Right now, your next customer is scrolling Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram. And whether they know it yet or not, they’re looking for what you sell.
We’ve managed and tracked social media marketing strategies for a long time. While it’s an incredible channel for growth, there’s a lot of competition for attention. Plus, each platform has its own ever-changing rules and tools.
That’s why we’ve created this updated toolkit for social media lead generation. It has the strategies, tips, and examples you’ll need to plan, run, and track lead-generation campaigns across all major social media platforms. Let’s get to it.
Contents
- 24 social media lead generation strategies
- Why is social media great for lead generation?
- How to track and analyze social media lead generation results
- Best social media networks for lead generation
- Social media lead generation FAQs
24 social media lead generation strategies
Social media marketing has become a highly versatile strategy, offering many ways to generate new leads. This list includes some of the best lead-gen tactics available.
💡 Social media is just one option to get leads and awareness. Use this guide to find 30 ways to promote your business (with or without money!).
1. Post a variety of content
If you want leads from social media, you have to post content that stops people from scrolling and gets them to click.
Chef Pasquale Sciarappa has mastered this strategy. His videos are fun, informative, and visually appealing.
Notice the subscribe button in the lower right and the View products button in the lower left? Those are great ways to capture a lead right while someone’s enjoying his video.
Variety is the spice of marketing. Try posting several formats like Instagram Stories, carousel posts, YouTube Shorts, etc. Invest more time in the ones that deliver the most leads.
2. Engage with your followers
You’ll need to build up a little trust with someone before they give up their contact details. One great way to do that is by engaging with people who mention or interact with your brand on social media.
Wendy’s frequently gives a masterclass in social media engagement. Scroll through the brand’s feed, and you’ll find a wealth of witty and welcoming replies.
Use social listening (we’ll talk about that in a bit) to learn when people mention your business. Then, jump into the conversation when appropriate. And don’t forget to ask people to subscribe to your newsletter or register for your loyalty program. We’re here to get leads, after all.
3. Optimize your profile
Your amazing content is doing its job, and people want to know more about your business. Where do they look first? It’s usually your social media profile.
To get more followers and, of course, drive leads, you’ll want to maximize every aspect of your profile. There are many ways to optimize this valuable space, but here are the top tips to consider:
- Fill your profile out completely.
- Add a link to a lead-gen landing page or to your website.
- Add keywords so your account gets found more often.
- Write a business description that creates trust.
4. Post at the right time
The one social media post that won’t generate any leads is the one that no one sees. Get more eyeballs on your best content by posting it at the most opportune time for each platform.
For example, there are a few hours each week that seem to get the most engagement on Instagram posts.
Your perfect posting schedule is unique to your audience and business, though. These guides will help you find the ideal time to post on:
5. Share user-generated content (UGC)
Someone needs to have a certain level of trust in your company before they’re willing to give away their contact details. User-generated content proves that your products are the real deal and that everyday people enjoy using them.
Have a look at this UGC post from the accessories company Bellroy.
The brand got free content from a faithful follower who showed off their products to hundreds of potential leads. Not only that, but the original poster’s followers got to see Bellroy’s packs in action, too. That’s building trust at scale!
6. Publish video customer testimonials
One of the best ways to get leads from any channel is to share the great experience previous customers have had with your solutions. On social media, that means publishing customer testimonials.
If you can swing it, record a video either of your customer explaining why you’re great or of you doing what you do. With a little editing, you could add some before-and-after images as well.
That positive feedback will encourage prospective buyers to trust your business. Plus, your content will show up in searches for things like “[business type] reviews.”
7. Promote your sales
A great sales promotion can quickly turn a casual follower into a lead and customer.
Make your sales promotion relevant to your audience and offer enough value to generate interest.
Try using coupon codes to make the promotion easier to track. That way, you can tie your sudden jump in sales or new leads to a specific promotion.
8. Write unskippable calls to action (CTAs)
When you’re posting on social media with the goal of generating leads, you need people to take a next step (not just watch your hilarious cat video). Calls to action are the most important bit of lead-generation copy here because they tell the reader exactly what to do next and what they’ll get in return.
Make your CTAs energetic, explicit, and full of value so they’re hard to pass up.
>> Free Guide: The Only Marketing Calendar You Need for 2026
9. Incorporate the right hashtags
Hashtags tell social media algorithms what your content is about and help people find your posts when they search. For lead generation purposes, make sure to add some hashtags that attract people who show an intent to buy.
For example, let’s say you sell real estate. You could include hashtags like #denverrealestate or #dreamhome.
