A Comprehensive Guide to Generating Leads on Social Media

There are hundreds of different marketing strategies for generating leads on social media. From Facebook ads to TikTok challenges, there is a strategy for any B2B or B2C business in any industry. 

But how do you know which social media platforms are right for you? And how do you leverage those platforms to generate warm leads?

It’s easy to get sucked into the social media rabbit hole and waste hours on marketing strategies that don’t convert. 

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll look at the top social platforms, what businesses they work for, and strategies for turning fans into warm leads for your business. 

Learn all about the fundamentals and types of B2B leads in our guide here.

What is Social Media Lead Generation?

Social media lead generation simply refers to the steps a business takes to get new customers from social platforms. If you’ve ever seen an advert pop on your social media, that is a business investing in social media lead gen – and you were the social media lead!

Think of social media as the very top of the marketing funnel. Your goal is to capture their attention on the platform and then move them off it and into your sales funnel. 

At this point, you can nurture them until they become a paying customer.

Best Platforms for Social Media Lead Generation

There are dozens of social media platforms to choose from when it comes to marketing and lead generation. But that doesn’t mean they are all effective for all businesses. 

Social media lead generation on Linkedin 

• Great for: B2B businesses

• Not so great for: Product-based businesses, visual brands

LinkedIn is the top paid and organic social platform for B2B companies. In fact, around 82% of B2Bs report the most marketing success from LinkedIn. 

Since LinkedIn’s audience is made up of professionals, industry leaders, and company decision-makers, it’s an incredibly effective lead generation tool for B2B companies.

How to generate leads on LinkedIn 

• Optimize your profile with SEO in mind

Think of LinkedIn as a search engine. Whenever someone does a search for a keyword in your industry, you want your profile to show up. You do this by adding relevant keywords throughout your profile. 

And speaking of profiles, make sure yours is completely filled out to make it look good in the eyes of prospective customers.

• Post relevant content and updates

Just like any social platform, you need to post regularly to stay top of mind of your potential customers. 

Choose a posting schedule you can stick to and share a mix of original content and industry news your audience will be interested in. 

Make sure to use hashtags when you post content, so it shows up for people who follow the hashtag but not you.

• Join relevant groups and be active

Groups on LinkedIn are hubs of industry news where many senior business people hang out, share knowledge, and stay up to date. Find groups filled with your ideal customers and be active. 

Don’t focus on selling, but instead offer valuable insight and build a reputation as an industry leader in your niche.

• Automate your outreach

If you’ve been on LinkedIn for any amount of time, your inbox is probably filled with cold outreach messages from people trying to get your business. 

Every now and then you might get an interesting message, but you can tell that most of them are just mass automated messages. 

It’s important to automate outreach on LinkedIn, but personalizing your outreach will make you stand out and give a consistent stream of warm leads.

• Great for: B2B and B2C

• Not so great for: Brands that can’t commit to being active often

Twitter is the fastest moving social platform. To convert leads, you need to give your audience a lot of persistent attention and be willing to be active more than other channels. 

Audiences on Twitter are usually in the early discovery phase and so will need to be convinced to convert into leads. 

How to generate leads on Twitter

• Optimize for click-through

Your ultimate goal on Twitter is to get people to click your tweets and go to a landing page or website. You do this by optimizing tweets for clicks:

• Attach a high-quality picture
• Add one to two hashtags of trending, industry-specific topics
• Add a link to a valuable free resource
• Add a link near the beginning of the tweet

• Post consistently

The lifespan of a tweet is around 20 minutes, which makes it difficult to reach many people with each tweet. 

Because of this, you need to post multiple times a day to be seen by as many people as possible. Posting just once a week will get your brand lost in the noise of Twitter. 

• Use Direct Message Cards

You’ll need a large following and be a Twitter Advertiser to make use of Direct Message Cards. But if you can use them, they are an effective tool for lead generation. 

DM cards are Twitter’s way of keeping people on the platform, rather than having them click a link and leave. They are particularly useful for B2B companies who benefit from opening a dialogue with potential customers. 

• Great for: B2C and B2B (especially local businesses)

• Not so great for: Businesses targeting the younger generation

Facebook is arguably one of the most effective social media platforms for lead generation. With more than 2.45 billion users every month, it has the largest population of any channel. It also has some of the best tools for marketing. 

Whether you have a product, service, or lifestyle brand, Facebook is a great marketing platform for lead generation. 

