Social media is typically associated with raising brand awareness rather than sales. This is not necessarily the case. As many marketers have found, social channels are largely untapped in terms of bringing in sales. Beyond customer service and brand building, here’s how your business can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to generate leads.
Get to know your customers
Social media gives a platform for your clients and potential clients to reach you directly with their queries and comments. This is a great way to learn about your market and what they need. Social media allows businesses to forge a closer relationship with their customers, which increases their ability to respond fluidly to changing market demands. There are many businesses who crowd source information from their clients. When you ask your customers directly what they want, and you provide that product or service that they have requested, it’s obvious that the ability to generate leads will increase because you are a business that listens.
Competitions
Social media users love competitions – this has been proved by its wide-ranging success across many and varied campaigns in almost every industry. These campaigns are often simple, cost effective, and a great way to generate leads. Competitions that require consumers to share posts or photos are the easiest competitions to run because you can easily track entries on Twitter and Instagram with a hashtag, but more importantly, it’s easy enough for customers to want to enter. This is opposed to more complex competitions that offer higher stakes – perhaps a competition that requires entrants to create something for a chance to win an overseas trip. Sharing requires minimal effort, and is an easy way for your brand to gain exposure organically.
Use your Facebook page as a website
Make it as easy as possible for social media users to access your product or services. Facebook allows custom tabs to be created on your business’ page. If it’s a franchise you may have a tab that helps them “Find the nearest store to you”, or if you own a beauty salon, “Book an appointment now.” Put your social media pages to work and generate those leads!