People searching those hashtags are more likely to become customers than someone who looks for posts tagged with #fitness.
10. Create deal-closing landing pages
If you get someone to click on a link in your social media ad or post, you’ve taken a huge step toward landing a brand-new lead. But if you make them navigate the menu on your website, they could get frustrated and leave.
Instead, send potential leads to a dedicated social media landing page that’s designed for your lead generation campaigns.
This local kids’ gym executes its lead-generation landing page perfectly.
Notice how the only action you can take on the page is to call them or leave details to request a callback. There are no other links to confuse visitors and take them away from this valuable step in the lead-generation process.
🚨 Is your website optimized for lead generation? Find out with our free website grader.
11. Offer a lead magnet
A lead magnet is something valuable you offer in exchange for a prospect’s contact details. Very often, lead magnets are important information that people in your audience would love to have.
Don’t discount your experience as a valuable lead magnet. For example, you can offer a free assessment, design, or quote.
Any local business can adapt this strategy for its own social media lead-generation campaign.
12. Launch a referral campaign
What if you could turn your happiest customers into salespeople who found new leads for you? You can do exactly that with a referral campaign.
Referral campaigns put word-of-mouth marketing on overdrive by incentivizing people to recommend your business.
This real estate agent adds an incentive to his social media referral program.
Consider other high-value offers like gift cards, discounts, or access to exclusive products and services. You could even just ask current email subscribers to recommend your newsletters to their friends.
13. Add plenty of social proof
We’ve mentioned how important trust is to successful social media lead generation. Social proof is among the best ways to generate trust. This can be as simple as flaunting your Google star rating or mentioning how many customers you’ve served. Or it can be the full text of a glowing review.
There are plenty of other options. See more types of social proof here.
14. Go live
People love live videos on social media (one study found that 82% of people would rather watch a live video than see a social media post!).
You can go live on several social media platforms. This bake shop uses Instagram Live to answer common questions from the baking community.
Many platforms let you add links to your videos. You could tell viewers to tap a link and sign up for more in-depth tutorials…which would then turn those fans into leads for your business.
15. Try social listening
Social listening is where you monitor online conversations about your business, industry, products, or related topics. The idea is to see what people say about you (or your competitors) so you can create messaging that’ll resonate better.
You can track individual conversations manually to a point, but you’ll probably want a social listening tool that scours platforms for the right mentions.
When you see a relevant conversation, note its sentiment and content to guide your social lead generation strategy. Say people talk about how much they love the professionalism of your technicians, create a few posts around that to attract your next lead.
16. Invest in lead ads
Landing pages reduce the friction of the lead generation process. Social media lead ads take it one step further.
Social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all offer an ad campaign type that targets lead generation called lead ads.
When someone clicks on this type of ad, they’re shown a form they can fill out without leaving the platform.
Lead ads make it super easy for your prospects to share their information. Less friction means more people flow through the process, and you get more leads.
17. Leverage social media chatbots
One way to move people through your marketing funnel is to ask them to direct message you through a social media platform. But most businesses can’t monitor those chats 24/7. And that’s where a social media chatbot comes in.
You can set up a chatbot to answer common questions and direct people to request a quote or set an appointment. That way, you have 24/7 lead generation happening while you focus on other tasks.
18. Partner with a social media influencer
Like UGC, social media influencers can lend credibility to your brand. The big difference is that influencers have larger audiences on social platforms, and you will often pay them for their efforts (either directly or with free products).
Whether it’s a local athletic coach talking about your physical training programs or a celebrity wearing your newest design, influencer marketing can get new potential customers into your lead nurture funnel.
Not every influencer is for every brand. Make sure the one you choose shares your values and has a real, engaged fan base (no fake followers).
19. Incentivize lead generation
While you would never pay someone to leave a review, it’s perfectly acceptable to provide something of value to encourage them to become a lead.
Try running a promotion where you provide free shipping or a 10% discount in exchange for someone signing up for your priority members program or downloading your app. Then share that promo on organic and even paid social media posts.
20. Run a contest or giveaway
Social media contests are a versatile social media marketing strategy. You can use them to increase your follower count, raise brand awareness, or generate new leads.
Or, if you’re on the marketing team at Hotel Lucy, you do all three.
See how this giveaway offers three ways to gain new leads. First, people can like the hotel’s account which means they’ll see the brand’s future posts. Second, it leverages the network effect of social media by incentivizing people to share the promotion. And finally, there’s another incentive for people to sign up. That’s a triple-threat campaign.
