Episode 415: Getting hot leads from social media

I have a blunt and potentially painful question to ask you: for all of the things that you do on social media, are you actually getting consistent hot leads from those actions?

If the answer is no or not as many hot leads as you’d like, then you are going to love this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.

I am going to walk you through how to get hot leads from what you do on social media… but it’s going to be quite a different strategy to what you would see from some of the most prolific social media coaches and teachers out there.

Today we are going to get you hot leads consistently from social media!

Let’s dive on in!

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When it comes to making money from what it is that you do on social media, a lot of people assume that if they reach more people with their content, they will make more sales.

But reaching someone on social media and then immediately making a sale to them is the exception, it’s not the rule.

Most people design their social media marketing strategy on a teeny tiny chance that someone is going to stumble across what it is that they do, and they’re going to hungrily go and chase down how to pay you money.

That is not how it happens most of the time.

99% of sales that come from social media activities involve far more connection, far more relationship building, and far more long-term strategy. Yet most social media marketers are teaching you how to reach more people on social media.

Reach is a metric that we can easily grow. But reach does not have a direct correlation to sales.

If you’re still trying to get your work in front of more and more strangers as your social media strategy and you do not have a strategic way to turn that reach into sales (beyond just telling people what your offers are), then this podcast episode is going to be one you want to take some notes on.

I want to be the first to say that even for myself when I want to make more sales, my brain defaults to: How can I reach more people? How can I grow my audience?

We default to reach as our strategy for most business growth goals and problems.

In most cases, when we have a big stretch income goal we want to achieve, we start thinking of ways to get in front of new audiences. When we have a cash flow crunch, we start thinking of what strangers we can reach on the internet and sell to.

But actually, for most online business owners, that is not the ideal strategy. It’s not the most effective strategy, and it’s certainly not the entire picture of how we make sales.

To make sense of how we make sales as the rule, not the exception, we need to break it down into more steps.

That is where my client attraction process comes in handy.

The client attraction process is something that I’ve developed to explain where most of the sales come from in your business as a result of a longer-term strategy.

99% of your sales that come from your social media strategies will come because you’ve had a multi-step approach to building a relationship with that person, even if you haven’t done that consciously.

Even if you haven’t designed it this way, most of your sales will come from people who’ve been around for a while. Most of your sales will come from people who’ve been quietly watching you, who’ve been on your mailing list, or who’ve engaged with you over an extended period of time.

Most of the sales in your business, especially the ones on social media, do not come from a stranger just seeing something one day and then buying from you that same day. There’s a longer-term process to it.

I’ve broken this down into your client attraction process, which is a five-stage process.

Stage 1: Reach

Not all reach is created equal.

We have reach to cold audiences (ie. new strangers) and reach to warm audiences (ie. people who already know you).

Stage 2: Nurture

That is where you nurture and build a relationship with that person. They get to know you, and you get to know them.

You getting to know them is often overlooked by most marketing and social media strategy teachers. But you getting to know your audience members, either one-on-one or one-to-many (or both in an ideal situation), is the secret to getting more leads from social media.

I’ll go into that in a little more depth in a moment.

Stage 3: Invite

This is where you invite people to step closer to purchasing something. Either you invite them to check out an offer that you have, you invite them to connect with you one-on-one to work out how you might be able to work together, you invite them to look at a sales page, or you invite them to come to a lead magnet like a webinar or a challenge.

There are one-to-one invitations and one too many invitations that we can use.

Stage 4: Convert

This is where those hot leads that you have invited to step closer to purchasing something from you then purchase something from you.

That conversion can happen one-on-one through things like sales conversations via Zoom, DM conversations or email conversations. That conversion can happen by people checking out on a sales page and purchasing there, buying something, requesting an invoice, or requesting a quote for services.

It can happen in a number of different ways – one-on-one or one-to-many.

