Social Media now plays an important role in the sales and marketing plans of many businesses worldwide. There has even been a shift to a new selling paradigm that has created a revised lead generation strategy for both online and offline companies. When first starting out, it is easy to get the wrong impression about how quickly and easily social media can help to grow your business. It really can be easy to reach thousands or even millions of people, however, the frustration lies with just how qualified those people are as sales prospects. It’s important to never forget that in order to know how to capture qualified sales leads via social media, you must create a plan to implement an effective lead generation strategy.
Here are just six of the many ideas that a company can use to generate qualified sales leads:
- Blogging. One of the great things about blogs is the ability for the reader to comment. When a reader takes the time to read your post, register to make a comment, and then actually make that comment, you’ve now created the ability to communicate to him or her.
- Tweets, Likes, etc. The impact that Twitter and Facebook have made upon the social media scene is almost immeasurable. Actively posting on Facebook and tweeting allows you to promote your business and generate traffic back to your website.
- Free Downloads. Providing valuable content on your website that is available to visitors after registering is a very simple way to capture leads.
- Youtube videos. If your company has a service or product, then a great lead generation strategy is to create a video offering training or discussing your product. Youtube allows you to place a link with that video and you can allow the video to do the selling for you.
- Affiliate Programs. Affiliates can sign up to promote your company (and often they will use social media), and they do it on a “commission only” basis. If they don’t sell, they don’t get paid. You can control the information by creating the tools and materials (banners, ads, special reports, etc.) they use to promote your business.
- Webinars. A leading-edge sales generation strategy is the webinar. You can discuss industry news, host a training session, or provide other useful information to your targeted audience. They can either attend the live event or they can listen to the replay or rebroadcast of the seminar at their convenience if you provide a recording on your website. Of course there’s some planning involved, however it can be well worth it to investigate this avenue of generating sales leads.
In order to successfully implement a lead generation strategy and capture qualified sales leads via social media, you must implement as many strategies as possible, monitor the successes of these methods, and measure the results. Always remember that flexibility is key to creating and maintaining your success in social media.