According to a survey, 68% of marketers say social media helped them generate more leads.

The figure highlights how effective generating leads from social media can be with the right strategies.

The big question becomes, what are the best tactics to generate leads from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms to support your social media marketing efforts?

That’s what this guide is all about.

We’ll cover these four lead generation techniques to optimize your social media marketing efforts, including your overall digital marketing strategies.

1. Host giveaways and contests

When done the right way, running social media contests can be powerful lead generation tactics.

After all, who doesn’t want a chance to win a prize?

You can leverage social media contests to:

• Spread the word about your giveaway, product, and brand. Run contests that encourage audience participation and, in turn, boost lead generation while promoting your business.For instance, you can host an Instagram giveaway with your newly launched product as the prize.

  Also, include viral IG hashtags in your content to make your contest searchable and more visible to wider audiences.

• Gain lead information instantly. Host giveaways that require participants to share basic information, such as their names and email addresses. Participants get a chance to win, and you can get instant lead information, making it a win-win for everyone.
• Drive click-throughs to your landing page. Include a link in your Facebook and Instagram contests that ask participants to fill out your landing page lead forms.It can help drive traffic to your website while allowing you to capture lead information.

Plan and implement your social media contests seamlessly with Vista Social.

The platform lets you schedule your posts for automatic publishing, saving you from manual tasks.

You can also publish your social media posts immediately, add them to a queue, or post them in bulk on your set dates and times.

Image source: vistasocial.com.

Implement fun and engaging social media contests to capture your audience’s attention and generate leads.

Follow foolproof content writing tips to nail your messaging and make your contests a huge success.

2. Provide incentives

“What’s in for me?”

That’s the question most prospects have before signing up for your newsletter and acting on your offers.

Potential customers want to know the value they can get for giving up their details to you.

Offer irresistible incentives to provide value and encourage your prospects to share their information with you.

Some incentives you can offer include the following.

• Gated content. Provide gated content in exchange for getting lead information. For instance, ask for your prospects’ email addresses to give them full access to your whitepapers or ebooks on project management and the top project workflow management software.
• Discount coupons and codes. Offer discounts when prospects act on your offers, such as subscribing to your email newsletters.You can also offer a free first consultation to encourage signups, the way business coach Olga Sol (mastermind.queens) does in her Instagram post.

Image source: instagram.com

You can provide additional services or freebies with your customer’s first purchase or booked appointments, such as offering work-life balance examples and tips.

Develop a solid strategy for generating, nurturing, and converting social media leads into paying customers.

3. Post clickable content

Sharing captivating photos on Facebook or Instagram won’t always be enough to get you leads.

You’ll need to post compelling content that effectively entices your audiences to engage with your posts and act on your offers.

Put simply, your content needs to be click-worthy.

One of the best ways to do this is to create clickable posts, including the following.

• Facebook shoppable posts. Tag products from your Facebook Page shop or catalog in your FB photos and videos.Facebook users can click on these photos’ tags and get directed to your site (if the image comes from the product catalog). If the photo tags are from your shop, users will land on the product details on Facebook.
• Instagram shoppable posts and Stories. Add product stickers to your IG Stories images to create and share shoppable posts.Like FB shoppable posts, Instagram users can click the tags or links and be directed to the item’s product page and details.

  The IG shoppable Story from fashion company Anne Klein is a classic example.

Image source: instagram.com.

Instagram shoppable posts and Stories make it quick and easy for your audiences to shop for your products right from your posts. Convenient customer experiences are always great for lead generation.

Simplify planning, scheduling, and managing your clickable post creation and distribution across social media channels.

Use robust content calendar software to map your content production and publishing for more seamless lead generation.

4. Implement social media lead ads

An effective way to speed up your social media lead generation efforts (or amplify your current lead collection strategies) is to run lead ads.

Some of the social media lead ads you can implement include the following.

• YouTube TrueView (for Action ads). YouTube’s TrueView ad format allows advertisers and marketers to encourage specific user actions, including generating leads.The TrueView ads include prominent buttons linking to your designated website, and you can set them up to generate leads by choosing Leads as your goal as you create the ad.
• LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. The LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms can pre fill form fields based on the user’s profile data. It makes it faster and easier to capture lead information.For example, LinkedIn users interested in buying SEO articles from you can see their email address already pre filled in the form and only add the other necessary details to book a call.
• Instagram lead ads. IG lead ads also provide pre fill form options for seamless customer information gathering, fueling your lead generation initiatives.You can create the lead ad and form via the Facebook Ads manager. Choose your ad objectives and set up the information fields for the data you want to collect, including the name, address, and phone number.

