How to Drive Qualified Social Media Traffic to Your Website for More Leads and Sales

Submission by Susan Friesen of eVision Media

Using social media to get leads should be easy, right? More than half the global population now uses some form of social media, and that number is growing—giving marketers and companies plenty of potential customers to target. But of course, if you’ve tried to drive sales with social media, you know it can be easier said than done. 

Getting website traffic from social media is a multi-step process. By following smart social media strategies carefully and consistently, over time you will start to see results.

Let’s assume you’ve already invested in a website, and that you’ve also created a few social media accounts on various platforms. Are they working for you? If not, it’s probably because you’re making a few simple, fixable errors.

Ultimately, there are two major factors to driving qualified social media traffic to your website to generate more leads and sales. Get either one wrong, and you likely won’t get the results you want. 

Getting website traffic from social media won’t happen overnight. But thankfully, if you follow a consistent strategy using a consistent posting schedule, then you will start to drive quality leads to your website. We’ll explore how to do this below. 

But first, there’s the other factor to consider. Once you send people to your website … then what?

Use Your Website To Make Sales

Marketing 101: always know the goal of your marketing efforts. What are you trying to do? What do you want potential customers to do?

When driving qualified social media traffic to your website, you need to first ask yourself why. 

Are you trying to collect email addresses? Book a consultation? Sell a product? If you don’t have a goal and corresponding call-to-action on your website, then all the traffic in the world won’t do you any good. 

For example, you may want to generate more leads with landing page giveaways or work to improve customer experience on your website. In general, you want any particular landing page and your website in general to be search engine optimized and optimized for conversions. That way, when you get all that traffic rolling in from your social media marketing efforts, you’ll be able to actually capitalize on it. However make sure there is consistency in design and branding between a professional social media creative and your landing pages, so people know you’re a serious brand.

It’s also a good idea to make your website content easily shareable. You do this by adding social media buttons to your posts and pages so that people can easily click to share them on their own personal platforms.

Use Social Media To Get Leads

OK, so let’s now assume you have a well-designed website that will generate leads and sales. Now we get to the fun part: driving traffic to that website with social media. 

Like we’ve covered, there are now billions of people using social media. When it comes to competing for their attention, you’re going to be a very small fish in a very, very big pond. Most of the ways you’ll drive traffic involve cutting through the noise to connect with and hopefully influence potential customers.

To get your social media audience to go to your website, follow these steps:

• Pick The Right Platform

When developing a social media strategy, it’s always a good idea to think about your existing and ideal customers. What platforms are they using? For example, 77% of Pinterest users are female, making it a better choice for a jewelry line than, say, a new shampoo for male-pattern baldness. Twitter is often a great choice if you have lots of articles and content to share, while LinkedIn has the business networking space covered. 

Remember, you want to connect with the right people—anything else is a waste of your time. So carefully consider which platforms will help you reach your goals before making it a significant part of your strategy.

And a pro-tip: Facebook has more than 2.85 billion monthly active users. It’s almost always a good tool for social media marketing for business.

• Optimize Your Profiles—And Include Links

Once you’ve picked your platforms, you need to set them up properly. Most platforms will give you space to describe your business. Twitter, for example, allows up to 160 characters in your bio, so use them wisely. That means adding SEO keywords and a succinct, clear description of your business and/or services. You likely will also want to include contact information or your location if that makes sense for your situation. 

It also means you need to include your link in your profile description. If you’re trying to get website traffic from social media, then your audience must have a way to find your website!

Make sure to also use relevant, on-brand, and high-quality images for both your profile pictures and backgrounds. It’s a good idea to use the same profile picture across all your accounts to create more brand recognition. 

And here’s another pro-tip: you can optimize your Twitter profile pictures by using the built-in photo editor on Publer. This is a critical step since a grainy profile photo is a great way to ensure you’re not taken seriously.

• Post High-Quality Visual Posts, Consistently

Think about when you personally use social media. There’s a lot of mindless scrolling, right? That’s true for everyone. The best way to encourage people to stop scrolling and engage with your content is to make it compelling. And the best way to make it compelling is to use beautiful, on-brand imagery. 

People are naturally drawn to beautiful visuals. In fact, an Adobe study found that posts with images get a 650% higher engagement rate than regular text posts. 

So using good images is a smart way to increase your social media engagement and therefore get website traffic for free. 

The second part of your social media marketing strategy should be posting consistently. One great post every couple of months isn’t going to do much. Different platforms will have different standards and best practices, but a general rule of thumb is to post as often as you can create those high-quality visuals we want. 

Making a posting calendar and scheduling your posts is often the best way for small businesses to manage this work.

• Engage With Your Audience

Social media marketing for business is a wonderful opportunity. Not only do you have the chance to showcase your services and products to a wide audience. You also get to connect and hear from them on a regular basis. 

The more you engage with your audience on social media, the more likely they are to engage with you. And again, the more they engage with you, the more likely they are to click over to your hopefully well-optimized, converting landing page. 

In this way, social media marketing and your website go hand-in-hand to get you qualified leads and sales. 

Use social media to get leads and use your website to turn those leads into sales. When done correctly, it’s the best way to get valuable website traffic for free.

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