While digital marketers recognize the importance of incorporating social media into their digital media programs, it’s becoming a tool that is much more important than simply promoting the company’s brand. Lead generation is an essential piece of such efforts. Many companies, however, struggle with this aspect. Consider four steps that will help you increase sales opportunities from social media.
1. Make Content Worth Clicking
In the early days of this critical form of digital media, visibility was considered the most important factor. An evolution to generating sales opportunities from a company’s social presence has changed this. Generating sales opportunities is now more important than simply brand identity. To do this, it’s essential to produce quality content with a link to a call-to-action that is specific and enticing.
2. Use Social Ads to Generate Prospects
Just as with website marketing, it is nice to generate interest through organic social media marketing. More and more marketers are finding it necessary to include at least some level of social ads in order to generate serious sales prospects. These leads can be directed to members of your sales teams and to your customer relationship management (CRM) system for follow-up.
3. Ensure Your Profile Is Optimized
While having an active and attractive social media profile is important, its value to your social media sales efforts will be limited if it is not optimized properly. Among the essential ways to do this is providing sign-up forms for newsletters, bulletin, offers and other outbound communication opportunities. Including contact information is another key component, as well as creating buttons for readers to respond to specific requests for action.
4. Use Analytics to Determine Needed Adjustments
Measuring social media lead generation is dependent on a robust analytics system. The more specific information you can get, the better. Google Analytics, for example, enables you to set up goals that will track whatever information you are looking for. Another advantage of social analytics tools is that they will help you in deciding the type of messaging and creative elements that should be included.
A great deal of preplanning and effort is needed when determining how to set up your social media marketing initiatives. As mentioned, it’s not enough to generate interest anymore. Getting users to take a measurable action that will contribute in some way to generating sales is the desired goal. Taking the steps mentioned will help you succeed in accomplishing this objective.