Image source: facebook.com.

Include the social media lead ads in your content tracking strategy to track and measure their performance and effectiveness in generating leads.

Generate more leads from your social media marketing efforts

Optimizing your social media marketing efforts to boost your lead generation initiatives can take time and effort.

While you won’t see significant results overnight, you can set your lead generation efforts up for success by following proven social media marketing tips.

Combine what you learn with reliable tools and refine your strategies to boost your lead generation initiatives.

Many factors come into play when it comes to paid advertising. Those new to the game often think achieving skyrocketing click-through rates (CTRs) and conversions means they’re doing a good job. But that’s not always the case for every industry.

To get the most return out of their pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, businesses should learn which metrics to focus on and exert the most of their efforts. Otherwise, they’ll end up inflating their budget to no avail.

Now, the question is””what are the metrics and figures to benchmark for every industry? The following data will help business owners and advertisers compare and improve their Google Ads campaigns.

Average Cost per Click (CPC)

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CPC is a metric that measures the cost an advertiser pays to the publisher (e.g., Google) each time their ad gets clicked. This varies depending on the competition for a certain keyword and is crucial to their bidding strategy.

Based on the above statistics, CPC for paid search across all industries ranges from $1.40 to $8.67, with an average CPC of $3.53.

Travel, arts and entertainment, and sports and recreation industries have the lowest CPCs, with $1.40, $1.60, and $1.73, respectively.

Meanwhile, legal, dental, and home improvement industries have the highest average CPCs, with $8.67, $6.49, and $5.75, respectively. These findings are consistent with previous reports as legal services fall under a high-value industry.

How to Lower CPC and Maximize Ad Spend

For businesses, the goal is to lower their CPCs to maximize their advertising budget. To achieve this, they should first work on improving their quality score.

Quality score determines the quality of the ad, its keywords, and its landing page. The higher its quality, the lower its CPC, and the better its position on search engines.

There are several ways advertisers can improve their quality score, which include the following:

• Making sure the ad is highly relevant to the keyword and search query they’re bidding on
• Improving their landing page with clear copy and consistent messaging
• Establishing trust by highlighting reviews and testimonials via the landing page
• A/B testing ads with different headlines, selling points, and calls-to-action (CTAs)
• Building their account on highly targeted ad groups
• Analyzing competitor ads and learning from them
• Improving their click-through rate (CTR)

CPCs don’t lower overnight. It involves different strategies that require trial and error. But many businesses don’t have the time and expertise to monitor and improve their campaigns. In such cases, it’s best to place their advertising in the hands of experts. Hiring a reliable Google Ads agency can take a lot of the work off their plate, giving them more time to focus on running their business.

Average Click-Through Rate

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The CTR is another important metric to consider when measuring how well an ad is performing. It measures how often a person who sees an ad is likely to click it. It is measured by the number of clicks divided by the number of times an ad is shown.

CTR = clicks / impressions ✕ 100

For example, if an e-commerce ad has 10 clicks after being seen 200 times, the CTR would be 5%. CTR heavily depends on an ad’s quality score. But many factors contribute to this metric.

According to the above figures, CTRs across all industries range from 3.84% to 19.67%, with an average of 6.18%. The industries arts and entertainment, travel, and sports and recreation have the highest averages, with 10.67%, 8.54%, and 7.73% of CTR, respectively. As with previous benchmark reports, the numbers have been consistently high for these industries.

The lowest average CTRs are on attorneys and legal, home and home improvement, and dental services, which got 3.84%, 4.21%, and 4.69%, respectively.

How to Boost CTR for the Business

A low CTR can mean many things. The ad may be targeting the wrong audience or may not target their specific pain points.

To improve the CTR, advertisers should focus on improving their quality scores. Some of the best practices that effectively boost a campaign’s CTR are as follows:

• Optimizing the headline and copy. Use relevant keywords but include them seamlessly within the copy.
• Write a compelling CTA. It should be clear and direct to the point.
• Optimize the ad image. Visuals greatly influence clicks for an ad. Run A/B tests using different image copies and designs to learn what works best.
• Use hashtags. Hashtags attract views. Spend some time researching trending hashtags, and use ones that are relevant to the campaign.

Average Cost per Lead

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Also known as cost per action, cost per lead is how much was spent per conversion. In other words, this shows the cost of an ad for every time someone takes its desired action””which can either be to make a purchase, fill out a form, or contact a business.

Across all industries, the average cost per lead is $41.40, from a range of $14.88 to $73.70. This means each conversion costs a business $41.40.

Legal services took the top spot for the industry, with the highest cost per lead at $73.70. Furniture came next with $64.72, and finance and insurance with $62.80.

