With over one billion active users on Facebook per day, it’s safe to say that who you want to reach is likely using Facebook. Those leads may also be using one of your competitor’s products. To look for those leads, start by doing a quick search on Facebook of your business area plus the city you’re located in. A search for credit unions in Omaha, Nebraska pulls up all of the public posts — from personal and business pages — that match those terms.
Learn more about your leads to start marketing them products
All of these people who show up in that search could be your new customers. Start by taking notes on the demographics of people participating in this conversation. Are they a specific age? What types of products or services are they talking about? Are your competitors showing up in this search? Take note. From there, join groups that appear in those search terms that you see prospecting potential in. Staying engaged and monitoring the conversation around your industry will help you understand what your leads need so you're able to approach them. When those leads start engaging back with you, it’s rewarding. You start getting excited about the possibility of converting them into a customer. But once you get them to talk to you and like your page, how do you get product into their hands?
Start enticing those leads with free stuff on Facebook
If your brand isn’t running contests on social media, this is an easy way to generate interest in your products and reach out to potential leads who have identified that they want or need what you're selling. Think about using engagement questions that entice people who are a good fit for your products: "Share two reasons why our products could help make your life easier and we’ll give you a $50 gift card. We’ll pick a winner at 6PM CT.” You could even encourage users to share the post for an additional engagement and reach metric. People love free stuff and you’ll have a list of Facebook users who – at the very least – now know your products and have said they could use them.
Add or provide value to leads' personal or professional lives
Once you've identified a list of Facebook leads, it’s time get valuable content in front of them and encourage click-throughs to your website. Once they are there, ask for some basic personal information before they can download your content. On the back end, you’ll be able to track if they download your content and if they click through to other areas of the website. Your business may want to consider the same tactic for coupons – share via Facebook that you’re offering 15% off, a free consultation or sample with a Facebook fan’s email sign up. You'll generate leads easiest this way and be able to define which ones will most likely turn into customers. We even use software to qualify leads for businesses and products.
Serve paid ads to increase sales and awareness
One fast way to generate Facebook leads is to target them via the ‘collect leads for your business’ advertising feature. Promote your newsletter, upcoming event or just find out if they want to know more about your business by tailoring ads to your defined audience. So, if you’re a real estate agent, you can use this feature to target Facebook users who recently became engaged or those who had a baby. And along with lead collection, there are so many other ways to reach those leads – including video and brand awareness ads. While you’ll have to invest more initially, this may help get your business get started with lead generation.
Our free social prospecting workbook will help you get started
Looking for more ways to find the right people for your products? Start by downloading our social prospecting workbook to get additional tips on how to take action with potential prospects. Plus, you'll learn more about helpful tools like Facebook's Graph Search.