We talk a lot about the power of social media for businesses. It spreads your message far and wide, helps you gain exposure ad even generates new business for you. But that last part if where many businesses struggle. Turning interested followers into warm leads that you can convert into real income can be a challenge, but it’s not impossible. And social media plays a big part in that conversion process. So why are so many businesses letting warm leads pass them by? Today, we bring you some simple ways to generate leads from your social media efforts, ready to turn into real sales.

Share Links To Gated Content

If you’ve never heard of gated content before, it’s pretty much what is says on the tin. Its content hidden behind a virtual gate, and if it’s valuable enough, interested readers will be willing to provide some basic contact information in exchange for access. This content is usually something fairly substantial – like a white paper, a webinar or a free eBook. On social media, you would share a link to a landing page for this content, where readers will be invited to provide their information before receiving the content, either by email or being redirected to it. Some people who click through might click away, but those who are truly interested will be happy to give away their name and email address in exchange for the information you’re offering. Now, you have the contact details of someone who is confirmed to be interested in what you’re offering and sees the value in what you’re selling – the definition of a great lead. Posting gated content links is one of the simplest ways to generate leads from your social media.

Run Competitions

Competitions are an interesting thing. Lots of people run them, but not many are hugely successful. The key to running a good competition is in the prize. It has 2 important jobs – to be valuable enough that people will actually be interested in entering the competition, and to be valuable to the type of person who has the highest potential to become your customers (while not having much value to anyone else). If your prize isn’t valuable enough to start with, no one will want to part with their information to enter the competition. And if it’s so generically valuable that everyone who sees it will enter, you’ll capture loads of contact information and still have cheated yourself out of some good leads. So what do you offer? An extended trial of your service is a good place to start, a free product or a free upgrade to the top level of your service are all good options too. In terms of how to contest works – you have 2 options. You can ask your followers to retweet/like/share/follow your post and pages, which will improve your visibility, or you can set up a landing page for them to click through to and enter their details.

Advertise

Most social media platforms now come with in-built advertising capabilities. While your organic posts can be targeted to some extent, advertising takes the idea of targeting to a whole new level. They allows you to target incredibly focussed and niched groups of potential customers who align perfectly with your ideal customers. That laser focus means you are much more likely to generate real, valuable leads for your business. Using advertising combined with, say, gated content, allows you to keep your advertising costs low and collect hot leads comprised of your ideal customers. You can also go further than that, and use the specialist lead generation tools many platforms are now offering to help marketers collect leads directly from within social networks.

At Moyralla Marketing, we are experts in helping businesses utilise social networks to grow their business. Whether you’re just getting started with LinkedIn, or you’re a socially savvy person looking to hone your skills and start generating- and converting – leads, we can help. For more information on generating leads from social media, or to just chat about social media for business, get in touch with the team today.