Have you ever considered b2b lead generation strategies for Social Media Platforms?
No? - You may be overlooking a huge opportunity.
With 3.78 billion users (as of 2021), social media offers advertisers a plethora of lead-generation prospects.
Social media marketing can help any company create many qualified leads in the right circumstances. That's why 79.3 percent of marketers consider it crucial to their overall digital marketing strategy.
You're already behind the times and undoubtedly wondering, how can social media generate more leads? - Fret not.
In this article, I've covered everything you need to know. I'll show you simple and successful strategies to get more prospects using social media sites. We'll go over how to generate leads on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn in particular.
By the end of this article, you'll feel like a pro. Fasten your seatbelts. Let's get started.
Social Media B2B Lead Generation Strategies
What type of lead do you want to capture?
Before you can efficiently get prospects on social media, you'll need to figure out three things. You must first decide what type of lead you want to capture. You may choose to choose one or both of the following options, depending on your business:
- Contact Form Submission- a form on your website that asks users for their name and contact information so that you can contact them about your products or services, make a sales call, arrange a meeting, and so on.
- Email List Subscriber- an email list subscriber is a form on your website asking visitors their name and email address. It helps you add them to your email list and send them regular updates, newsletters, promotions, and other information.
- Creating a landing page is the next step dedicated to capturing your prospects. If you're getting leads through a contact form, you most likely already have a contact form page on your website.
If you don't have one, make one now. Ensure the Page directs the user to fill out the contact form or complete another business goal, such as purchasing something.
The sole goal of this Page is to capture your prospects. Don't mistake clogging up this Page with more links or information about your business. The visitor will not be confused about what you want them to do.
You'll need a landing page (also known as a squeeze page) dedicated entirely to collecting the visitor's name and email address if your lead type is an email list subscription. On Post Planner, here's an example of one.
You're now ready to take on the role of social media lead generation ninja!
We'll start with Instagram, then move on to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. After reading this article, you'll better understand how to generate leads on social media.
Social Media B2B Lead Generation Strategies
A. How To Generate Hot Leads From Instagram?
Since its creation, Instagram has become one of my favorite social networking platforms. With new features being added regularly and the platform's large user base, it's difficult to deny its influence. Instagram has over 800 million monthly users, making it one of the best for reaching a media-focused audience.
History of Instagram
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger collaborated to build Instagram in San Francisco. They released it on October 6, 2010, and its popularity skyrocketed almost instantly. After its launch, it immediately became the most popular photography app, attracting 100,000 users in one week and 1 million users in two months. Facebook then purchased it for $1 billion in 2012.
Currently, Instagram is very popular, with over a billion users. It has become the most popular social media platform. I still see many Instagram accounts for businesses that don't have lead generation techniques in place.
Although you'll most likely need to make some changes to your Instagram account, persuading your boss or client should be straightforward. Did you know that 83 percent of Instagram users come across a product they like?
Here's another interesting fact:
As a result, managers in charge of promotional content would benefit from utilizing Instagram's impact on online marketing.
You can't afford to lose out on Instagram's fantastic marketing potential. Instead, use these ten marketing strategies to produce as many leads as possible on Instagram. As a result, your sales will skyrocket in no time.
The best ways to use Instagram to produce B2B leads:
1. Use your Instagram bio link to its full potential
Did you know that at least one company profile is seen by 200 million Instagram users every day? It indicates that people are eager to learn about new businesses. You can create a clickable bio for your Instagram account to help visitors understand your brand without wasting time.
You can include a lead generation landing page to generate B2B leads as a bio link.
2. Include a variety of contact options
It's fantastic if a potential B2B buyer discovers your product, service, or SaaS software on Instagram. You should, however, make it simple for your visitors to contact you directly. Why? Many people are frequently involved in making B2B purchasing decisions, which means the process might take a long time.
Including many contact choices such as directions, phone numbers, and email addresses allows your followers to contact you in the most convenient method for them to inquire about costs or partnership opportunities.
B2B purchasing decisions are frequently more expensive and hence more challenging to make, so it's understandable that your prospective clients would want to learn more about your product or service. Instagram users will be able to contact you directly if you provide contact options, and you will be able to create B2B prospects.
3. Develop Genuine Relationships with Your Fans
The truth is that B2B shoppers, like everyone else on social media, are looking for authenticity. It would help cultivate genuine relationships with your followers to generate more B2B leads.
Giving your organization a human face and establishing a relationship with users involves taking users behind the scenes. Because they don't have the resources for high-quality videos, small B2B enterprises will agree that coming up with content ideas might be difficult. People want to interact with firms that share their beliefs, not companies with a polished shine like a billion-dollar brand.
4. Inform your followers about your B2B company.
Once you've got your target audience's attention, you'll need to show them how your product can help them grow their businesses. The most straightforward approach is to inform your followers about your B2B company.
