about those businesses. You can then segment your leads according to their behavior.

Conclusion

Social media used to be awesome and sensational. It's still where many people nowadays go to relax and connect with their close family, friends and the brands they love. However, you should never depend on it for your business. Trends change every day. Focus on lead generation and your business will experience great success for the longest time.

Social Media Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "How to Turn Your Social Following into Leads" was first published on Small Business Trends