Today, social media has evolved into one of the most effective mediums for marketing. Social media platforms can be utilized for finding potential customers, both in the B2B and B2C sectors.
This makes social media marketing campaigns essential for lead generation. However, many businesses do not fully understand how to harness social media for generating leads.
Hence, this article is a guide on the best practices and the top strategies to generate qualified leads using social media.
Social media leads are potential customers who have expressed interest in your brand, product, or services through social media platforms.
The process of promoting goods or solutions through social platforms is known as social media marketing. Any individual or business that accepts the promotional transaction and agrees to check out the offering through their social media account becomes a social media lead.
There are various strategies to attract customers to your business using social media. Some use paid strategies and others depend on organic engagement. Ultimately, social media is a valuable medium to find leads and drive sales.
Let’s get you prepared with the best practices to get qualified leads using social media.
No matter the marketing campaigns you opt for, you need to know who your target audiences are. Describe your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) based on job title, industry, company size, location, and pain points. Once this is clear, your social media efforts will be laser-focused.
Set goals or targets you wish to achieve within a time frame through your social media campaigns. Beyond being a best practice, this will push your marketing and sales team to focus on the parameters necessary to accomplish every single target.
It’s smart to analyze which platform your target audience is most active on.
Each social media platform has its own audience behavior and demographic profile. So, by understanding the uniqueness of each platform, it is easy for you to tailor your content or posts according to its demographics.
For Example:
If you are prospecting on LinkedIn, which is best for B2B lead generation, you can use advanced search filters and engage with thought leaders and industry professionals.
Instagram is a Gen Z hub. The demographics are mostly into lifestyle brands. It has created a huge influencers market worldwide. Generating leads using Instagram is simple only if you understand its culture.
Facebook is excellent for community building. It can do a lot more, however, if you are aiming to generate quality leads using Facebook, then you can run lead ads. Facebook also allows you to target prospects based on specific factors.
X, formerly known as Twitter, is useful for thought leadership and engaging with trending topics. Here, you can find high-value prospects, and with the right promotional strategy, you can acquire leads.
And finally, TikTok! It is powerful for awareness and reaching new demographics, especially Gen Z.
To measure the success of your campaigns, KPIs are key. Use social media management tools to track and optimize your profiles.
Measure click-through rate (CTR), cost per lead (CPR), lead quality, and conversion rate from time to time. You can refine the content of your posts according to the performance of your campaigns.
A good first impression is all you need to attract leads. The goal is to turn profile visitors into leads. For that, branding is a major factor. High-quality profile pictures and cover photos are the first things profile visitors notice, so keep them professional.
Next, optimize your bio to communicate what your business does and how you can help. Include strong CTAs and relevant website links in your bio to get traffic to your webpage.
With these practices, your social media marketing efforts and strategies are bound to generate leads.
Social media is a phenomenon. It is widespread, and the influence it has on everyone is massive. So, instead of scrolling through your feed for fun, put your profile to better use.
Sell your products and services, promote your brand, and establish an unshakable presence in the market by leveraging social media for lead generation.
Here are 7 expert strategies to generate quality social media leads:
Offer something in return for the contact information of prospects. This process is known as lead magnet.
Build engagement with your prospects by providing a valuable offer such as a guide, eBook, whitepaper, or checklist. Promote the lead magnet on your social media platforms through engaging posts and visuals.
Since the social media post is a mere representation of the gated content, prospects can be redirected to the landing page of the full content present. In this way, to unlock the complete copy of the content material, they have to sign up or exchange contact info.
This ensures that the prospect is interested in your content and wants to learn more about your brand, making lead magnets a key strategy for social media lead generation.
Always remember, collaboration is an authentic promotional strategy. Influencer marketing is a powerful lead generation strategy, particularly in B2C sales.
Today, we have tons of social media influencers. Leveraging their fame or credibility to endorse your brand will supercharge your market reach. Through influencers, you get visibility beyond your own followers.
This may seem like a very B2C pattern to follow, but it can be vital for B2B lead generation as well. Businesses can partner with industry specialists and create social media posts or videos to attract the target audience and get them excited about what's to come.
For B2B sales, you can initiate joint webinars, podcast interviews, or testimonials from industry experts or influencers to attract warm audiences and convert them into leads more easily.
What would we do without content?
Content marketing is not just for social media lead generation, it is a universal strategy that can be infused with email, direct mail, SEO, etc.
However, social media is the most inclusive medium, allowing you to get creative with your content strategy. So, to get qualified leads across social media platforms, you need more than just generic content for outreach and promotions.
Create posts, videos, or reels with content that takes a strong stance on an industry topic. This is a sure-shot way to spark attention among the masses (target audience), start conversations, and attract leads who align with your business.
For example: Cold emailing doesn’t work anymore; personalization isn’t the key in 2025 – you need relevance!
