Social media platforms are popular places to market your business – regardless of your specific industry or niche. Some of the most popular social media platforms to market your business with, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, have 415 million users in the USA. This means that no matter who your target audience is, you can be sure that at least some of them are on social media.
Social media marketing agencies are supposed to help clients generate new leads online using social media platforms. Unfortunately, we find that our clients tend to accept a minimum of effort from the agency or freelancer, only coming up with new posts for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.
To be effective at generating leads from social media, look for these signs from your agency of choice.
Before any social media marketing company can efficiently and successfully market your business, they’ll want to learn about your sales cycle. With so many different businesses, especially in your competitive niche, no two have the exact the same sales cycle.
Your preferred social media marketing company should work to understand everything about your sales cycle, including the problems your products or services solve, the audience that finds this most valuable, and your goals for your business. The reason this is important is because the way you use social media and the way your competitors use it will be different. Business lead generation is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.
Most social media marketing companies will offer a social media specialist to help you understand what social media platforms are available, the advantages of each, and how they might benefit your business. What you’re looking for are options for how to use the platforms, how you should measure success, and what to expect for results.
For most companies, social media amplifies existing lead generation efforts, so beware of any company that doesn’t take the time to understand all of your other business sales lead generation projects.
Social media marketing companies pride themselves on their ability to create the content you need to share on your best social media platforms, plus they’ll run paid ads to reach your target audience. The challenge comes from the agency’s desire to hit content production targets, and the client’s ability to come up with content topics. Get a strong sense of where the agency expects the content ideas to come from, and if they’ll source it all, be careful. Your team, especially your sales and customer service teams, need to be the source of your content because they talk directly to your clients and prospects.
In addition to advice on how to manage social media marketing companies, we have some ideas you can implement immediately. The first of these ideas is built on the assumption that you are sending your prospecting clients to your website.