Stage 5: Deliver

This is a critical part of your client attraction process. If you don’t deliver for the people who have purchased from you, then you are often stifling the number one source of fresh hot leads for new client bases.

For those of you who have great word-of-mouth referrals, you’re nailing this stage! You deliver really beautifully.

There are things we can do to proactively encourage past and existing clients to bring in new referrals.

When you deliver really well and you’re achieving results with your clients, then you can also bring in new leads through client success stories, client case studies and testimonials.

We want these things to be done well though. We’re not swooping in and saying we saved them or we are responsible for that success. They did it. But some well-used client testimonials that are not claiming other people’s successes and that are shared quite effectively and with consent can also help to increase lead generation in your business.

If you want to learn more about how you can use client testimonials in your marketing, check out episode 396: tashcorbin.com/396

It’s this full beautiful cycle of reach, nurture, invite, convert, and then deliver.

Invite is where you get leads.

If you invite someone to take a step closer to buying something from you, and they take that step, they are a hot lead.

The whole purpose of this podcast episode is for you to get hot leads from social media.

What we are looking for is how you ensure when you invite people to take a step closer to purchasing something from you, the people actually do it.

Social media is one of the toughest places to get people to do that because we are missing the previous step in your client attraction process, which is your nurture.

For most people trying to grow an online business using social media, the parts of their client attraction process that are the most neglected are nurture and invite.

In most cases, if they are doing nurture and invite, they are trying to do it in a one-to-many broadcast, which is very low conversion.

When I work with new clients who are struggling to get leads on social media, the thing we focus on and fix first is their nurture and invite strategies on social media. Just by doing that, they increase the leads that they’re getting.

Once they’ve got hot leads, they’re very good at helping people to decide whether they are ready to invest or not. They’re good at jumping onto a sales conversation, qualifying that lead and making that pitch to work together.

If that’s something you struggle with, here are a couple of episodes of the podcast you can check out:

• Episode 407: My consent-based sales conversation structure – tashcorbin.com/407
• Episode 370: The number 1 sales call mistake and how to fix it – tashcorbin.com/370

What I want us to focus on in this episode is getting those leads in the first place.

If you want to get hot leads from social media, the first place that I would recommend you focus your energy and attention is doing more one-to-one nurture. That one-to-one nurture is your audience getting to build a relationship with you one-to-one so that they can learn more and get to know more about you, and you get to know them.

That is often the biggest missing element.

How do we do this one-to-one nurturing and get to know our audience members more consistently?

Even in asking the question, I’m sure you’ve got some ideas.

For so many people, we see social media as a broadcast part of our marketing and advertising strategy. It’s just somewhere that you go and post information and people listen to you, they learn from you and they hear from you.

But when you think about social media as being a two-way channel, stop using old-school broadcast marketing strategies alone, embrace that opportunity of it being two-way, and ask the question of how you get to know more of your audience on a one-to-one basis, you will have some ideas.

We know how to go and find out more about our favourite pop singer, movie star or Formula One driver.

We don’t necessarily do that in a one-to-one relationship. I’m certainly not DMing Taylor Swift hoping to find out more information about what’s going on with the Reputation Taylor’s Version album release. But we can go and find out more information about them online.

If Taylor Swift sent me a DM and asked me some questions, I certainly would be answering. That’s one of the reasons why she is so revered by her fans – she actually follows a lot of her fans.

She reads a lot of their posts and engages with them. When she hears people sharing stories about what’s going on for them, she’ll select a very minute teeny tiny number of people in her audience, reach out and support them. She often quietly and privately gives them gifts or does things for them that no one will ever hear about unless the fan then goes and shares that story.

That is the kind of approach that we want to be taking on a micro basis.

The number one thing I would say with all of this, is that it’s very different for someone who knows that you’re their biggest fan to reach out and thank you for being a fan, versus knowing that someone follows you as a business owner and you just slide into their DMs and thank them for being a fan.

We want to ensure that our social media strategy is consent-based.