21. Take advantage of remarketing
You don’t always get the lead on the first try. But you can get more chances to convert leads through remarketing.
Remarketing is when you show ads to people who have interacted with your brand in some way. In the case of lead generation, it might be people who clicked through to your lead-capture landing page but didn’t complete the form.
Platforms like Facebook let you create a custom audience for retargeting ads. Use those ads to remind your almost-leads that they have some unfinished business.
22. Use shoppable ads
Shoppable ads are paid posts on social media with embedded links that allow people to purchase products or become leads without leaving the social media app.
This bookstore uses a shoppable ad on Instagram to lead people to its online shop.
With your shoppable ad, you can take people to your catalog or ask them to register their email addresses in exchange for a discount or other perks.
23. Personalize your promotion
Personalization has been a powerful lead-generation play in marketing channels like email. But now most social media platforms let you personalize certain aspects of your ads.
Take LinkedIn, for example. It uses individual members’ profile information to dynamically personalize ads…even adding a user’s first name.
Most social media platforms now let you hyper-target ads for very specific audiences.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) offers dynamic text and creative. And TikTok has Dynamic Showcase Ads that automatically generate customized video ad combinations based on user interests.
24. Take advantage of precision ad targeting
Every major social media platform lets you target ads for specific audiences.
For example, on Instagram, you can show ads to people by location, interest, demographics, and behavior. So, if your ideal customer is a 24-year-old man who loves camping, lives in central Idaho, and has visited your website before, you can put ads in his Instagram feed.
Here are a few guides to help you target social media ads better:
- Facebook Ad Targeting: The Complete Guide + 10 Tips
- Proven Techniques for Ultra-Effective TikTok Ads Targeting
- Every Instagram Ad Targeting Option to Reach Your Audience
Why is social media great for lead generation?
You’re probably familiar with how effective social media is for growing a community and engaging an audience. But social networks also have some characteristics that make them the ideal channel for connecting with new customers.
It’s trackable
You can get your business in front of a lot of people on a billboard or TV ad. But there’s a limit to how much you can learn about those interactions. Did people like what they saw? What action did they take after seeing your ad?
On social media, however, you get tons of data about your performance.
With social media lead generation, you know exactly which strategies generate the most leads so you can improve the poor performers and double down on the best ones.
People look for brands and products on social media
Social media scrollers aren’t just there to share cute pet pics. They’re there to find their next fitness instructor or cocktail dress.
Consider these stats as proof:
- 54% of people use social media to research products.
- Facebook users click on 12 Facebook ads every month.
- 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day.
- 80% of people on X (formerly Twitter) have mentioned a business or brand in a tweet.
- 25% of TikTok users say they have purchased or researched a product after seeing a TikTok about it.
With so much product research and purchase intent, it’s no wonder social media is a lead generation powerhouse.
Social media platforms are designed for lead generation
Social media platforms make their money from advertising. So it benefits them when your social media lead generation campaigns are successful. That’s why just about every significant social media platform has baked-in tools and technology to help you gather leads.
For example, there are social media ads designed for the sole purpose of collecting people’s contact information. There are high-profile places to add links to your web pages. And there are tools to track your progress—all built into the social media apps.
How to track and analyze social media lead generation results
As we mentioned earlier, social media gives you lots of data about the effectiveness of your campaigns. This certainly holds true for your lead generation activities. Here are a few ways to track and analyze your results.
Monitor post engagement
Likes, shares, and comments might not tell you how many leads you get, but they are great indicators that the content you’ve put out is attracting attention.
These marketing metrics are easy to find on each social media platform’s analytics dashboards.
Use this data to guide future content creation. When you notice that people love your “a day in the life” posts, expand on them and add more lead generation features like CTAs.
Apply UTM links
You can add UTM tags to the URL of your links to make them unique, which lets you track the source of traffic to a page of your website (like a lead-generation landing page). Create a UTM tag for links you’ll use on social posts.
For example, let’s say you have a landing page that promotes a discount for first-time visitors to your yoga studio. You can create a unique “social media” UTM code and attach it to the landing page’s URL. That way, you know how many people end up on your landing page from your lead-generation campaign on social media.
Use third-party tracking software
There are several tools you can use to track the success of your social media lead-generation efforts.
If you want to see if leads are coming to your website from social media platforms, Google Analytics will tell you that. You can also use a social media management tool to track analytics beyond what the social platforms themselves offer. Most of these tools also let you see all of your accounts in one dashboard, so you don’t have to log in and out of several accounts to get the full picture.
