Social media is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing department’s toolkit. But, when it comes to lead generation, your sales team should be using it too.
Generating leads in the B2B market can be tough. First, you need to have a well-practiced and researched approach when speaking to potential clients. Second, you must ensure you communicate via a channel your lead is comfortable using and uses frequently.
In the digital era, one of the best channels for lead generation is social media.This article will guide you through the best B2B social media platforms, and explain some B2B social media best practices.
Seeing LinkedIn at the top of our list should come as no surprise. The website connects millions of companies and professional individuals, making it a great place to start business conversations and approach potential clients. According to the Content Marketing Institute, a staggering 93% of businesses use LinkedIn for content distribution.
When it comes to B2B lead generation, one of the best things LinkedIn offers is its built-in lead generation forms. In social media advertising, creating the ad is usually only half the work as you also need to think about creating a landing page. LinkedIn eliminates this issue for business.
With LinkedIn, you can set up ads to immediately redirect potential clients to a signup form for whatever you were advertising (whether it’s a free demo, a webinar, or a contact page). What’s more, the LinkedIn form will also automatically pre-fill itself with any info that’s available on the user’s LinkedIn profile.
The pre-filling of the form increases convenience, which is a core part of effective lead generation. If potential clients find it difficult to get in touch, they’ll lose interest. So, it’s important to make things as easy as possible, whenever you can.
Twitter is another huge social media network, so you’ll access a vast portion of the B2B market by using the platform for lead generation. 66% of Twitter users report finding a business they now frequent while browsing the website, so it’s proven to be a good spot for growing your client base.
Twitter itself is all about being up-to-the-minute, so any B2B lead generation strategies you employ should share this quality. Write tweets that discuss the most recent developments your business has made, and what it means for your clients. Share any new demos or discounts on your offering, as well as a clear and simple way to get in touch.
The feature that makes Facebook one of the best B2B social media platforms is the sheer size of your potential audience: the platform had an incredible 2.9 billion monthly active users at the end of 2021. For lead generation, though, its best feature is Facebook Ads.
Like LinkedIn, you can build an ad that takes those who click on it straight to a pre-filled registration form of your choice. However, Facebook offers in-depth targeting that can help you reach the most receptive audience. .
As with most social media advertising tools, you can specify your demographic’s basic info: age, gender, location, etc. Facebook also allows you to target the specific interests of your demographic as well as their online behaviour. Furthermore, Facebook’s ad manager offers a robust range of analytics, providing you with a full understanding of how effective your ads are at generating leads.
While it’s nice to share content from your partners or existing clients via social media, these posts are unlikely to generate leads in the B2B market. You’ll want your audience to know that you post content to engage with them, not just so that your analytics show you were online on that day.
Don’t feel bad about scaling back the number of posts you make so you can focus on making high-quality original content. Some of the most effective B2B lead generation strategies would recommend one great post that drives interest and generates a ton of leads over making tons of low-engagement posts every day.
One of social media’s biggest strengths is its flexibility. It’s not just for marketing — it’s a sales platform, a communications channel, and a market research tool. As such, one of our B2B social media best practices is to use it for research purposes.
While creating content or approaching new leads on social media, make sure to frequently check in with competitors. It’s vital that your content differs significantly from theirs, so your business stands out in the B2B market
Checking your competitor’s content is also handy for predicting the direction their business might be taking in future. If you can work out a particular demographic they might start to target, you can start ramping up your marketing towards that demographic so you can compete. Alternatively, you can refocus your efforts to other groups that they’re no longer marketing towards.
Social media is the lead generation tool of the future, but some businesses might not be taking advantage of its full potential.
If you only plan to create text posts, you might as well use emails for lead generation. B2B lead generation strategies should utilise videos, photos, and any other interesting multimedia tools so that you can capture and hold the interest of potential clients. On top of that, adding things like video content helps you stand out from the crowd and beat your competition.