Social Media in the past few years has been used by businesses all over the world. B2B and B2C companies all want a slice of the digital pie. Here in the Middle East, Facebook is the most popular social network overall, and consumers are spending more time attached to their phones than ever before. This is why it is so important to connect with your audience on the go, to be at the forefront of customers minds. Brand loyalty is at an all-time low and channels such as Facebook and Instagram work as a platform to convince your new prospects that they should buy from you.

At Eminence, we find many customers wanting quick leads from Social Media, this is not a quick fix to give you leads. Businesses shouldnurture their online customers differently to the ones that are physically buying offline or instore.

Social Media is not recommended to be used to generate actual leads alone.It is recommended that Social media acts more of a support to other marketing activities online which reassurestrust in your company.

Eminence have come up with a few ideas to help generate leads and maximise engagement with your customers online. Of course, a strong social media needs to be a part of an overall digital strategy– as one cannot work effectively without the other.

Contests

This is a great way to get your audience engaged. But you will need to make sure that the prospects taking part in your competition are actually interested in your brand and not just taking part for the prize. Have the prize as an extended version of a trial, or a free product. Although, generally speaking, the more valuable the prize is, the more people will enter.

Ask participants to share a post with hashtags, like the page, comment on the post, fill out a form – all of which are waysin how you can monitor the interest online. Clicking through to a landing page also helps monitor who is interested in your company.

Competitions and contests can be trialled and tested to see which ones work best for your online community.

Social Advertising

Although it is important to have organic likes and engagement, sometimes- especially if you’re new to the market-Social Media advertising can give you a boost in the right direction. It gives you the ability to precisely target who you want to see your ad. Through using this specific target criteria, it is a terrific way to keep your advertising costs to a minimum, ensuring that you are only seen by the customers that your business is relevant to.

Facebook Lead Ads are a great way for customers to connect with your business without leaving Facebook. One great advantage of Facebook lead ads over a regular gated content offers is that Facebook automatically populates the lead form with the user’s contact information, so it can take as few as two clicks for a potential customer to connect with you.

Instagram lead ads – since Facebook owns Instagram, the same can be applied in Instagram, however, it can only pre-populate the lead forms with names, phone number, email and gender. This is a fantastic way of getting the right information from your potential customers to use and personalise offers in the future.

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Using targeted social media listening

Social Media listening is all about knowing how your brand is being perceived online. It can also be used to see what is going on from an industry perspective. From trends to competitors- social listening allows you to dig deeper into digital conversation and adapt your strategy accordingly.

You’re able to use search streams to monitor keywords and conversations people are having about certian products. You can reach out to these people to help connect you to your audience. This positions your brand as the go-to brand for useful information in your industry.

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Stop promoting links

Ok, don’t stop altogether with your links, as this is the gateway to encourage people to visit your website. This shouldn’t be your only objective when it comes to lead generation. Website linksare just a part of the social media strategy to push people in the right direction.

Besides sharing your own links, share other content that is informative and interesting to your audience. This can be anything that you feel would keep them engaged in your page, industry humour, quotes or inspiring stories will all grab their attention. Even competitions, tutorials or interviews that do not directly link to your website. But of course, you will still need direct links to your landing page amongst other content. This will help build a connection and ultimately keep your brand in the forefront of the customers minds when they’re browsing online.

Now it’s your turn

Social Media is great for brand awareness, education of the industry and engagement as well as lead generation. Butin order for this to happen, businesses need to implement a strong digital strategy which runs alongside your social media strategy. Eminence can help with all of the above to ensure that your social media is top notch.