4 Tips for Converting Social Media Leads

Here are 4 tips to help you convert your leads.

#1: Identify Traditional Online Leads

Consider the type of leads you have coming in from traditional channels and where they’re coming from. Some traditional online channels that are putting leads through your sales cycle probably include paid search, affiliate advertising, banner advertising and I’m sure there are others.

However, what is similar in all of these? They deliver leads with a call to action that’s for immediate gratification and results in a very “short” sales cycle. They drive the lead to a landing page to “convert now.”

#2: Identify Social Media Leads

Consider the type of leads that are coming from social media outlets. Some fairly common social media channels that are putting leads through your sales cycle probably include Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and the list goes on.

What’s different? Think about where you’re driving these leads. They’re engaging with content, not landing pages. At the point where they get to a landing page, it’s probably the same landing page that you sent your other leads to.

#3: Differentiating Between Traditional and Social Leads

You can break leads up into three groups:

• Direct Conversion Points: People have responded to an ad to buy your product or service. They’ve shown a clear indication that they’re interested in your product or service and are going to buy within a short time. They’ve responded by clicking on a paid search, affiliate or banner advertisement or have responded to an advertisement for an “offer” that they want.

• Indirect Conversion Points: People have downloaded one of your ebooks, attended a non-product–based webinar or subscribed to your newsletter or blog.

Essentially, these people have provided their contact information in response to a “piece of content” that they want.

• Engagement Conversion Points:
  Those who have clicked on your tweets, followed you, become a fan on Facebook, liked your status update or even commented. They’ve interacted with you, but you don’t have their contact information because they haven’t filled out one of your lead forms yet.

Each conversion point is different and should be treated differently. If you think in terms of a sales funnel, these points would stack on top of each other. They could be used to represent an estimated time frame to the point of close or sales conversion.

The time frame will depend on the length of your standard sales cycle. For example, if your sales cycle was 1 to 30 days for your longest direct conversion point lead, you might find that social media leads represent 31 to 60 days for the indirect lead and 61 to 90 days for the engagement lead.

#4: Identify Where You’re Losing Social Media Leads

If you’re treating the social media lead the same way you’re treating the direct conversion point lead, you’re likely killing the sales before they have time to mature.

The first step to converting social media leads is to understand where they fit in the sales funnel as we’ve discussed here.

The next step is to know what to do differently so you can facilitate their movement through the sales funnel to the sale.

You may find that you don’t have a sales and marketing process that supports this type of lead and if that’s the case, there will be some work to do before your social media sales results will improve.