Meanwhile, animals and pets got the lowest cost per lead at $14.88. Automotive got the second lowest at $17.81, then restaurants at $20.49.

Based on Wordstream’s past reports, the current overall average is lower compared to the previous figures. This is great news for businesses that want to make the most of their advertising budget.

How to Lower Cost per Lead for Paid Ads

Advertisers should aim to reduce their cost per lead to save on advertising costs. Here are some tips and tricks businesses can achieve this goal:

• Use analytics and eliminate poor-performing digital marketing channels.
• Narrow the customer profile and find an in-market demographic for their products and services.
• Optimize campaigns to reduce poor-quality leads. Advertisers can either lower bids or review and change up keywords.
• Write specific ad copies. For example, include specific details, such as the price and product type, to avoid confusion among potential customers.

Average Conversion Rate

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Conversion rate measures how many people actually clicked on an ad and converted or followed the desired action. For example, a consultation service puts up an ad leading to a “contact us” form. Its conversion rate is the percentage of people who clicked on an ad and actually booked a consultation with them.

Based on the report, the average conversion rate across all industries is 8.82%. This is according to a range of 3.25% to 19.19%.

Animals and pets have the highest conversions at 19.19%. Physicians and surgeons follow this at 19.15% and auto services at 15.23%.

Meanwhile, industries with the lowest conversion rates include furniture, apparel and jewelry, and real estate, with figures at 3.25%, 3.6%, and 3.93%, respectively. These industries have been consistent in their placements when it comes to conversion rates.

How to Improve Conversion Rate

The million-dollar question marketers and advertisers ask among themselves continues to be on how to improve conversion rates.

Optimizing for conversions is important for advertisers as it allows them to keep their customer acquisition costs low while getting the most value from their current site visitors. The goal is to increase revenue per visitor, drive more customers, and grow the business.

Before applying steps to optimize conversions, the first step is identifying a business’s conversion goals. This will depend on the industry and type of business.

Here are common conversion goals for every industry type:

• E-commerce. E-commerce businesses often look at product sales, cart completion rates, and newsletter sign-ups. Business owners who want to start their own online store should be able to optimize their website to boost these factors.

• Travel. Conversions may include the number of bookings, purchases, or social shares.

• B2B. Marketers can look at deals closed and the number of leads generated through bookings and consultations.

• Media and other brands. Other conversion goals include ad views, page views, downloads, engagement, and newsletter subscriptions.

Effective Tips to Supercharge the Conversion Rate

Low conversion rates can mean many things, mainly stemming from a poor-performing landing page. Here are some proven ways to make an ad more compelling:

1. Add a pop-up of an enticing offer to your site.
2. The fewer the form fields, the better.
3. Strengthen social proof with real reviews and testimonials.
4. Eliminate distractions that will only make visitors steer clear of the CTA.
5. Add an appealing offer that resonates with the market.

The Takeaway

There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for advertising, so businesses need to leverage data analytics to measure and improve their advertising performance.

With these benchmark figures, advertisers will be able to focus on the metrics that best work for their industry, analyze how it adds up to their current ad strategies, and work on ways to boost their results in future campaigns.

In the world of SEO, you’re probably aware that a vast amount of research goes into each client’s individual campaign. But as an SEO agency, sometimes you might simply lack the tools to deliver the best SEO strategy to your clients.

Link building is a powerful strategy that brings in relevant traffic and helps to improve conversion rates for your clients. But how do you go about structuring a link building strategy if you have little knowledge in this space?

The answer is, you don’t have to. Thankfully, link building services are available for you to outsource in order to meet your clients’ needs head-on. But don’t be fooled by every company that claims to offer link building services.

White label link building is the practice of building quality links the right way for your clients-without worrying about link schemes or creating spammy content.

If you’re an SEO professional looking to deliver quality link building services, the following will provide a template for what to expect.

Outsourcing for Large Link Building Campaigns

When one of your clients needs links built, they’re probably not talking about just a few. In fact, you might be dealing with a client that wants hundreds of links over a given time period, and that’s a tall order for any SEO professional to handle.

As an SEO professional, your agency is more than likely focused on already complex tasks to deliver your clients the results they want. And building hundreds of links might not be a task that you’re able to complete effectively.

With a service that offers white label link building for agencies, you’re able to stay focused on your own work while the professionals go to work for you, freeing up your time to handle daily business affairs as usual.

Build Your Own Brand Awareness

When you hear the term “side-effect,” you might start to get a bit nervous. But with white label link building you shouldn’t. In fact, one happy side-effect of using white label link building services is that you’ll not only be able to help your client gain more brand awareness, you’ll be able to build your own as well.

