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Lead Conversion Using Social Media Activity

Lead Conversion using Social Media is a huge topic for one post, but lets deal with it.

While you might have objectives relating to brand recognition and user engagement, they are nothing more than objectives. You use social media as a way of generating and converting leads while also making the most of your return on investment. However, you will need to link a social post or advertisement to a conversion goal on your website and this could be increasing sales or traffic. Essentially, you want to convert leads into sales and enhance your social media conversion rate.

So, social media conversion rate. What is it and how do you make improvements? You might already be aware that a conversion is an action that prospects take once they have received some form of communication or message from your business or brand. Your social media conversion rate is the number of conversions that are achieved as a result of a social media ad or post. Therefore, the best way to enhance this is to use paid social advertising. This isn’t like using organic content which can be used to encourage a user to take action.

We cover the importance and role of social media ads when it comes to lead conversion in this blog. We also look at optimisation tactics that will give you the scope to create ads that perform exceptionally well using some of the most profitable social media platforms currently available.

Social Media Lead Conversion Stages

When it comes to social media, it is highly likely that you are going to be handling a wide range of leads at the same time. These leads will follow a number of different stages as they move towards eventually becoming paying customers:

  • Lead generation involves finding potential new customers
  • Lead nurturing involves creating relationships with potential customers
  • Lead conversion whereby you take potential customers and turn them into real customers

Now that we have shown you the difference between these, it’s important to look at how you manage lead conversions using social media advertising.

Lead Conversion Using Social Media Ads

The reality is that not all Twitter or Facebook ads will achieve an impressive ROI. It’s really important to ensure that you adobe the right techniques to achieve the right results, regardless of how automated your advertising might be.

If you are using social media advertising for lead conversation then you will need to consider these 6 areas below.

1. Bring Your Ad Messages and the Buyer’s Journey Together

When it comes to converting leads into paying customers, the situation that you will find yourself in is known as the bottom of the funnel. This is because you are engaging with people who are already looking to make up their minds when it comes to purchasing.

So, this means that it is especially important to create copy that is sales-focused while also adding deals into the mix to engage with them.

This will involve enhancing your credibility using the likes of testimonials, like dentists do lead generation, or showing them why they should choose you by giving comparisons of products or services. Case studies are also extremely useful as these real-life examples will demonstrate how you have helped other clients in the past.

Whatever the stage of the journey the buyer might be at, you should use the same approach consistently.

2. Encourage Lead Generation from Social Media Ads To Take Action

As far as social media and advertising go, there is always a cost involved. However, your target audience is quite reluctant to provide personal details, unless they receive something in return.

Once you begin providing incentives on your eCommerce store, you will find that your audience is more willing to part with their details. These incentives can include free products or trials, promotions, pre-sales, discounts, or even prizes.

You should make it your focus to ensure that you make it clear why you are collecting data as your audience will need to understand the reasoning behind it.

See the below In-Demand Toys website that enticed customers from social media adverts, onto a presale page for the latest Star Wars action figure.  Customers feel they are a limited special group and receive reward points for the purchase.

Lead Generation from social media on a website landing page

3. Use A Range of Social Media Ads for Lead Generation

Social lead generation ads are a part of the process and these ads come with pre-populated forms, this makes it easier for users to provide their information, enabling you to add them as leads. On Facebook, lead ads have a 12.5% click-through rate but they don’t get the praise they deserve.

Optimising social media conversion is nothing without the targeting features that come with social platforms, particularly on platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. Social media advertising and targeted advertising go hand in hand.

Targeting is placing your ads in the right space, so they get noticed by your audience. When implemented, you will be able to bring certain profiles together based on their behaviours as well as other parameters that you determine when creating the ad. 

You can also opt to use retargeting ads, giving you another opportunity to increase your conversion rate through social media. This will enable you to target past visitors or contacts in your database. You might also want to consider those who have abandoned their shopping carts or those who have taken some action but not followed up.

Research has found that retargeting ads are likely to enhance the rate of social media marketing by 70%. This ad type has a bad reputation but it tells us a lot about the behaviours of people and how to use social media marketing without placing excess pressure on your audience. 