I’m not suggesting that you go and slide into the DMs of anyone who’s ever engaged on any of your social media and ask them a bunch of invasive questions and pretend that you’re really curious about who they are.

But if we do this authentically and genuinely, and through the lens of consent-based strategy, it is a really effective strategy, and it’s one that your audience will absolutely love and adore.

What we’re looking to do is strike up more one-on-one conversations with your audience. It’s not by friend requesting them or cold DMing them. We’re going to do it with consent.

In your posts on social media, how could you get to know more about your individual audience members? Genuinely, and through the lens of getting to know what it is that they want, what they’re struggling with, why they’re following you, and what they most want to learn from you.

We can just ask those questions.

You’re going to have to ask the questions over and over again – it’s not a case of you just posting a few questions to your socials and then you’ve got four hundred hot leads.

But the more that you do this consistently, the more likely it is that that is what will happen.

Ask lots of high-quality questions that help your audience move forward, help you get more insight into what they’re looking for, and help you get to know them more on a one-to-one basis.

Be willing to put in some time and effort to get to know those individuals.

For example, sometimes I will ask on my Facebook Page who has published and book – and ask them to share more information.

I don’t just do that and then leave all of those comments floating around. I’m doing it because I want to get to know the individuals in my audience.

I will go and click on the links to those different books. I’ll see what the book is about, how many reviews they’ve got, etc., and I’ll make a meaningful comment in response.

I’ll reply to where they’ve shared the link and tell them how amazing it looks, or that I’ve just purchased it (because I do purchase the books a lot if it’s something I’m interested in).

This is where it’s striking up genuine one-on-one connections with people.

I want to be 100% clear here that I’m not buying and reviewing people’s books so that I can sell to them. I genuinely want to get to know as many of the individuals in my audience as possible.

This is just nurture. It is just building relationships. I am not inviting any of those people to take a step towards purchasing anything from me without first getting some kind of clue from them that that is something they’re interested in.

The first step to knowing whether they might be interested in it or not is to have a relationship with them.

A lot of people resist nurturing a relationship with people online because they think it’s a waste of time.

They think they’d be better off just broadcasting to one hundred strangers on the internet.

I can tell you hand on heart that spending time and energy on getting to know my audience and building relationships with people in my audience is far more profitable and has a far higher return on investment for my time than any of the broadcast marketing strategies I could engage in, still at this stage in my business.

I don’t see this as a waste of time.

First of all, I don’t see this as a waste of time, because I am fascinated by humans. I’m fascinated by business owners, entrepreneurship, what people get obsessed with, what people are struggling with and what people are looking for.

I am genuinely invested in helping to support women and marginalised people to grow their businesses online, regardless of whether they buy from me or not.

I am genuinely getting to know the members of my audience so I can support them and help them further. And for the ones who need extra mentorship and support who want to work with me in a paid capacity, of course, if I get the hint of that, I will invite them to have a conversation about that.

Simply asking great questions can be one of the most powerful ways to do that one-to-one nurture.

But you’ve got to ask questions for the nurture, not for the reach.

That’s where most social media strategists and marketing trainers are misleading you. They’re telling you to ask questions that get lots of replies because it grows your reach.

But growing reach and not nurturing that relationship is wasting your time.

You’re getting all this reach, you’re growing this potential relationship with hundreds of people online, but then you’re letting that relationship die off and hoping to reinvigorate it with more broadcast content later.

Instead, treasure every precious connection and relationship you can build in your business.

Of course, I’m not saying to be a one-on-one mentor for free to every single person in your audience. But at least take some time to genuinely get to know them.

Another way that you can do it with your posts on social media is by replying to people’s comments. Pretty straightforward, but actually engage. Not just for the reach! So many people say that they reply to every comment that people give them on social media because they know it’s good for their reach. But that is so short-sighted.

Replying to those comments is your opportunity to make that person feel seen, heard, understood, validated, supported, nurtured, connected and valued… and here you are using them for extra reach.