It makes no difference how you publish information about your company on Instagram. You might want to produce blog pieces regarding the benefits of your products or offer explainer/tutorial videos. What matters most is that your audience becomes involved and interested.
5. Form a partnership with brand ambassadors
Word-of-mouth marketing is an effective method of generating B2B leads. Other B2B buyers are more inclined to consider your company when other companies publish excellent feedback—Instagram influencer marketing's popularity aids in speeding up the process and spreading the good word about your organization.
Finding influencers might be difficult, but you can team up with brand ambassadors to promote and endorse your business. Bricia Lopez, a specialized influencer with numerous firm trusts, supports Intel's Asus laptops.
6. Take advantage of Instagram Stories
Users love Instagram Stories: 500 million individuals produce or watch them, and companies account for 13% of the most-viewed Instagram Stories. It is a fantastic opportunity for B2B enterprises to reach their target audience and achieve their business objectives.
You may leverage Instagram Stories features like a swipe-up link to direct interested viewers to a landing page to generate more B2B leads. You may also save significant Stories to Highlights, which appear just below your bio and help followers and new visitors find relevant content fast.
7. Use Instagram Ads to Generate Leads
A quick way to produce B2B leads is making Instagram ads and executing them. This ad style allows you to reach your target audience while collecting valuable data while staying in-app. The ads can help you gather helpful information from your prospects, whether trying to figure out their contact information or build your email list.
Instagram is valuable for B2B organizations looking to advertise their products and produce B2B leads in recent years as a marketing tool. You may save time by incorporating these strategies into your marketing strategy now that you know how to generate B2B leads with Instagram marketing.
B. How to Generate Leads on Facebook
Since Facebook is the most popular platform with audiences interested in almost anything, you'll have the most luck raising your social media B2B digital marketing ROI there. (Unless you have a strong presence on another social media platform)
Here are some ideas for generating leads using Facebook.
1. Make a tab for collecting leads.
Most email marketing software providers offer a Facebook app that allows you to construct an opt-in form on your page. Check to see whether yours does, then create a form that either advertises your lead magnet or requests that people subscribe.
2. Make a cover photo for your Facebook page.
Ensure your photo caption includes a link to your contact form or squeeze Page.
3. At the top of your Page, pin a post.
Begin by including a link to your contact form or squeeze Page in your post. Once the post is published, click the arrow at the top right of the post to pin it to the top of your website so that everyone can view it.
Pro Tip: If you have a Facebook group, you can use the same tactics to promote your contact form or squeeze Page there as well.
4. Make use of Facebook advertisements.
To send your ideal clients to your Contact Form or Squeeze Page, use the 'Increase conversions on your website campaigns' or 'Send users to your website.' Use a lead magnet to get the most out of your advertising spend!
5. Make use of lead generation ads
Check your Power Editor to see whether you can generate lead-generating ads there. This feature allows you to develop ads that direct mobile audiences to mobile-friendly opt-in forms where you may collect the contact information of Facebook users.
C. How to Use LinkedIn to Generate Leads on Social Media
If you're trying to reach out to a professional audience, you can use the following LinkedIn features to generate leads on social media.
1. Include links in your LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn provides several options for linking to your contact form or squeeze Page from your professional profile.
You can use the Publications and Projects sections to add direct connections to your contact form or squeeze Page, ideally by marketing your lead magnets, in addition to the three links you can add to your Contact Info.
2. Make use of LinkedIn advertisements.
You have two alternatives with LinkedIn: Sponsored Updates and Text Ads. You may use both to generate ads that target your ideal audience for your contact form or squeeze Page. For Sponsored Updates, you'll need a LinkedIn corporate page.
Automating Lead Generation on LinkedIn
If you're in the B2B industry like me, LinkedIn is one of the finest (if not the best) venues for distributing content and generating leads. You can find almost anyone there, and the entire site is a never-ending supply of sales chances.
The platform makes it easier than ever to reach any decision-maker. Your Page can search for your audience by their locality and industry to fetch a filtered list of them. However, many users believe LinkedIn automation is both spammy and ineffective.
Because it's automated, it has to be spammy, right? - That's not entirely true. Being authentic and honest is the key to LinkedIn automation. When people think of automation, they see you sending 100+ LinkedIn messages every day, wreaking havoc in your leads' inboxes.
Here's what you should know now: As the name implies, LinkedIn automation uses specific software to send out connection requests automatically, create/send messages, view messages, and Page follows, eliminating your human efforts. You can complete these tasks with the help of LinkedIn automation.
Why Automate?
Anyone with a personal LinkedIn profile can use LinkedIn automation tools (and not a business page). B2B marketers, sales executives, and job recruiters, for example, stand to benefit the most from these solutions. So, what are their advantages?
With more than 740 million users worldwide (2021), LinkedIn has become one of the largest social networks. Can you afford to waste valuable company time analyzing each profile to determine which ones are worth engaging? - Certainly not!
LinkedIn automation tools come in handy in this situation. They assist you in adequately sorting leads into usable contact lists so that you may engage and convert them.