Having said that, younger generations are moving away from Facebook in favor of other platforms, which is something to keep in mind if you have a product aimed at a younger audience.

How to generate leads on Facebook

• Optimize your profile

Your business page on Facebook needs to be filled out completely and optimized for location. Do this by providing:

• Contact information
• Your location and opening times
• A clear CTA (shop now/call now/message now/etc.)

The last thing you want is someone finding your business on Facebook but not understanding who you serve or what your offer is.

• Create clickable content

You need engaging content to get leads on Facebook. So make content that your audience wants to see. 

Remember, your audience isn’t usually on Facebook to buy, they are there to relax. So create content that evokes emotion and encourages them to share and save.

Each post should have a clear CTA. Whether you want your audience to like it, share it, or click a link, make sure your content is constantly working to build your audience.

• Facebook lead ads

Lead ads are a great way to generate warm leads from Facebook. These are promoted forms already pre-populated with the contact information. When used with Facebook’s retargeting tools, these are an incredibly effective way to capture the information of interested customers and add them to your nurture funnel. 

Social media lead generation on TikTok

• Great for: B2C, influencers

• Not so great for: B2B

With over 1.5 billion downloads and 800 million users worldwide, TikTok is a viral social media app with great potential for B2C businesses. 

This platform is much more geared towards B2C companies. Since the platform is only video-based, products are easy to promote, especially those aimed at younger audiences.

Many major brands are already shifting significant chunks of their social media marketing spend to this platform. And even smaller businesses have shown how easy it can be to go viral on this app. 

How to generate leads on TikTok

• TikTok Ads

Ads are the quickest way to generate leads on TikTok and are designed to help brands showcase their products. 

With ads, you can boost brand awareness, showcase new products, learn more about your target audience, and move users from TikTok to a landing page or website.

• Add a clickable link in your bio

TikTok allows you to add a clickable link to your profile which is perfect real estate for getting more customers. 

This allows you to drive traffic to your website, landing page, or email sign up form where you can get users to sign up to your mailing list – putting them at the top of your nurture sequence.

• Take part in TikTok challenges

Getting involved in TikTok challenges or viral trends is a great way to boost brand awareness and help your content go viral. 

Many small businesses have blown up on TikTok from doing 30-second challenges and have gotten millions of views from it. 

Social media lead generation on Clubhouse

• Great for: Established brands and businesses

• Not so great for: New brands and start-ups

For those unfamiliar with the Clubhouse app, it’s a space to create chat rooms and forums with like-minded people. Users can join and create chat rooms focused on niche topics that are audio-only (no video involved). 

The problem is, it’s not easy to use Clubhouse to generate leads because it’s simply not geared towards social media marketing:

• There’s no advertising
• You cannot send direct messages (DMs)
• Links are not clickable

This means you really have no way of converting leads in the app itself. Hence why it’s difficult to brand new businesses to get traction with Clubhouse. If a user isn’t already familiar with your brand, it’s hard to make them engage. 

How to generate leads on Clubhouse

But this doesn’t mean lead generation is impossible. It just takes a few extra steps:

• Build a following on Clubhouse

You need to be strategic about the people, rooms, and clubs you follow. All should be within your industry and high-quality.

• Collaborate with other brands and individuals

Align with other brands that are maybe more well-known and collaborate with them to build your following. 

• Add calls to action (CTAs) to bio

Although you can’t add clickable links, you can tell people about your business, add your website URL, or direct them to other social platforms to begin the lead gen sequence. 

• Give business announcements

Build brand awareness by posting announcements about your business. People will begin to see what you do, and you’ll be front of mind when it comes time for them to make a buying decision. 

Social media lead generation on Snapchat

• Great for: B2C, lifestyle brands, influencers

• Not so great for: B2B companies

Snapchat is built for engagement. And because it has a younger audience, it’s a good option for B2Cs aimed at younger generations. 

Like Twitter, most Snapchat users are in the early discovery phase, and so your goal is brand awareness and building trust. 

How to generate leads on Snapchat

• Encourage your followers to go to your content

Snapchat is a great place to promote products, blog posts, videos, podcasts, eBooks, webinars, and other tangible content you want your audience to see.

Although you can’t add clickable links in your snaps, you can add memorable bit.ly links and encourage your followers to go and search them off the app. 

This is a less effective method than having clickable links on other platforms, but if your content on the app is engaging enough, it can work well. 

