Four tricks to generate leads from social media for free

Social media is an integral part of our daily lives. There are nearly 5.04 billion active social media users worldwide. Nowadays, people rely on Social Media not only to stay connected but to stay informed and relevant. Users can find their dream home, Sunday’s brunch spot, and organize their holiday on social- all with just one tap. This makes connecting with brands online quite important these days.

On Twitter, 72% of the people who follow brands are likely to purchase items or services from them, while on Instagram even more users have admitted to buying something they saw on the platform. That said, it is no surprise that social media is the top marketing tactic for start-ups. While advertising on social media has become increasingly important, the drop in organic reach has impacted the quality of sales leads generated through social media.  Here are a few easy tricks on how you can generate quality leads for your business:

Share Links To Gated Content

There are very simple ways to obtain the contact information of potential customers. The most popular one used on websites and blogs is sharing links to gated content. The most important thing to consider when doing this, however, is making sure you’re providing services, which are valuable to your customer. That makes them more likely to provide basic information in exchange for access to the content. White papers, webinars, and case studies are among the top B2B Marketer drivers for leads.

For example, Jerry Jenkins has a blog aimed at writers, where the users are provided with an opportunity to get an e-book emailed to them if they provide their name and email address. This gives the owner of the blog the opportunity to follow up with more information later on.

Sweepstakes, Giveaways, and Contests on Social Media

Another tactic, especially popular among brands and bloggers, is giveaways in the form of sweepstakes. To grab the prize, the user has to fulfill certain criteria, such as tagging a friend within the comments section, following the page or sharing the post. The bigger the prize, the higher the chance your customers will be willing to provide more information.

Contests are a great way to gather user data with their consent too; by creating a giveaway where users need to sign-up with their email and basic information will give you a fuller view of your target market. Make sure you consult with your legal advisor before doing so and don’t forget to add the appropriate agreements/consents as part of the sweepstakes.

A great success story to further study the sweepstake phenomena comes from the below example - While Wearth London. While their Instagram giveaway is more likely to drive more traffic to the brand’s account, ASOS’s campaign will likely get a higher number of leads. The users are required to fill a form, registering for a student discount, in order to also be entered into the competition.

Social Media Listening as a Way to Gather Sales Leads

Social media monitoring is another (potentially free) and very valuable way of gaining leads. When doing this, it’s important to define your goals as this will help you choose how you’d like to carry out the monitoring activity. Whether you want to use a deeper insights tool or you’d rather go for a paid option and invest in software it’s important to consider the power of social media channels for lead generation. Searching for specific keywords and phrases will provide you with holistic monitoring across the world.

Provide free webinars, training and online lectures

With the correct approach, webinars are almost guaranteed to generate leads. The easiest way is to ask your viewers to register in advance by providing their contact information. Alternatively, you can also provide links during the webinar itself. Of course, advertising the webinar is going to be key. Before posting your webinar, be sure to look up response statistics and maybe post a few polls to your followers to see what they are most interested in.

Part of the charm of webinars, social media monitoring, giveaways and sharing links to gated content is undoubtedly that they are free and simple. If you want to spend a few dollars a day, focus on the beneficial promotions you can do online such as ad campaigns on social media. Interesting stats to prove how far your dollar can go is that 80% of social marketers’ key strategy is to increase engagement as 90% of social traffic to B2B blogs and sites comes from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The latter also generates about 80% of social media B2B leads.

While sales is the most challenging part of the sales funnel, getting quality leads is undoubtedly the most important step towards closing. Make sure you take good notes on the leads you need to follow-up with and reap the benefits of social.

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