Some of the most common goals we see social media marketers set out to achieve is driving more traffic to your website and generating more leads. But how do you do so?
When starting your social media accounts it can be difficult to gain a fan following. And without the fan following, no one is seeing any of your posts and it’s even harder to get more leads and drive traffic back to your website.
Generally the best social media strategy for any platform is to create content that is rich in value and informative for your target followers.
That should be your first objective. Once content is flowing and you are nicely integrating links to your website in the form of blog posts and/or landing pages you may want to turn up the heat.
- Paid Facebook ads: An ad campaign on Facebook can multiply the number of visitors from Facebook to your website by more than 2,000%. In part this effectiveness is based on the sheer number of Facebook users—almost 1 billion. The other part of this surprising surge in effectiveness is due to the nature of the network. Brands that make an impression on visitors are encouraged to share that favorability with their friends. This shared enthusiasm contributes to increased purchasing activity.
- Paid LinkedIn ads: For B2B enterprise, LinkedIn is usually the social network of choice. Although priced higher than Facebook, LinkedIn offers ads that reach almost 200 million users, many of whom are managers and executives of their organizations. LinkedIn has recently introduced an Application Programming Interface (API), which enables clients to customize analytical tools. APIs allow marketers to determine how effective ads are and more easily fine-tune the campaign to increase ROI.
Now, it’s important to remember that when advertising on these two platforms you don’t necessarily want to be driving that click through traffic to your website. Instead, you may want to try driving traffic to a landing page where you can provide visitors a unique offer in exchange for their basic contact information. Or try driving traffic to your actual social media account feed where they can get a rich amount of content
As we pointed out before, a successful social media strategy includes posting a mix of content; your own as well as other information that is rich in value to your users.
You can then promote your LinkedIn page or your Facebook page and have a wealth of information for the end user right there so you become a trusted source and visitors are more inclined to link to YOUR blog posts and your landing pages.
Once you’ve gained more followers from your advertising efforts you, try to focus on these tactics:
- Capture visitors: If you are attracting visitors from Facebook and LinkedIn but only converting a tiny fraction of them, you may wish to redesign your landing page. Most visitors will devote only a few seconds to a web page, so you need to communicate your value proposition, offer premium content and prominently display a Call-to-Action. If you can convince a visitor that you have something to offer them that your competitors cannot, then you have secured a new customer.
- Produce shareable content: One of the key features of social networks is the discovery of new and interesting information, pictures and videos. Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest facilitate the sharing of this type of content, and its dissemination expedites network building and search engine optimization. This should spur your marketing team to create original and engaging materials that hopefully will impact a wider group of people than those who visit your social media site or your website.
- Engage visitors: It is not enough merely to create a page on Facebook and add some interesting content. You need to instill visitor’s desire to learn more about you. The easiest way to inspire curiosity or affection is to start a dialogue with your visitors. Responding to comments, questions and complaints can produce positive feelings and a little humor or compassion may generate authentic warmth towards your brand.
There are other advertising mechanisms to get more visitors to your social media pages and then, hopefully, in turn, to your website and your landing page. However, LinkedIn and Facebook advertising are two, simple, hands-on ways you can promote your pages and eventually capture new leads and more website traffic.
It’s important to remember that advertising on social media accounts is only a worthwhile endeavor if you already have a sound social media strategy in place.
Not sure if your social media strategy is solid? We can help with that! Click the link below for the latest social media marketing tips and techniques.