• Build other platforms

Snapchat is a great platform for building brand awareness, especially for B2Cs. But you’ll want to encourage your audience to follow you on other platforms where it’s much easier to engage and nurture them. 

Snapchat should never be your only platform when it comes to lead generation, and you’ll likely find other platforms work better. So regularly encourage your audience to go and find you on those other platforms by offering new, different content. 

• Show Your Product or Service in Action

As this platform is video-based, it’s a great place to showcase your product or service. And what better what to generate new leads than showing your audience what you can offer them?

Strategies to Generate Leads on Social Media

Once you’ve optimized your social channels for lead generation, you’ll want to implement strategies to get those leads to take the plunge:

Discount codes

A discount code is a popular incentive brands use to encourage people to click through to their website or sign up to their email list. Make sure you have a strategy behind your offer to retain your new lead and add them to your database, rather than just getting a one-off sale. 

Polls and surveys

Your effort on social media, whichever platform you choose, should be getting your audience to engage. This might be a like, share, or better yet, taking a poll or survey (an easy form of sales gamification) 

Not only will this solidify your brand in your potential customer’s mind, but it will also give you key insights into your target audience. 

For example, you could run a poll on Facebook asking your customers which of two products they like best. Or which problem they want solutions to. 

Special offers

Everyone loves getting special offers from brands, whether this is a flash sale, sneak preview of a product, or free gift. 

An easy way to generate new leads consistently is to run regular special offers on your product or service. Unlike a one-time discount code, if your customers know you have regular special offers, they are more likely to stick around and become a repeat customer. 

Paid social ads

Organic reach on any social channel is limited. In fact, only around 5% of your followers will see any given post or update. 

Social media channels are engineered this way to force brands to pay for advertising, and so PPC ads for lead generation are king. 

Whether you promote your brand to raise awareness and grow your following or showcase specific products or services, make sure you have a single goal behind your ads to make them effective. 

Host a group chat or live stream

Video is the most popular form of content consumed on social media. So hosting a live stream not only gets you in front of more eyeballs it also shows you’re a professional brand that wants to engage with your audience. 

Pick a specific topic related to your offer and give your audience free, valuable content in the stream. Although you can pitch your offer at the end to generate leads, your focus should be on giving actionable content that shows your business to be an industry leader. 

Encourage referrals  

Social proof is the strongest evidence a potential customer can get when making a buying decision. So encourage your existing customers to refer you through your social channels. 

Offer an incentive such as a discount on the next purchase for each referral to encourage customers to refer.

Share testimonials

Testimonials are another form of social proof that go a long way on social media. If you’re struggling to come up with new content, ask previous clients for a testimonial – if it’s a video, even better. 

Share these with your customers to show them the quality of your offer and cement in their minds that you are the right choice. 

Run contests

Contests are incredibly popular on social media and can be extremely effective if you have a product or service. 

For example, if you sell art supplies, you could run a contest for the best painting. Get your audience to post to their social media with a specific hashtag and your business tagged, and the one with the most likes or shares wins. 

For service-based businesses, this can work too. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, challenge your audience to a workout that they film and post to social media with your business page tagged. 

People love to feel engaged with brands and running a contest is a great way to show there is a face behind your company and get a stream of new leads. 

Connect with social media influencers

There are social media influencers in every niche imaginable. If you can find some in your industry to reach out and collaborate with, you can get access to a massive new audience.

It’s important to do this strategically and have goals in place for any partnerships. And know that someone doesn’t need millions of followers to be an influencer. In fact, smaller, more engaged audiences often yield better results. 

Build a community on social media

Groups on LinkedIn and Facebook and other similar platforms give you the opportunity to curate a community of warm leads. When you have an active group of potential customers, your brand almost automatically becomes their choice when it comes time to buy. 

Building a community online takes time and effort. So you may need ambassadors to handle the everyday running of it. But once established, this can bring in a steady stream of potential leads on autopilot. 

Automate with chatbots

It’s always best to have a real person when it comes to customer service, but there’s no way you can be available every second of the day. 

Chatbots are a great way to automate your social media messaging to filter your leads as they come in. You might get hundreds of messages every day on social channels; chatbots can answer FAQs and make your potential customer feel listened to right from the beginning of their journey with you. 

Conclusion

There are hundreds of options available when it comes to generating leads on social media. The important part is choosing the right channel and focusing on several key strategies, rather than spreading your social media marketing efforts too thin. 

Did you know there are many options when it comes to advertising on social media? Check out our guide on the different PPC channels and how to choose the right one for you.