Beginners: Grow Leads Fast with Social Media Marketing

Social media is a powerful and cost-effective marketing tool for SMEs looking to grow their leads and revenues. With a wide range of free features to connect with your audience, build brand awareness, and generate leads without spending a penny, as well as a sophisticated suite of advertising services now available, social media marketing provides an adaptable pathway to success for businesses in all sectors. This beginner’s roadmap will guide you through selecting the right social platforms, how to create compelling content, engaging with your audience, and using paid advertisements to your best advantage.

How Do You Choose The Right Social Media Platform?

Let’s start at the very beginning: What platform or platforms should you use? With several mature social media platforms now available, picking the right ones to invest your time and money in can make or break your social media strategy. Rather than trying to use them all or spread your resources too thinly, it’s best to focus on the ones most relevant to your target buyers. Start, therefore, by assessing your audience and where your customers spend most of their time online. For example:

• LinkedIn is perfect for B2B businesses and professional service companies targeting decision-makers and senior directors.
• Instagram works well for businesses that rely predominantly on visuals, such as companies in the lifestyle sector, and often caters to a younger demographic.
• Facebook, meanwhile, is one of the best platforms for engaging adults in the key 35 to 44 demographic, with excellent advertising tools for detailed audience targeting.
• Pinterest is growing in popularity among businesses in the interior design, fashion, and hospitality sectors, appealing largely to female buyers aged 25 to 44.

What Content Should You Publish On Social Media?

A successful social media presence depends on publishing the right content to resonate with your audience. Planning your content plans in advance will help you ensure relevance, consistency, and effectiveness.

So, what do you want to achieve through your social media content? Common goals for social media include:

• Generating leads.
• Driving traffic to your website.
• Making sales directly via social commerce.
• Building brand awareness through likes, shares, and social media follows.
• Increasing customer engagement levels.

Once you are clear about your objectives, you can tailor your content strategy accordingly. For instance, if lead generation is your primary goal, create social media posts with strong CTAs and links to lead magnets, such as ‘download our free e-book’, or ‘sign up for our webinar’.

Social media is a volume game when it comes to content. While you might get away with publishing 2 to 4 blog posts on your company blog each month, you will need to be much more active on social media in order to remain visible and relevant. To keep up with the volume required consistently, consider re-purposing existing assets for social media use. For example, a blog post can be transformed into an infographic or several shorter posts, and a longer video can be condensed into shorter clips for LinkedIn posts or Instagram Reels. Many businesses also find it helpful to use a social media content calendar to plan and schedule posts in advance, using a platform such as HubSpot to streamline the process. This allows you to plan weeks or even months ahead and post at optimal times for maximum impact.

How Do You Engage Your Audience?

Social media is a two-way relationship-building tool, not simply a bulletin board. The best results, therefore, come from using social spaces as platforms for building a community and fostering a sense of belonging among customers. Use your feeds to share exclusive content, answer questions, run regular polls, or host discussions that align with your business. By engaging with your customers in this way, you’ll gain crucial insights into what your audience genuinely wants, helping to inform your content strategy moving forward. Don’t be shy about joining conversations on social media, either, engaging with trending topics, or chipping in on industry discussions and groups relevant to your services and products. It’s also important to respond promptly to comments, mention customers in your posts, and acknowledge messages, fostering a reputation for responsiveness and courtesy.

What is the best way to use paid adverts?

While there are strong results to be had from organic outreach on social media, paid advertising can supercharge your efforts and increase your revenues and leads. There are several types of paid ads, including:

• Boosted posts: These increase the visibility of high-performing organic posts to a broader audience.
• Lead generation adverts: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram all allow you to collect leads directly within the platform using built-in forms.
• Retargeting adverts: These provide tailored adverts to users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content in some way, encouraging re-engagement.

It’s important to note that you don’t need a huge budget to get started. Begin with a small daily budget and test different advertising formats to identify what works best for your business. Over time, you can optimise your spending towards the ads and formats that deliver the best return on investment, and increase your spend when you can afford to.

Download our free guide

If you would like to find out more about social media marketing and how to get the best results, please download a free copy of our Social Media for Business Guide today by clicking here.