Whilst were on the subject  of targeting, briefing influencers the right way is also a key piece of predetermined consumers targeting.  Its worth a read.

4. Use Facebook Ads For Lead Generation on Social Media

The reality is that Facebook reaches almost 3 billion people each month, proving that it becomes a valuable channel for social media advertising. You don’t need to advertise with the aim of reaching everyone but how do you use Facebook to advertise – the solution is targeting.

It’s important to learn how to use the targeting features of Facebook to attract qualified leads. However, prior to doing so, you have to understand your audience group based on a range of targeting parameters. So, this will include the likes of age, gender location, their interests, lookalike audiences and previous purchases.

Now you can create Facebook lead generation ad campaigns to obtain clicks from high-value users. This ad type will enable people to follow an ad and then complete a form in just a few steps. The option is also easy to access using mobile devices which is the preferred device for 98% of those who choose to use Facebook.

To optimise your lead ads, there are several best practices to follow. This includes starting with the most important questions, offering a location lookup feature to help discover local searchers’ intent, and giving people the opportunity to contact you after they have signed up using a click-to-call feature.

You can also let them choose their preferred dates for their appointment and add friction to your form such as a slide to submit to filter higher-intent leads.

If you need to ramp up your knowledge on Facebook marketing, try us or read this blog on how to learn digital marketing.

5. Lead Generation From Advertising on Twitter

The reality is that Twitter is absolutely huge and is one of the major social media platforms out there. During 2020 it saw a 24% increase in users and it is continuing to act as a major player in the social media doman. As a result, this proves that Twitter ads are up there as one of the best conversion rate optimisation services.

In particular, you shouldn’t focus on the direct response advertising that is available on the platform because this is aimed at the likes of app installs and video clicks. As a result Twitter is all about getting the conversion instead of going down the branded advertising route.

If you want to utilise this new system, then you will need to customise your Twitter ad campaigns so that they align with your target audience and so, you should focus on conversation targeting, event targeting, tweet engager targeting, keyword targeting, movies and TV targeting, interest targeting and follower look-alikes targeting.

You should also ensure that you create a call to action that is clear as this will ensure that all copy fits in with the landing page. You should also focus on creating ads for different user devices and make sure that you don’t use hashtags heavily.

Remember we are the no.1 web design and Digital Marketing Agency in Surrey, so do reach out if you have any questions so far on Lead Generation.

6. Use LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest For Lead Generation

These are another three of the big social media players and they all seem to fall behind Twitter and Facebook but that does not mean that you should avoid them for lead generation.

All three platforms are growing year on year because there are over 700 million LinkedIn users, more than 1 billion people use Instagram each month and Pinterest is adding millions of active users each month.

These trends are moving in the right direction and it’s important that this is taken advantage of, so how can you do this and increase conversions?

If you choose to use LinkedIn, then you can target the right audience by using professional ad copy while also retaining your brand identity. This means that you should create landing pages that are relevant and ensure that you do not lose these high-value leads.

Should you opt for Instagram, then you are naturally going to need to take advantage of the ad formats that are readily available.

This includes the likes of stories, images, videos, and shopping ads. The aim is to use visual content such as images and videos to convert followers while strong CTAs will help to encourage users to take the next step.

Pinterest has a lot of value when it comes to social marketing but it is recommended that you leave your ads to its algorithm. You will need to identify the right ad format for your brand and industry which can include promoted carousels, buyable pins and promoted pins. You can also focus on targeting users by using keywords and interests.

Optimising your social media conversion rate is nothing without using the chosen platforms of your users. There is no denying that the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest have a huge influence on the way in which businesses drive sales and revenue.

Lead Generation from Social Media is a must

So by bringing together social media and advertising, it gives you a useful option when it comes to increasing conversions and sales. Social Media is the best tool to increase website traffic

This means that you should always look to perfect this marketing strategy and your chosen platforms as this will enable you to make significant improvements across your business.

We are here to help, so click the Free Marketing review button, top right and lets talk.

Michelle Goodisson
Michelle Goodisson

Professional and dedicated all-round digital marketeer with 20 years experience in b2b and b2c marketing. Covering retail buying, product development, brand management, digital marketing, licensing, event management, PR & sponsorship.

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