You’re using that person’s comment for your own gain and benefit of reaching more strangers on the internet, when that person who commented is far more engaged, far more interested and far more valuable to you as a business owner if you just took the time to get to know them as a human being.

This is where I think a lot of those flash-and-crash social media specialists and marketers do us a disservice. They’re losing sight of the entire bigger picture of why we’re building an audience on social media.

It’s so that we can get to know them.

It’s so that we can build a relationship so that we can sell our products and services to the people who want our products and services.

You’re not out here peddling dodgy offers to people who don’t want them. You’re out here trying to grow your business and get clients because you genuinely want to help and make a difference.

If that is the case, stop treating people like you don’t. Stop treating people like you’re only interested in the numbers and the ego-driven data.

Instead, get people engaging with you and get to know them.

If you measure your social media metrics by how many people YOU have got to know, not how many people have got to know you, you will be far more likely to be measuring a metric that has a direct correlation to sales.

Another way you can do this is to tell people to DM you (but give them a reason to do it).

Sometimes I’ll do posts on social media where I say that I have some free time in the afternoon and want to review a bunch of people’s Facebook pages. I ask my audience to DM me a link to their Facebook page and let me know what they’re focused on selling at the moment and I’ll give them some advice on how they can improve their page and what may be missing from their messaging.

I will genuinely just help people one-on-one.

That is a really high-connection way of building that one-to-one nurture.

In that process, if I notice that someone hasn’t got their messaging foundations down, or something is going on where their Facebook page just doesn’t seem to be connecting with their audience, I might ask some questions to see what they’re doing to get connection with their audience, and how they’re growing their audience on this channel.

It becomes a one-to-one conversation. Through that process, if I qualify that they might be interested in investing in some help with this or getting some help in a deeper way (maybe through one of my free resources, through jumping in to talk about one of my packages or one of my products), then I will ask the question.

When people join my mailing list through a one-on-one conversation, they are far more likely to do the free thing that I’ve got them to sign up for, to stay on my mailing list as an engaged member of that mailing list, and to buy something from me eventually.

This isn’t a short-term focus of getting them in my DMs, getting them on my mailing list, and then pressuring them into buying something from me within three days.

I’m not a churn-and-burn marketer. I’m a consent-based marketer.

Looking at your social media nurture strategy as a longer-term strategy is a really helpful way of ensuring that you’re not creating a lot of anxiety and putting a lot of pressure on every single conversation that you have.

You don’t have to turn every single conversation into a paying client, because that just smacks of desperation and then you lose a lot of that authenticity.

Be present and engage with your audience, because that’s how you get to know them. And that’s how they get to know you.

Reward your most engaged people on your social media by paying attention to who they are.

If they comment very consistently, you might comment back and let them know that you’ve checked out their Facebook page and you think that what they do looks really amazing, and you’re happy to answer any questions they have.

You want to reward that person. I personally reward them with an invitation to DM me with a question and I’m happy to help them out.

I do help people out in the DMs and on email quite consistently. I’m very good at having boundaries around that and not having that turn into a free one-to-one coaching relationship. But just because I have a 15-second answer that could help someone to make more sales quickly, doesn’t mean that I have to withhold that until someone pays me.

If I can help someone quickly and easily, I just do. Because I know that that’s far more valuable for them and for me long term.

Get people on your mailing list one-by-one first.

As I said, when I invite people to my mailing list one at a time, it increases their conversion rate.

It increases the chance that they turn into a hot lead. They’ll often go and do the freebie and then they’ll come back and DM me and tell me all about what they’ve learned from the freebie and what actions they’re taking. Then if it’s applicable, I can ask them if they’re interested in my program where we go much deeper and they get much more support from me.

Sometimes they’ll say they’re interested in it and go sign up within a few days. But a lot of the time, they will say that they’re not quite in the market for that yet. That’s okay! I will still give them they link just in case it’s something they decide they want to move forward with.