The following are some advantages of LinkedIn automation:
- Sending a message to request a connection.
- Personalize you're messaging based on the profile information of your target audience.
- Creating a follow-up social selling campaign.
- Select a specific target demographic for your outreach.
- Then, using precise analytics, extract critical insights from your campaign.
While you engage in other business duties, you can have your LinkedIn message automation campaign running in the background.
Now that's what I call efficiency!
But, before we get into the nitty-gritty of LinkedIn message automation, you should know the inevitable, potentially disastrous consequences of automating everything.
Messing Automation Process
Have you ever spent a week in prison?
I have - LinkedIn's prison, to be precise. Food was frigid, and evenings were worse. They weren't fooling around. The support from LinkedIn, though, is the coldest. They even declare that it is against their terms of service.
But I learned my lesson: you'll be OK if you use automation effectively and interact with others professionally. Because if you don't, you'll suffer the same fate that I did.
Imagine paying for LinkedIn Premium, software, and months of cultivating relationships with six- and seven-figure prospects, only to have it all vanish in a second. Here's another way to look at it. Consider the following:
"Does this seem like something only a spammer with an automation program would be capable of/want to do?"
If that's the case, don't do it. You'll be alright if it's a genuine professional outreach with good intentions, as long as it doesn't happen at a "supernatural frequency." It's not difficult to stay out of LinkedIn's clutches. Follow these three golden rules:
- Sending out mass texts is never a good idea. Your messages should be one-of-a-kind as much as feasible.
- Never submit more connection requests or visit more pages than a typical professional would in a single day.
- Using a dodgy automation tool is never a good idea. Stick to the professional ones that won't get you kicked off LinkedIn.
It's that simple: don't be a spammer. Send personalized messages to people you're interested in doing business with and who won't block or report you when you contact them.
How to make seamless automation?
Finally, the guide's 'How-to' section!
Personalization is crucial, as previously stated. It would be best to personalize your messages to stand out and generate leads using LinkedIn automation. It is what most people miss out on, and they end up falling. Almost anyone can personalize LinkedIn messages by including their first and last names.
At this point, it's clichéd. You should be able to do better than that. Here's how:
1. Tags for Personalization
Let's look at some of the many personalization tags you can use to get data from your prospect's LinkedIn profile:
- {first name}
- {last name}
- {job title}
- {company name}
2. Preparing for Outreach
Before you start sending automated messages, you should begin with LinkedIn campaigns. In reality, there's a lot you can do ahead of time to get ready for an automated LinkedIn outreach campaign.
Here's how to ensure that your campaigns get the response and acceptance they deserve
- Optimize your LinkedIn profile- When individuals receive your message, they will first look at your LinkedIn profile. Ensure that your profile, slogan, summary, and content are consistent with your brand.
- Templates and texts for campaigns- People frequently begin selling themselves from the first request. LinkedIn users can spot spam from a mile away. "Your post about the much-needed radical flexibility requiring empathetic managers was spot on! It made me think about empathetic management. Thank you for sharing. Happy to connect!"
- Campaign results and analytics- Finally, the easiest way to examine your LinkedIn automated messages is to look at the results and analytics of your campaigns. You can then alter your connection request messages and experiment to identify the winning templates using this information.
Companies that have adopted this: Over 660 million individuals use LinkedIn. LinkedIn search for "cloud engineer in New York" yields over 100,000 results. Even if you eliminate three-quarters of those contacts, you still have 25,000 people to call. Many well-known firms, such as HP, Tata, Canon, Sap, and others, use LinkedIn automation to create hundreds of warm leads monthly.
3. How to Use Twitter to Generate Leads on Social Media
Let's take a look at how you may generate leads using Twitter.
1. Make use of your Twitter profile picture.
Because visitors won't click on this one, you'll need to include an easy-to-type URL in your image.
2. Pin a tweet to your profile's top.
Twitter, like Facebook, allows you to pin a tweet to the top of your profile page. Provide a link to your contact form or squeeze Page in your tweet. Once your tweet has been published, click the three dots in the bottom right corner to pin it to your profile.
3. Make use of Twitter advertisements.
Twitter, like Facebook, has two sorts of ads that are ideal for generating leads. The website clicks or conversions will allow you to get the link to your contact page or squeeze Page in front of your desired audience, whereas the 'Leads on Twitter' will allow you to capture leads directly on Twitter.
The 'Leads on Twitter' campaign is excellent in that Twitter users may sign up right from the platform. It implies no one will leave your contact form or squeeze Page between the ad click and the submit button.
The Final Note
Consider what it would be like to receive daily leads from social media. New contacts from social media would pour into the top of your funnel every day.
Then you may nurture those prospects throughout the buying process until they convert (and become your customers or clients). It isn't just a fantasy; it could become a reality for you!
Whichever social media platform you utilize, the concepts in this piece should help you get a constant flow of leads.