One of the primary goals of social media marketing is generating motivated and qualified leads. This is accomplished by tracking your keyword phrases and initiating conversations with those who mention your keywords- whether they are in a Tweet, on a blog or anywhere else in social media. To turn these conversations into leads you need two things: An offer and an effective landing page designed to collect the information that constitutes the lead.

Lead Generation: The offer

The offer is something you give away that is very relevant to the conversation you are having within social media. Given that these conversations are public, you should assume that many people in addition to the person you’re communicating with will see that offer and that they share those interests. Because of this highly targeted audience it is critical that your offer be of high value and that you make it very easy to receive. The offer may be a white paper (not a sales pitch- they’re already interested), a webinar, some consulting time, a free version, etc. Something compelling and valuable enough that the recipient will tell others about it.

Utilizing URLs (web addresses) effectively

Assuming you have a great offer, the most important aspect of the lead generation process is the experience your prospect has while acquiring that offer. The experience starts with the URL in your conversation. You’re going to build a dedicated landing page that you use for all your conversations, a landing page that specifically communicates information about your offer and is only used for your engagements. You want a unique URL so you can track the effectiveness of your communications on that level. If you have multiple individuals out there engaging on your company’s behalf in social media each should have their own URL and landing page. This allows you to track the scope and effectiveness of their efforts.

The URL itself is ideally on your domain. However, if you have a long domain name it will take up too much space on Twitter. Using a URL shortener like bit.ly has several advantages. First, it shortens that number of characters required. It also keeps track of the clicks from each place you use the URL, giving you a good idea of how viral each instance is. Again, virtually everything in social media is measurable.

Use your URL consistently in all social media interactions

Where do you use the URL? When commenting on blogs be consistent in using the URL in the website field on the comment form. Register with Disqus, Intense Debate and Backtype (commenting platforms) to track comment threads on sites that use those platforms. Always offer up the URL in Twitter exchanges and do this publicly rather than via Direct Messages.

Landing pages are not home pages

So you’ve got your URL and you are spreading it around. No matter how good you are at engagement if the URL does not deliver the user to a great landing page you’ve wasted your efforts. Here are some factors that make a great landing page:

• It is not your home page. Home pages are too general and require the visitor to search for the offer that enticed them to click.
• It is a dedicated page that briefly and compellingly, in plain English (no biz speak!), describes what they are signing up for.
• It clearly states that you will not share their information with anyone.
• It contains a form requiring the minimal information you require from a lead. In a recent lead gen program we required only the email address but asked for name, title, company and phone number. The email was required for delivery of the offer. You can require all of those elements, however nothing stops them from filling in fake info. And the more complex the form is, the more there will bail out on you.
• Always have a contact option that says: ‘Need More Info? Call (or email) Martin Edic now at 585-727-3119′. You don’t want to let a hot prospect slip through.

That is all. No nav elements, no graphics, no pitches for other products or services. They are there to sign up for your offer. The completed form is sent to your sales group or automatically entered into your CRM app as a lead.

Don’t pitch, participate

Effective landing pages eliminate all roadblocks to acquiring the valued information that turns a social media conversation into a qualified lead. Never spread your offer out generically by posting the same pitch over and over. You want to find motivated and qualified leads. This requires an effort on your part, an effort that is worth it when you consider the value of such a lead (I’ll be covering how to value a lead in the near future).

Need help getting your social media lead generation project up and running? We should talk. Contact me at martinedic.com