How to Generate B2B Leads With Social Media and Manage Them Afterwards

Lead Generation is crucial. The problem is that it's really hard.

This guide gives you all the tools you need to make it a breeze.

If lead generation is something you're struggling with - keep reading to find out how to cut through the marketing clutter and generate quality leads via social media.

In today's world, consumers are simply flooded with ads. Actually, the more offers they receive, the more irritated and reluctant they become to take advantage of those “special deals” they’re promised. That’s precisely why marketing and sales specialist are now forced to find more creative ways to reach potential customers, generate leads and close deals. In fact, 65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenge at the moment.

At the same time, lead generation is not rocket science, and you don’t have to look far to attract potential clients. Try to leverage the potential of what’s within your reach - your owned channels. A well-designed, intuitive website, paired with social media profiles, can easily boost conversions and thus, increase sales. Here’s how to make the most of them.

Lead generation explained

“Lead” is an individual or organisation that expressed interest in your service by sharing their contact information. It simply means that these contacts have already engaged with your company one way or the other, and are more likely to purchase from you. Before it happens, though, you have to make sure your lead generation strategy is spot-on.

Before you decide how you’re going to attract potential customers, remember that leads can be acquired in various ways - with ads, landing pages, blog posts, events, social media etc. In fact, the majority of B2B companies nowadays say content marketing generates more leads than other marketing strategies, whereas only 6% of businesses use social media to generate sales. Even though the effectiveness of these lead generation tactics depends on the kind of content you’re able to produce on a regular basis, their potential is definitely worth exploring.

Generating leads with social media

Social media is a great tool not only for increasing your brand awareness but also for generating quality B2B leads.

It provides you an opportunity to reach prospects from all over the world. Back in the day, if you wanted to gain that type of reach, you’d have to sacrifice time and energy for traveling to conventions and international networking events. You can also use other social media supporting tools to enhance your leads ratio such as social media management tools. it will help you to manage multiple tasks related to social media activities. Even it has many easy features to make your tasks simple such as you can schedule Facebook posts, scheduling LinkedIn posts, schedule tweets, etc. in advance. Other than that it will offer you the best time posting, social inbox, one-off posts, etc. features to boost your prospect engagement ratio.

Social media made that process much less expensive. No wonder - 75% of B2B buyers actually use social media to support their purchase decision. The only question is: how can you reach them?  

Multichannel approach

Before you actually dig into generating leads with social media, make sure you are where your audience is. Social networks change, and it may turn out that your target group just stops using Facebook all of a sudden. Luckily, social media is much more than that - take a closer look at less known networks, such as Quora, Tumblr or Meetup. Also, make sure to create a good content plan and a calendar to follow your posts. Once a prospect lands on your beautiful website, give them an opportunity to contact your team via a live chat. If they need more information, ensure them that your phone lines are open, along with your business hours so they can reach out. It's one of the most convenient ways to connect with potential customers. Moreover, you should also try your hand at Facebook comment moderation once your content is live.

Relevant social media content

Experiment not only with different social networks, but also content types and format to see what works best for your audience. For example, on certain platforms, posting high quality videos may lead to more engagement than text-based posts. You should always aim to provide value first, and then encourage your fans and followers to make a purchase.

Establishing credibility is extremely important, be it B2B or B2C. Show your customers that you’re an expert on what you’re offering through insightful content, similar to how Gary Vaynerchuck built his business empire.

But again, you’ll have to make sure you’re packaging them the right way depending on your chosen platform.

You could be the best in what you do. Still, if your content is engaging enough, your audience won’t need a big incentive to buy from you in the end.

Social selling

Social media is perfect for establishing relationships with potential customers. When it comes to generating B2B leads, however, LinkedIn is probably the best choice. You can attract new business contacts with a complete profile and craft effective outreach messages using the best LinkedIn prospecting messages, professional network, quality content and recommendations. You can easily republish the content you create, use SlideShare to share presentations, join relevant groups, and take advantage of paid campaigns (be careful, though, as they are not the cheapest).