Such polarizing opinions will not be agreed with all your target audiences. But it will help you find the ones who strongly agree with you.
This content marketing strategy, when integrated into your social media posts, is highly effective – it may spark debates, but that’s fine if you’re getting more qualified leads.
Start-ups or new businesses suffer without social proof. It is a major reason why around 90% of start-ups don’t last for more than a year.
We understand that to get social proof, you need customers, and for that, you need to find leads. It is a frustrating chicken-and-egg loop!
This is the real pain point that a lot of businesses face worldwide. Social media is the real catalyst for lead generation in such cases. Whether you have followers or not, just get your stakeholders and well-wishers to share your promotional posts. This is an initial social proof for your business. Further, once you get a small number of customers for your business, make sure to get their reviews, feedback, and testimonials.
Posting testimonials, ratings, and feedback on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn is quite impactful.
This is an instant trust-building strategy, showcasing that you are a legitimate and genuine service provider, ultimately driving in qualified leads and expanding your customer base.
This is a feature in platforms such as Facebook/Meta, LinkedIn, and Instagram. By importing a subscriber list or contact list to the custom audiences feature, marketers can retarget and reach individuals or businesses already familiar with their brand.
More than for lead generation, this is effective for re-engagement and conversion. Since your ad campaigns are targeted towards prospects who are aligned with your business goals, products, and services, sales are imminent.
Furthermore, if you are not interested in re-engaging with lost customers, then the custom audiences feature can be used to create lookalike audiences.
The data you uploaded in the custom audiences feature on Facebook will be used as the source. This way, the system will find prospects who share the characteristics of your current customer base.
Characteristics include demographics, firmographics, technographics, interests, and behaviors. Produce lead magnets and target that audience on social platforms for engagement.
Ultimately, this is a worthwhile social media strategy to generate qualified leads.
Events such as webinars, live broadcasts, live polling, and Instagram Q&A sessions are real-time engagement-building campaigns.
Going live on social media is aura farming; in our case, it is lead farming. Virtual events do more than posts or reels could ever do. You get instant replies, feedback, engagement, promotion, brand awareness, and new followers/subscribers, all at once.
The “live” factor taps into urgency. The FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) factor kicks in, especially when you set limited time offers.
Social media platforms often prioritize live content rather than posts or video content. Live, virtual events are an organic visibility booster. Capture leads for your business by dropping CTAs in the comment section or the chat.
If your event is focused on product or service promotion, then ensure to give proper CTAs such as “DM for more info”.
In short, live or virtual events help prospects learn about your business, understand your offerings in real time, and allow them to take immediate action. The fastest sales funnel process!
Stick to the basics. Because sometimes, you need not do anything fancy to get leads. Just having paid ads across social media platforms can get the job done.
Direct, effective, and result-oriented. Run paid ads to target prospects who best fit your business. Most social media platforms have options to filter reach as per demographics, location, job titles, etc. So, by promoting your posts, you can attract leads.
Paid social ads are powerful because you're not the only one searching; your prospects are also searching. The right ad, seen at the right time, with the right CTA, is blissful for businesses and their ideal customers.
People are always scrolling through their social media feed, and when relevant ads appear, you are most likely to generate qualified leads.
When something has 5.2 billion users, then it’s something that needs to be studied. Or at least taken advantage of.
Unlike email marketing, telemarketing, or direct mail marketing, social media marketing is effective for both B2B and B2C prospecting. You get to tap into a diverse range of audiences.
Social media marketing is a combination of advantages from other marketing channels. You get to build trust, brand visibility, global reach, networking, collaboration, and ultimately better ROI.
“Social Media is the modern word of mouth”
Think of it this way: Social media is where people talk, discover, and decide. If you're not part of that conversation, your competitors probably are.
So, what better place to obtain leads, find customers, and build your brand than social media platforms?
Social media is truly an omnipotent medium that stays true to everyone who utilizes it wisely. Lead generation is just a minute achievement orchestrated through social media.
However, as the topic at hand is lead generation, we say that social media is absolutely necessary to get qualified leads.
Social media is not a medium for definitive or objective conversations. The platforms are established with one common purpose – to share their own opinions and have subjective conversations.
The same applies to marketing or lead generation using social media. There is no definitive strategy you can apply to generate qualified leads. You can implement the best practices and strategies we have suggested, but the approach is in your court.
To conclude, you don’t need 100 leads. You need 10 qualified ones that convert. For that, social media is fundamental.
Krista Grace is a Content Manager, whose expertise lies in SEO marketing, content writing, and data-based management. Working at TargetNXT for more than 6 years, Krista has incorporated her deep insight of search engine optimization and B2B marketing to produce content that ranks high on SERP. She has a keen eye for database management that allows her to keep helping businesses with her contents.