That is a no-pressure way of me generating all of these hot leads in my business.

Talk about your offers and products in a high-connection way.

The other thing that I do often notice when I watch people on social media is either every single post has a call to action, or nothing talks about how we can pay you money. It’s usually one or the other extreme.

I think the sweet spot is right there in the middle. You want to consistently tell people how they can pay you money, what they can buy from you and what your products and services involve… but you also want to have plenty of content on social media that doesn’t have a call to action.

The more calls to action you have on your content, the more they look like ads, the more it feels like I’m just being sold to or told what to do over and over again, and the more that this just looks like an advertising platform. Therefore, the less likely I am to engage.

Make sure that you are encouraging one-to-one connection and engagement.

Stop rejecting it. There are many people whose pages I’ve sent a DM to and then instantly received a message back that says they don’t read messages here.

Social media is social. I’ve followed prompts to send this person a message because I want to buy from them, and then I’ve instantly been shut down.

Often that dead end will involve an instruction on what else to do. But is that actually what you want to be doing to hot leads in your business?

I can understand if you get 4,000 DMs every single week that you might want to have an auto-responder on your DMs. But if hot leads are reaching out to you on DMs on social media, would it not be worthwhile to check those DMs and respond to them?

Sometimes I get auto responses from people that say I’ll have to wait for their reply because they only check messages sporadically. It pretty much either says that they can’t be bothered to talk to me, or I’ll have to wait.

I understand that 10 years ago when we had instant email response expectations and out-of-office replies telling someone you’ll get back to them within 24 hours used to be a really good idea. But people don’t expect an instant response straightaway now. You having an autoresponder that says you can’t be bothered to reply to me just feels like it’s putting a hand up to my face.

If you are a small business and you don’t have a lot of hot leads coming in from social media, I would suggest turning off every autoresponder and instead taking the time to engage with people one-on-one.

People do not expect you to reply instantaneously to messages on your page.

All you need to do is just make it part of your normal routine to check your messages on your Facebook page or Instagram on the days that you are working in your business.

Even if it’s just once a day, that’s fine. You do not need an autoresponder to explain that you only look at it once a day. You do not need an autoresponder that keeps me at arm’s length.

Instead, just leave the autoresponder off and reply when you can.

I recently DMed a Facebook page because I wanted to buy some candles. I didn’t get an autoresponder – I just got a reply from them two days later explaining why it took them so long to get back from me, and giving me all the details of the order I wanted to make.

After that, I bought the candles from them. Boom. They gave me what I needed.

It took two days for them to get back to me, but that’s fine. I wasn’t needing to buy candles that very instant. And they were very lovely and gave me all the information I needed in their reply. There was no autoresponder. I didn’t go off and buy from someone else in the meantime. I just sent them a DM and asked a question.

That is definitely a more consistent buyer behaviour online these days.

I recommend that you turn off the autoresponders. But that might be a little contentious.

That’s all for this episode!

My call to action for this podcast (hehe) now that we’re coming to the end is that I have a little bingo game card that I have created on how to get hot leads from social media.

It’s normally only for people who do paid work with me, but I’m excited to share it with you today.

I make a new one every time I run the client attraction challenge, a mastermind, or the Kickstart program because it is so fun. It gets you taking these teeny tiny actions that make a huge difference in getting hot leads from socials.

If you DM me on Facebook or Instagram and let me know you’ve been reading episode 415 and that you’d like the Hot Lead Bingo sheet, then I’ll send you the latest of the bingo cards. (The reason why I’m getting you to DM me is because I update it regularly.)

You can have a little game of hot lead bingo on social media and see how some teeny tiny consistent actions can make a huge difference when you’re focused on the nurture and invite part of your client attraction process.

Here are the links to DM me on Facebook or Instagram:

• Facebook: facebook.com/tashcorbincoaching
• Instagram: instagram.com/tashcorbin

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast.

Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.