Lead Generation: How To Turn Clicks Into Customers

'We Listen So You Don’t Have To' is a recurring series by MarketTap, where we recap the latest and greatest of the digital marketing and social media podcasts. Times, they are a-changin’ and we’re dedicated to keeping up to date with all the trends, tips, and technologies. We believe in sharing this wealth of knowledge so we can help your business grow.

This week we tuned into Social Media Social Hour Podcast with Tyler Anderson and his guest Billy Shaw, one of the top online marketing influencers, educators, and practitioners.

Your business is all set up. You’re on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Your website is locked and loaded. It’s time to sell. You need to find your customers, generate leads, and turn those leads into paying customers. What’s the next step?

Paid Social Advertising

“People are taking the slow lane when there is this giant opportunity with paid ads right now to bypass all the BS.” - Billy Shaw

A well-structured marketing and advertising strategy cannot be stressed enough. Social networks are constantly updating, making it harder for smaller businesses to be seen and heard when marketing themselves organically. More and more companies and brands are using social platforms to market their businesses and advertising space is getting scarce. Now, more than ever, it is crucial to look into a paid marketing strategy. Putting dollars behind your content will ensure you are reaching more potential customers in your target demographic with frequency, at that. It is imperative to have a budget for paid ads.

Be Specific with Your Audience

“If every entrepreneur and marketer had to get ONE tattoo it should be two words ‘BE SPECIFIC’” - Billy Shaw

The days of big billboards marketing are over. However, this is still how many people view advertising: get a broad message out to as many people as possible. Not only does this strategy not work anymore, social platforms will actually punish you for placing ads in front of people that are not relevant by charging you more. Building specific audiences and having specific ad sets tailored to the needs and desires of these segmented audiences will without a doubt lead more potential customers down the funnel than one broad message intended to target everyone.

How to Build A Specific Audience

1. Stereotype. Based on life experiences, make assumptions about your audience’s behaviors. Get inside their heads.
2. Narrow in on locations. This is very important for local, brick and mortar businesses, however, e-commerce businesses should be targeting specific locations and neighborhoods where they know their intended demographics live and work.
3. Create audience profiles. What are their needs, desires, and problems? Where do they work? Do they have dependents? How much do they make?
4. Separate genders. While this may not be the case for everyone, but more commonly, the different genders have different interests and responses to different content.
5. Make different ad sets for each stereotype or audience profile. People like to envision themselves and will respond better when they can relate.
6. Do research and find out which platforms your audience is on and create platform-specific content for those channels (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc).

Create A Strong Landing Page

An ad should never click through to a website. No one wants to have to do the digging and work to find what they thought they were clicking through to see. Send your clicks through to a landing page and make that landing page as simple and straightforward as possible.

1. Have a bold and clear headline.
2. Provide 3 reasons as to why your potential customer should give you their information (video works best, but bulleted lists are fine).
3. Ask for a name, email, and phone number (90% of text messages are opened and read within 3 minutes of receiving). People will be hesitant to give out more and may opt out altogether if they are required to.
4. Have an enticing and specific CTA. Nix the “Submit” and the “Sign up for newsletter” and instead address their problem specifically. If you are a gym, “Show me how I can get in shape” or a clothing brand “Update my wardrobe”.
5. Embed pixels on your site so you can retarget. Follow-up is key.

Extra Tips to Turn Leads into Customers

• Host a giveaway. A lot of businesses are afraid to give away something upfront. But, people buy based on the experience. Value is created after the experience.
• Get people to come try the product. Once they see that you are the solution, they’ll be hooked.
• Follow up with an e-mail, phone call or text message.
• Is there an opportunity to partner with an influencer on social media? Sometimes potential buyers need someone to vouch for the product or service before purchase, so partnering with an influencer could be a great way to reach your audience through a different medium. Find out more about influencer marketing by clicking here.