Let us lead with the jargon first, what exactly is a lead? In a nutshell, leads are prospective customers. The act of categorizing the user-base according to demography, age, and spending habits is referred to as Lead Generation. The ultimate goal of lead generation is to make a conversion or persuade prospects into making a purchase. For this, marketers use any information that helps them shape marketing funnels towards the ultimate goal – conversion.
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What are some Popular Platforms for Generating Leads?
Let us look at some of the offline mediums for lead generation. First, we have local community gatherings. If you have a small business yet a successful one, there is no reason to feel exclusive. There is so much you can learn from other businesses. How they operate, what their revenue model and target audience are, what retention strategies they are using, and many more. You can get insight into all these areas from one single meetup. If you look around, you will instantly find many community gatherings. If you fail to find them, you can always use MeetUp and discover events nearby.
Where to Find Prospects and Turn Them into Leads?
However, we can’t deny the fact that meetups are not effective for certain industries. Many growing industries generate the most leads using online mediums. For instance, if you have a WordPress plugin, you have a higher chance of lead generation from different online platforms. This makes complete sense, doesn’t it? To generate a lead for a business that is completely dependent on the internet, you need to understand the online behavior of its prospects.
If you have such a product or your target audience has a high dependency on the internet, you are better off using online mediums.
1. Facebook
First, we have Facebook. The most obvious, and of course, the most popular social media platform on the internet. In the first quarter of 2020, Facebook had an active user-base of 2.6 Billion. People engage with others via comments, likes, tags, mentions, shares, status updates, and of course, instant messaging. For businesses, Facebook has a couple of tools to offer. For instance, the Facebook Ads feature lets marketers run campaigns targeting their niche.
2. Google
If you are looking for ways to generate leads organically, what better medium than Google! Google is the top search engine on the planet. Due to its widespread use, the term “Google” was recognized as a separate word by the Oxford Dictionary community back in 2006. Since then, Google has only seen growth, massive growth. Along with generalized useful tools such as Google Maps, Google Calendar, Google Drive, it also has other specific tools for lead generation such as Google Adwords, Google Adsense, Google Keyword Planner.
3. Twitter
This microblogging site is popular for being the first place on the internet where news breaks. With over 320 Million active users, you will find thousands of people who you can turn into successful leads. If you are a Twitter user, you already know how quickly old tweets get buried under newer ones. According to an estimate, roughly 200 Billion tweets are sent each day. Marketers can schedule tweets beforehand, even one year in advance. Moreover, hashtags campaigns, which were at the core of the #MeToo movement, are also an effective lead generation method.
4. LinkedIn
Next, we have LinkedIn. Some say LinkedIn has a higher chance of conversion than any other online platform. This makes sense, as most of its users are professionals. Unlike other social media platforms, LinkedIn boasts a user-base with the final say in making a purchase. Similarly, most high-level executives and directors use LinkedIn for a better insight to back their decisions with.
Now, if you haven’t yet conducted a LinkedIn campaign, let us help you. While running LinkedIn campaigns, always try to find out your prospects’ personal contact information. That way, you can reach them personally.
But how do you do so? Now that you know what to aim for with LinkedIn campaigns, let us share a useful tool. A tool that makes running LinkedIn campaigns easier.
How do platforms help with LinkedIn Campaigns?
SignalHire is an online tool that helps marketers, recruiters, and sales personnel to curate verified contact details about their prospects. Profiles searched don’t necessarily need to be in your LinkedIn connections. Extracting verified email IDs from any LinkedIn profile takes only five minutes of your time.
Open an account.
Install the Chrome extension.
Open any LinkedIn profile and select the “SH” icon on the top-right corner of your browser.
From the new prompt, select the “Reveal Contacts” button.
That’s it. You will be presented with contact details for that account.
That’s how simple it is.
Turn LinkedIn Prospects into Leads
Using the Free version, you can extract both emails and phone numbers from 10 LinkedIn accounts per month. However, you can easily extend this limit by upgrading your credit. Unlike other online tools that have multiple pricing tiers, Platforms offers more flexible pricing for everyone. You pay for only what you want to use. Anyone can buy email credits that allow one to extract more email IDs, or get more phone credits to extract more phone numbers. Along with credit extension, you can also request a custom plan for you that meets your campaign requirements and unlocks other premium features such as ATS/CRM integrations so you can export emails as PDF.
Final Words
By now, you must be wondering, “why should I get that kind of platform when I can get LinkedIn Recruiter?”. Well, the most obvious reason for that is, LinkedIn recruiter charges a hefty amount for each time you try to look up contact details for a random account. Whereas, profiles searched can be completely random. Some of them offer more features and tools than LinkedIn Recruiter does, also it charges you for what you use, no hidden costs. Moreover, along with LinkedIn, the platform can be used to curate verified information from Facebook, Twitter, MeetUp, Quora, Dribble, and every other popular social media platform.