For example, if you’re using a link building service for your client, you’re more than likely going to help them accomplish some of the following goals:

• Gain greater conversion
• Improve relevant traffic
• Build site authority
• Increase sales
• Build relationships with authority publishers
• Gain greater visibility

As you can imagine, your clients are going to love all of the points listed. And as a result, you’re likely to get more referrals, positive testimonials, and develop a long-term relationship with your clients. All of this can add up to greater brand development for your agency, which means more clients, and more money in your pocket.

Save Money Each Month

Link building programs take a huge amount of work and a lot of time to perfect in order for the strategy to be employed effectively. As such, this is why link building companies have professionals who are highly skilled working on link building campaigns.

If you choose to hire a freelance link building expert or hire in-house link building professionals, this is going to cost you far more than it would to outsource to a professional link building company. And this is why outsourcing for link building tasks can be extremely cost-effective.

Link building professionals already have the knowhow and the necessary tools to build links for your clients. In fact, many of these companies offer bulk packages that can suit your clients needs for a much lower price than you’ll pay by hiring in-house experts.

Build Better Content

Professional link building companies also understand that content marketing plays a critical role in the success of a link building campaign. And this is why many link building companies already have a highly skilled team of writers and content experts to generate engaging content that gets results.

Basically, you can’t have a quality link building service without having high-quality content. And this is because high quality content engages your client’s target audience. Correspondingly, your client’s target audience is more likely to read the content and click on the links if it’s engaging and informative.

With better content you’ll also be able to further drive your client’s conversion rates upward. And by scaling their program in this manner, your clients are sure to be happy with the results that you can deliver.

Link building services can be your best ally as an SEO professional if you’re looking to offer your clients the most value. And when you’re able to deliver quality results in a timely manner, you’ll be doing your agency a favor and establishing yourself as an industry leader.

No one can deny the fact that marketing is essential when you want to promote your products or services. Companies can take different approaches to reach targeted customers using a variety of marketing strategies.

Implementing an effective marketing strategy can help you boost your sales. If you do not want to waste your time and energy on useless marketing activities, this article highlights what marketing actually works today.

Cause Marketing

Cause marketing or cause-related marketing is a marketing approach in which companies execute campaigns by supporting some social causes and beliefs.

Generally, non-profit organizations arrange these types of campaigns and the for-profit businesses support them financially.

This is one effective marketing method that businesses use to promote their brand by bringing awareness to some cause.

You might have come across several cause-related marketing campaigns that are presented by some reputable and popular brands. For instance, Walgreens and Red Nose Day collaborated to raise money for deprived children.

Cause marketing can help for-profit businesses to increase brand awareness and reputation. But, on the other hand, non-profit organizations get exposure.

Digital Marketing

One of the most powerful marketing strategies (and getting a lot of attention nowadays) is digital marketing. Digital marketing or online marketing is the tactic to promote a brand in such a way that it can reach out to potential customers via the internet or other digital communication media.

This means you are able to promote your service using email, social media, web-based advertising, and text and multimedia messages. In short, any marketing campaign that uses digital communication is digital marketing.

SEO, link building, content marketing, social media marketing, PPC, and email marketing are some of the examples of digital marketing.

The primary benefit of digital marketing is that it becomes easy to reach the target audience cost-effectively and efficiently. This way, you can get increased traffic on your website, which eventually drives sales and recognizes your brand.

However, the recommendation is not to try every digital marketing tactic at the same time. Instead, you start small and grow your way into it. For example, you can build white label backlinks as your first digital marketing campaign to increase your brand visibility.

Relationship Marketing

Another form of positive marketing is relationship marketing, in which the main strategy is to focus on customer satisfaction, retention, and value instead of making sales the first priority.

Conducting relationship marketing campaigns is not such a big deal. Generally, companies organize events to get in touch with their clients and build a loyal community. The main thing is to focus on the needs of the clients and solve their problems accordingly.

The main benefit of relationship marketing is that organizations can save their money and time by only focusing on their customers and the ways to serve them very well.

Scarcity Marketing

Scarcity marketing is an unconventional marketing strategy that aims to tempt customers to buy something before it gets out of stock. People fear missing out on such deals and they end up purchasing the product or the services.

There are many eCommerce websites and travel websites that use this strategy to amp up their sales. These websites play scarcity games by informing the viewers how many rooms are left for booking in a specific hotel. So if the customers want to book them, they need to hurry up.

The strategy is to make people feel competitive over limited availability. If the marketing campaigns can be done right, then it can be a powerful method to boost your sales.