10 Proven Social Media Lead Generation Strategies

You may have some great marketing strategy ideas but, after all, you need to generate leads to call yourself a successful marketer. Here are 10 social media lead generation strategies that have been tested and proven to work. I hope they will help you to increase conversions.

Research shows that 31% of marketers spend 10+ hours weekly on lead generation, whereas social media brings in more than 20% of leads for 4 in 10 marketers, according to a study conducted by RefferalRock.

I’m sure you can agree with me on this one – social media is a great way to communicate with your target audience and generate conversions. SproutSocial says almost 80% of people use social media to buy from brands.

Fortunately, there are some proven ways of generating more leads from social media. If you are struggling with your marketing efforts, I’m here to help.

How to use social media marketing for lead generation?

Generic social media marketing won’t bring you many new leads, especially in the B2B sector. You might generate a lot of engagement and have many followers, but it takes a special skill to turn them into buyers.

You need to change your mindset and apply specific strategies for social media lead generation, and today I will share some of my favorite ways of gaining quality leads.

Social media lead generation strategies

There are many ways you can generate leads via social media platforms – but you don’t have to limit your efforts to one of them. If you have enough resources, time, and planning, you can use all of them and focus your marketing efforts solely on social media lead generation.

Here are different strategies that will boost the sales process in your organization:

01 Social listening for lead generation

Using social listening for social selling and lead generation is a great way of increasing sales but is almost impossible (or at least very difficult) without the right tool.

We’ve prepared handy tips for social selling so you’ll know how to do it right.

Be genuine, prepare a tailored offer, and don’t be too pushy with your message and I’ll guarantee that sooner or later social media users will be more and more interested in your products or services.

Social listening means using the right tools to find online mentions about your brand or related keywords that are relevant and in the right context – you can use it for PR efforts, social selling, or other marketing techniques.

Here’s what our customer service expert says about social listening for lead generation:

“Lead generation is a very popular area of social media listening tools usage. Many of our clients want to reach mentions with queries about companies dealing with particular issues, such as “I’m looking for a social media agency,” “Who offers the best social media audit?” etc.

Yes, social listening can help you find leads, but you need to remember two things. First, you must set up a project correctly. Monitoring a general keyword such as “social media agency” might not work. You will receive thousands of mentions. It will be difficult to find lead queries. Second, you need to use filters smartly. The biggest challenge while looking for leads is dealing with the mass of mentions in different contexts. Of course, our Customer Success Team willingly helps with those tasks.”

02 Running contests on social media channels

Giveaways are always a very engaging tactic and, if it’s in your budget, a great one to increase brand awareness and recognition.

If you want to generate leads via contests, giveaways, and similar strategies, you need to do it right. Each user has to leave contact information and give marketing permissions. Otherwise, you won’t be able to reach out to them after the contest is finished.

To use this lead generation strategy, ask your contestants for contact details (e-mail or phone number), then prepare an outreach campaign to collect leads.

03 Lead generation paid ads

Paid ads are one of the easiest lead generation strategies presented in this article, but they require a budget and careful planning.

Social media platforms such as Linkedin or Facebook have great templates for lead generation ads and you can get the contact details right to your e-mail inbox.

Because ads with lead gen forms can backfire – meaning they can bring you a lot of low-quality leads – you need to thoroughly plan your campaign to find potential clients. I’ve asked my friend Mariusz, who specializes in social media ads and worked with lead generation forms for quite a while now, what’s important in this type of strategy.

“The key to success in lead campaigns is transparency. Your users need to know why they are leaving a lead and what the entire process you invite them will look like. Explain everything thoroughly in the creative.

You and the people you work with on lead ads must also stick to the campaign scenario. In addition, perhaps obvious, set yourself up to talk about needs, not to sell a specific product.

The customer who left the contact data often bought a different product than the one mentioned in the creative. Remember, the phone call or email you send is your brand’s business card. Provide a pleasant experience.

04 Building social media community

It may seem easy, but building a devoted and engaged community on social media is a hard task. However, the results can be magnificent.

By building a social media community, you can dramatically shorten the distance between the brand and the user. For example, Facebook is promoting groups, making them appear higher on the social feed – plus members get notifications for each new post.

I’ve asked Tomasz from Surfer what lies behind the success of building their community. Here’s what he told me:

“With over 17,000 active users, our Facebook community is one of the most important points of touch with thousands of Surfer customers and SEO enthusiasts in general.

There’s nothing more behind the growth of our community than commitment, patience, quality, and leadership.

Our go-to strategy? We try to keep people engaged, active, and kind to each other.

Many Surfer employees spend a lot of time in the group conducting conversations, answering questions, and motivating people to be even more helpful to one another.

05 Testimonials and social proof

Let’s face it – no one wants to buy from an unknown brand with zero recognition and recommendations. To gain the trust of your potential customers, you have to show them that your products or services are real and reliable.

Twitter is an especially great tool for that because of the retweet function, but there’s nothing stopping you from sharing testimonials via other channels.

06 Hosting virtual events

By hosting virtual events, you can showcase your products and generate relevant leads on the spot.

There are three ways of social media lead generation with virtual events:

• Gated content – in this case, users can access the event only by providing an e-mail address (or other contact information) that you can later use for a sales pitch,
• Engaging during the event – in this scenario, you enlist interested customers during your presentation or webinar,
• Post-event registration – after the event you can send a message via your social media to engage new followers and turn them into leads.

07 Using social media for content distribution

Most brands use social media channels to promote their content anyway, so why not use it to boost lead generation efforts? Content marketing can effectively help with generating leads if you do it right.

Use analytics tools to determine which content brings the most leads and promote it additionally through social channels. If it converts via organic traffic, there’s a good chance you’ll get high-quality leads also through social.

08 Involving social media influencers

Influencer marketing also can help you in generating quality leads.

Think of your brand ambassadors and how they can influence their followers to sign up for your newsletter or other mailing lists.

Social media influencers can educate your potential leads and create demand for your products or services. You can also use them to make a referral campaign that will drive traffic to a previously prepared landing page with a lead gen form.

09 Setting up retargeting ads

Apart from ads with lead generation forms, you can also set up retargeting ads.

Social media advertising can help strengthen your brand in the minds of your potential customers. You can even set up sequential ads that will support the sales funnel. For example, the ad will show up on social media after the potential buyer visits your website. More ads with different copy will show up after they open the link from the first ad. You can start the lead nurturing process straight away from the social media ads.

And the best thing is this process can be fully automated.

Studies show that retargeting ads have a 10x better click-through rate than any other display ads.

10 Optimizing your social media profiles

Did you know that you can add a lead generation form to your Facebook profile? Well, now you know.

There are tons of tricks for personalizing your social media profiles so that they serve as lead generation tools. The easiest way is to include links in the description to a landing page with an option to subscribe to your mailing list. Facebook pages have a customized button that serves as such a link (by default, it’s set for messaging).

Don’t be afraid to use emojis to direct users to your most important links and to describe what they can find inside. Emojis stand out in regular text and are most welcome on social media.