The Difference Between Generating Sales and Lead Capturing on Social Media

Sales and signups are two digital marketing goals nearly every business has in common. Sales produce revenue, and email signups produce leads. However, sales and signups are acquired in different ways, and social media isn’t always effective.

Have you been using social media to market your business? Maybe you’ve been on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter for a while and you’ve started to notice that marketing your business on these platforms is a little exhausting. 

If your only goal is to maximize your social media followers, you can nail those conversions easily. However, if you also want sales and signups, you’ve probably realized that social media isn’t enough.

First of all, with platforms like Facebook and Twitter, it’s not easy to capture attention since most people are either multi-tasking or scrolling fast on their smartphone. LinkedIn is a little better, but does anyone really convert from your posts or messages? It’s not hard to capture attention on Instagram when you post beautiful images, but does anyone ever become so intrigued they become a paying customer?

Social media platforms are best for capturing leads

The truth is, social media marketing isn’t what you think. While it’s part of digital marketing, it’s not flawlessly effective for every industry. It’s great for some types of products and services, but not all. Still, social media has been promoted as a way to generate sales, while its true power has been obscured: lead generation.

That doesn’t mean you can’t generate sales from social media – you absolutely can and many businesses do this well. However, it’s much easier to use platforms like Facebook and Instagram to capture leads than it is to generate sales. If you’re struggling to generate sales, and you can’t seem to tweak your campaigns enough to get better results, it might not be your fault.

Buying a serious product or service takes more time and effort than many people are willing to invest while scrolling through social media feeds. Their minds are elsewhere; they might even be in the restroom or scrolling through their feed under the dinner table. Any attention you capture in these cases will be fleeting. However, it could be enough to get someone to give you their email address.   

Use social media primarily for capturing leads

One way to maximize the time you spend marketing your business on social media is to use it to capture leads. Post to your fans and followers, but always make sure to include a link that goes to a page on your website that asks for an email address. Even if you’re advertising a coupon code or sitewide discount, give people access once they sign up for your email list. Give them a reason to click and sign up for the discount.

It takes less effort to capture email addresses on social media than it does to work your leads into becoming a paid customers. However, to get results, you’ll need to optimize your lead generation efforts both on social media and on the landing pages where you send people.

 

Generate sales on social media through PPC ads

 You can still use social media to generate sales, but you won’t accomplish that effectively through your public or private posts. Trying to generate sales through daily posts to your fans is going to drain you of energy and you won’t get sufficient results to make it worth the effort.

To generate sales on social media, you need to promote your products and services through PPC ads. Running PPC ads on social media platforms will put those ads in front of your specified target audience. You’ll probably reach some of your existing followers, but you’ll also reach people who haven’t seen you before. With PPC ads,  you’ll reach a larger number of potential customers and well-crafted ads will get you plenty of conversions.

Think of social media marketing as social media lead generation 

As long as you think of social media marketing primarily as a means of generating sales, you’re going to fall short of your desired results. Instead, think of social media marketing as a lead-generation tactic that can also be used to generate sales with PPC ads. When you shift your mindset, you won’t feel disappointed when your daily posts don’t produce many sales. From there, you can tailor your posts to generate leads, and that’s how you’ll leverage the true power of social media.