Direct or Social? What is Better for Lead Generation?

One question that often troubles entrepreneurs is which is the best marketing method to generate more leads—direct or social?

There’s no denying that both have their place in the marketing arena, but it is also equally true that social marketing offers many unique advantages, one of which is the ability to generate more leads.

Read on to learn the top benefits of social media marketing and three tips to generate more leads via this medium.

5 Advantages of Social Media Lead Generation

1. Faster results

This and the one that follows next are perhaps two of the most important benefits of social media marketing.

Setting up a social media campaign takes less time, and if it’s good, you start getting the attention of the audience within a few days or weeks. And if your campaign is damn good, it might go viral the moment you launch it, making your brand famous overnight.

On the other hand, direct marketing takes time to make an impact, even if the campaign is brilliantly planned and executed.

2. Costs less

Direct marketing is costly. You’ll have to spend a huge amount of money to launch and run it; whereas, social media marketing can take your marketing message to millions of viewers at a fraction of the cost. In fact, many small businesses only use Twitter, Facebook, and blogging to market their products, because it can be done free of cost or with little money.

3. More opportunities to convert

Every post made on social media platform gives you an opportunity to generate more leads and convert them. Once you’ve build a following, with every new blog post, Facebook post, tweet, video, image, or comment, you can not only interact with all your existing customers but also new customers. While not every interaction will result in a conversion, increasing your following will definitely increase your sales.

4. One-to-one contact

Unlike direct marketing, social marketing allows you to establish a one-to-one contact with your potential and existing customers. Facebook, Twitter, online forums, your blog site, and the like gives you a chance to converse directly with your audience and know them better.

5. Improved customer insight

Social media allows you to speak to as well as listen to your customers. Through social listening you can gain valuable insight about their preferences and behavior. For instance, reading user comments gives an accurate idea of what viewers think about your product or service or brand in general.

3 Ways to Generate Leads Using Social Media

Some of the top ways to use social media to generate leads are:

• Twitter Chats – Thanks to the focused audience communities, chats on Twitter give you a great opportunity to generate more leads.
• LinkedIn Groups – LinkedIn brings professionals of similar interest together. Creating a new LinkedIn Group or joining an existing is a smart move as you can then interact with people with a strong interest in your area of expertise or areas related to it.
• Facebook Advertising – Running ads on Facebook can help you generate more leads. However, do not restrict yourself to displaying ads only; regularly also post relevant, quality content to build trust and interact with your audience.

Read more about social media lead generation.

About the Author:

Vaishnavi Agrawal loves pursuing excellence through writing and have a passion for technology. She has successfully managed and run personal technology magazines and websites. She currently writes for intellipaat.in, a global training company that provides e-learning and professional certification training.