The key to building a sustainable long-term business lies in ensuring that you can keep leads flowing through for your sales reps to close. Your sales team is an asset and when they are working efficiently at meeting and exceeding targets, wonderful things happen for your business.

With billions of people logging in each day, Facebook provides a unique opportunity to not just reach people in your target market, but also to measure which strategies are working best at bringing in leads so that you can give them more focus. However, the power which Facebook gives businesses can also leave them scratching their heads as to exactly how to craft a winning campaign.

Before we delve into the 10 ways to use Facebook for lead gen, let’s breakdown the foundational principle of successful social media marketing. A winning Facebook lead gen strategy can be summarized as: placing your message in its most enticing form in front of the right target audience and nurturing them into customers using content.

For clarity, let’s break that down even further.

1) Message: This has to appeal to your target audience, otherwise conversion rates suffer. The best way to do is to brainstorm the type of content your audience is likely to be interested in. Moreover, your message should pre-qualify them as the right candidate for your services. What you don’t want to do is fill up your pipeline with ice cold leads. It is a waste of time for your sales team.

2) The right target audience: You need to place your message in front of people most likely to be interested in your offer. Take your time when creating your customer avatar. Carry out research into the buyers in your market. Pay particular attention to their; typical age range, gurus they follow, websites they visit, objections to the sale, influencers they follow etc. Tools such as SEMrush, Spyfu and Buzzsumo will help you to do this. The more detailed, your customer avatar, the better your understanding and the greater the likelihood that your message will resonate.

3) Nurturing them using content: There is more content being produced than humans have the ability to consume. Sales managers continue to produce content because they were asked to do so by a blogger. However, if your content isn’t useful and of higher quality than that of your competitors, you are limiting results. You can use content (email marketing, remarketing etc) to direct people through the sales funnel and nurture leads. As a result, your sales team can spend more time closing them.

Now that we have laid the groundwork, let’s delve into the step-by-step techniques for keeping the pipeline for your sales team full and flowing.

1) Build a great social media presence

On social media, visuals are critical to establishing credibility in the minds of prospective customers. They will make a decision on whether to take the next step, based on what they can see. Give them the best impression of your business. Canva is a free web-based tool which allows you to easily design outstanding images in next to no time.

Secondly, stick to the social networks which your target audience is active on. For instance, Linkedin is suitable for B2B businesses. On the other hand, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram are better for B2C companies. The key is to stick to a schedule when posting content. Nothing says “this company doesn’t care more than” seeing that your last post was a month ago. When you combine a consistent posting schedule with targeted Facebook ads, you can grow your brand and keep your sales team busy.

2) Create interesting content

As previously stated, the volume of boring, short (300-500 words content) pieces out there are at an all-time high. This is good. You can draw in leads using content which is significantly better than your industry competitors. Whenever you create a piece of content, ask yourself two questions: “Is this better than the best piece on this topic?” and “What can I do to make this more useful and interesting?”.

Buzzsumo is a wonderful tool for seeing content in your industry which is getting shared most on social media. This gives you a good idea of what is currently resonating with your target market. Another good tool is the best-selling books section on Amazon and the most watched industry-specific videos on Youtube.

Once you combine great content with targeted ads, you can scale at a great pace.

Below is the step-by-step content production plan I use for each lead gen piece.

3) Repurpose content

Some pieces will simply do better than others. You can easily repurpose them into infographics using Canva. Furthermore, you can break down each piece into images using Canva for use in your social media strategy. Wevideo can be used to easily turn them into videos for use as Youtube pre-roll ads and as part of an introductory video for client onboarding. Useful videos are a great way for showing expertise, establishing credibility and showing prospects that you are competent.

One of the best ways of impressing prospects is to write a short book which you can use to build your email list and as a physical giveaway to prospective clients. You can take a look at your best performing content and edit them into a book. Beacon.by can be used to make it look professional. Alternatively, Powerpoint eBook templates (some free) can be used to to create a great looking eBook.

4) Create contests

Awareness about your product/service is half the battle. Contests with enticing offers can be an effective way to increase awareness of your brand and increase inbound leads. Wishpond is a good tool for doing this. Combine this with Facebook ads to give your contest a boost.