Top 6 Effective Methods to Generate Leads

By thought-horizon | Dec 11, 2019

There is an inevitable dilemma between sales and marketing when it comes to capturing leads using social media. Salespeople who share social content about their offerings want the customers who interact with that content and call them for more discussions. Meanwhile, any good webpage is designed to capture the visitor’s credentials to create a new lead on the page that will be distributed to sales but not necessarily the salesperson who brought that prospect to the page?

What can be done? We experimented with individualized web pages per salesperson, but if you think it is hard to create one functioning webpage, creating thousands is no simpler. Other automation is possible, such as measuring those engaging with content into a CRM and then assigning leads accordingly. However, in today’s complex buying environment where there are often multiple stakeholders, databases can get pretty tangled when trying to implement this. What we have seen work best is a hybrid approach. It is worthwhile to keep track of who is driving the lead and to capture the leads as best as possible on your webpage. But it is also a good idea not to get too stringent about it. Many times it will be impossible to match every lead, so don’t sweat it. Try to attach as much as possible from the webpage and the sellers into CRM. Be very careful when distributing leads. Leads need to be checked against the CRM database to see if there is a potential owner. This will encourage sellers to keep their prospect lists updated.

1. Share links to gated content

Gated content is precisely what it sounds like: valuable content that unveils itself behind the virtual gates.

And the best part is, if you can intrigue your buyers with that piece of content, they will enrich your database with some necessary information in return.

Promoting gated content can offer a promising way to transform your followers into leads.

So get to your social media and promote a link to the gated content where potential readers are willing to provide their information before gaining access to it. Brainstorm how can you align your content strategy while creating content that is relevant to your product or industry. It can be white papers, webinars, case studies, customer journeys, and a lot more. Go on experimenting which content type works best for your business. Once interested readers complete the landing page form, they eventually become great leads.

2. Run contests

Freebies: we all love them, and the love multiplies with its value in our lives. Remember when you won a favorite product? We all have done it once in our lives, and your clients are included in these winning streaks.

Start by finding out what you can offer to your potential buyers. The prizes up for grabs have to be valuable enough to interest the target audience. And more specifically, they have to intrigue the social users who have the highest potential to become your buyers.

If the prize is not valuable enough, no one will enter your contest. But if it’s so generically helpful that everyone who sees the contest will want to register, you’ll gather loads of contact information but no qualified leads.

3. Use social media advertising

Organic social media posts are targeted, but only to an extent.

The gaps can be filled amazingly by social media advertising. Taking targeting to the next level, it gives you the power to collect leads from the laser-focused groups of buyers. Not only is using highly specific content a great way to keep advertising costs low, but it also gets your job done most effectively.

4. Use geotargeted search

For brick-and-mortar businesses, social media is more about going local. Even though they realize the value, not many of these businesses have leveraged geotargeted social search to discover local leads.

Geotargeted search explicitly enables one to find potential buyers who are in dire need of your services. You can not only reach out to them, but also direct them to the lead generation form.

Even larger companies can benefit from the geotargeted social search. You can use geotargeted search to track the tweets coming from the venue of an industry conference – even if you are not there. You can still make the most of the opportunity by giving this audience a custom offer, like an app trial, or simply waving “hello” to initiate a relationship.

5. Use targeted social media listening

Social listening is vital to garner some actionable insights into your potential leads, competitors and industry. It is nothing but lending a virtual ear to your buyers and absorbing the information about what’s happening in the industry, how are customers reacting to your services, what are their pain points are, and what your competitors are doing online.

You can intelligently use the search streams to monitor keywords that are important to your market and find valuable conversations. These conversations can uncover products and services and even specific features. You can then discover more information and reach out to people to share valuable information.

6. Engage in social selling

As buyers go digital savvy, social selling offers a rewarding way for businesses to generate and nurture leads. Combining the elements of social listening, lead generation, and sales practices, it is primarily about establishing and building relationships.