Ask customers how they learned about you
Sometimes the least techy solutions are still the best. If you want to know how someone became a lead…just ask them!
Train your sales or customer service team to ask each new customer where they remember learning about your business. Or send out a survey to existing customers with that question. It’s a super low-lift but insightful way to see which social media channels are delivering the most successful leads.
Best social media networks for lead generation
The best social media network to generate leads depends on your audience, the type of content you’ll use to attract them, and the type of business you have.
Here are some of the top social media lead-generation platforms to start with.
If you want to know about lead generation on Instagram, remember that it’s the go-to network for many Millennials looking for food, travel, and adventure inspiration. Do your products or services tap into that vibe? Try paid ads or Reels on the platform. And remember to engage with your audience so they feel connected to your business.
Instagram ads have lots of targeting options to find the right leads for your business.
Facebook still has the largest user base of all the social media platforms. So if sheer reach is your main priority, that’s a great platform to find new leads. Plus, you can target your ads by many user characteristics, including location. So if you’re a local business, you won’t waste ad dollars on people outside of your service area.
Screenshot
Facebook Lead Ads are purposely designed to help you generate leads from social media.
TikTok
TikTok is now the place to reach audiences from across the age spectrum (although its users still skew a little younger). Influencer marketing is big on TikTok, so consider looking for a partner with an engaged following there. Remember that while humor does well on TikTok, so does education. To get more leads and more followers, post TikToks that teach your customers something valuable.
Educational videos are a solid TikTok marketing tactic for attracting new leads and showcasing your expertise.
LinkedIn is where professionals go to share advice and advance their careers. It tends to attract people in the middle of their careers, so you’ll find Millennials and Gen Xers on LinkedIn. But Gen Z is aging into this space, too. If your products help those age groups in their work, then a lead-generation campaign on LinkedIn makes sense.
LinkedIn offers several ad types, including video and carousel-based versions
YouTube
YouTube acts a little like a streaming service in that you can watch entire movies and full episodes of shows. But it has a strong social media component, too. As a creator, you can grow a subscriber base and engage directly with your audience in comments.
Both aspects of YouTube can help you generate leads. You can use it as a pure advertising play and buy different types of YouTube ads that show in your audience’s favorite videos. Or you can be the creator and publish entertaining, educational content that people love and associate with your brand.
Whether it’s with an ad or original content, you can generate lots of interested leads from YouTube.
Reddit is a tricky place for marketers since it’s mostly a place for organic community chats about niche topics. Overt selling isn’t tolerated. However, there are ways you can find and connect with groups of people who could become leads (and eventually convert them).
The trick to generating leads on Reddit is to lead with authenticity. Go there to help and learn, not sell. Build your reputation and, when appropriate, share content or even products that fit the conversation.
On Reddit, look for relevant conversations or start your own.
Social media lead generation FAQs
Here are answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about social media lead generation.
What is a social media lead?
A social media lead is someone you’ve connected with through social media, collected contact information for, and who may become a customer. The type of contact details you gather and the methods you use to contact leads can vary. The key point is that you’ve now created a relationship that gives you more chances to convert a sale.
What is social media lead generation?
Social media lead generation refers to tactics you use to generate new leads through social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Once you have their contact details, you can nurture leads with emails, SMS marketing texts, or even send physical flyers to their home address. It all depends on the type of contact details you’ve gathered. The ultimate goal is to convert them into customers.
How do you nurture social media leads?
To nurture social media leads, stay visible and valuable after the first interaction. That may mean retargeting people who’ve engaged with your content, sending them into an email sequence once they’ve opted in, or simply showing up consistently with content that addresses their questions and concerns at each stage of the buying process. The goal is to build enough trust that when they’re ready to buy, you’re the obvious choice.
Start your social media lead generation campaign today
People are increasingly using social media as a search engine to find products and services. That opens up an incredible opportunity for your business to find new leads.
To drive the most leads for your business, try these social media lead-generation tactics:
- Post a variety of content
- Engage with your followers
- Optimize your profile
- Post at the right time
- Share user-generated content (UGC)
- Publish customer testimonials
- Promote your sales
- Write unskippable calls to action (CTAs)
- Incorporate the right hashtags
- Create deal-closing landing pages
- Offer a lead magnet
- Launch a referral campaign
- Add plenty of social proof
- Go live
- Try social listening
- Invest in lead ads
- Leverage social media chatbots
- Partner with social media influencers
- Incentivize lead generation
- Run a contest or giveaway
- Take advantage of remarketing
- Use shoppable ads
- Personalize your promotion
- Take advantage of precision ad targeting
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