Social media advertising

Speaking of paid campaigns - if you want to generate leads with social media, you might find it difficult to grab your customers’ attention at first, especially when you count only on organic reach. Luckily, social media ads can bring great results, even without large budgets. There are many options to choose from (boosting specific posts, creating dedicated ads or using some native features of every platform) when it comes to increasing brand awareness and improving the chances of driving sales from social networks, yet, there is no better way to generate leads than with Facebook Lead Ads. Potential clients can simply click on your ad and submit a form, pre-populated with their Facebook details.

Useful tools for generating B2B leads with social media  

Kontentino: Before you start using social networks to generate leads, you should take care of your social media presence first. This is when proper social media management tools come in useful, and Kontentino definitely falls into that category. It’s not just a simple calendar to schedule your posts across social networks - it lets you manage your content, as well as your tasks. You can easily keep an eye on task progression and information flow among team members, export posts directly to Facebook (which allows you to set boosting for all your scheduled post in advance), or save inspirations and ideas for later in a separate calendar.

PayByShare: If you promote gated content on social media, you don’t only have a chance to attract new followers and increase their engagement, but also acquire leads at the same time. Once you create a relevant resource, you can use PayByShare to release it in exchange for social media shares. This requires less effort than entering one’s email address or any other contact detail, which is why it’s more likely to be used. The tool also detects any fake accounts, so it has a higher success rate.

RocketLink, on the other hand, lets you maximise the benefits of sharing links. You can not only shorten and customise them but also add pixels of your choosing. This allows you to target social media campaigns at people who clicked the links you shared, even if you don’t drive traffic to your website. It simply means that you can create a custom audience with those who are interested in a certain subject, which increases your chances of generating valuable leads. Not to mention that you can embed pop-ups and widgets in your links, just to encourage the visitors to perform a specific action.

Social Champ: Automated social media management is an essential part of building a solid online presence. Therefore, it is important to find a tool that best fits your needs. Social Champ is one such tool that has a social media solution for all.

With the UNLIMITED scheduling options on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Google Business Profile, and LinkedIn. You can easily create, edit, schedule, and publish your posts without any hassle, get the top industry content using Content Suggestion, connect your favorite blogs with Auto RSS, monitor all your social media posts, and get monthly/weekly graphs to compare your social media performance. Furthermore, you can take care of small tasks, such as first comments, alternative texts, hashtags, and more! The best part, Social Champ offers a FREE plan that comes with all the features you love! 

What about lead nurturing then?

As already mentioned, social media is perfect for engaging with your audience and maintaining their interest. As you’ve already caught the attention of your “leads”, they most likely follow you on social networks. So, why not tailor the communication to their needs? Try to answer any burning questions potential clients might have, as those doubts might as well be what’s keeping them from choosing your service. Also, you can build trust towards your offering by featuring your current clients and their references.

Basically, if you take time to nurture your leads through multi-step forms, lead generation forms, logic forms, conditional forms, social media and use the customer data you've grown to pitch your services to the right people and the right time - you can easily boost sales.

Think about setting up tools to automate LinkedIn drip messages to keep the conversation going without bombarding your leads. That way, you can stay in touch effortlessly, making sure your messages hit the mark and keep your audience interested.

Studies show that people are 71% more likely to purchase something based on a social media referral, especially when your lead generation efforts are combined with email marketing and social media-based nurturing. The secret here is to build the trust that will eventually lead to sales, one way or another.

Convert leads into paying clients

How else can you make sure you close as many deals as possible? Pay attention to proposals you send to potential clients. It’s essential that your proposals look professional and have a well-structured, relevant content. Luckily, with the right software, you can create them without much of an effort.  Using web-based, trackable proposals with modern design will not only impress your clients, but also increase your conversion rate.

In search of new ways to reach customers, marketers and sales specialists often forget about what they already have in place. Social media profiles can easily be optimised not only to attract more fans and followers but also to generate leads and nurture them afterwards. Also, your business proposals can be easily yet significantly improved by using a proposal software such as Better Proposals. Forget Word and PDF, it’s time for digital proposals that will skyrocket your sales. As a matter of fact, with the use of right social networks and available tools, lead generation and lead nurturing have never been easier.

Berenika Teter, Content Marketing Specialist at Brainy Bees, creates, edits and promotes useful online content on the spot. Apart from working on the move and doing too many things simultaneously, she also enjoys writing for the tech industry.