Top 5 Best Social Media Channels for Lead Generation

Intro

Are you looking for the best social media channels to get more leads and clients for your business?

With so many options available today, knowing which channel will work best can be tricky.

That’s why I’ve already done the testing for you!

After helping thousands of business generate leads on social media, here are my top recommendations on the top social media channels to use for lead gen.

Unlike Google, where someone might search for a private investigator near me, with social lead gen, you will be broadly targeting everyone.

Key Points

If you’re short on time, here are my top 5 social media channels for generating leads:

TikTok (best overall)
YouTube (best for video content)
Facebook ads (best for older audiences)
Instagram (best for image and text ads)
LinkedIn (best for b2b)

Overall, each social media channel has its pros and cons when it comes to getting leads for your business. Which channel is best for you will ultimately depend on your target audience, budget and resources.

**Tip: **Rather than use all social media channels at once, it’s best to focus on only one or a few at a time. It’s better to use one (or a few) channels really well, than use all of them averagely.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of the top 5 social media platforms for lead generation:

1. TikTok

TikTok was the most downloaded app in 2022 and has over 1 billion active users (source). It’s no surprise that TikTok has steadily risen to become the most downloaded app on the Apple Store. It has proven to be one of the most fun, unique, and effective ways to create brand awareness, reach your ideal customers and stack up views faster than ever before.

Whether you’re using TikTok for ads for organic growth, TikTok has the potential to grow your business faster than any other social media channel right now.

You can either use TikTok yourself as a business owner or you can partner with influencers on TikTok to let them promote your brand for you. To develop your TikTok marketing strategy, you can also explore the resources and tools offered by the TikTok Creative Center.

Key benefits of TikTok:

Powerful algorithm: The TikTok algorithm does an excellent job of showing you content that you’ll love. This makes it highly addictive and one of the reasons its grown so quickly in popularity.
Short videos: People’s attention spans are shorter these days which is why TikTok focuses on shorter videos rather than longer videos.
Reach large audiences: If your content is unique and interesting, it’s much easier for your video to go viral.
Less advertising competition: TikTok has less advertisers compared to other larger channels such as Google or Facebook. Therefore your costs for running ads are usually lower compared to other channels.

When running TikTok ads for clients, I’ve found TikTok ads usually get 2-5x better results compared to Facebook ads. For example, some clients who were paying $20 to get a new lead on Facebook Ads, only paid $5 to get the same kind of lead on TikTok ads!

This allows them to get four times more leads for the same price. And I’ve experienced this in multiple industries, both B2C and B2B. Even ALFs in Florida are starting to use social to generate leads.

2. YouTube

YouTube has completely changed the way we create and share videos. Gone are the days you would make videos and place them on your website or social media pages hoping that someone would see them.

Today you can create a video on YouTube and if it’s good enough the YouTube algorithm can show it to the right people at the right time.

Key benefits of YouTube:

YouTube videos can appear in both YouTube search results and news feed discovery
Vdeos can appear on Google search results
Run video ads on specific YouTube videos, YouTube channels or search queries
Google has a vast amount of data to show the right videos to the right people

Many business owners have been able to grow their company using YouTube organic videos alone. You can use an SEO rank tracking tool to see where your videos are ranked on both Google and YouTube. You can also optimize your video for search to increases the chances it shows up for different search queries.

And if you want to speed up the time it takes for you to see results on YouTube, you can always pay for YouTube ads.

YouTube ads gives business owners a unique advantage. Because YouTube is owned by Google, you’re able to leverage both search data from Google and video interest data from YouTube when running ads.

In other words, you can reach out to new customers on YouTube by targeting people who are searching for certain keywords. Whereas other social media platforms only allow you to target users based on interest and demographic data.

3. Facebook

Despite the emergence of new players in the social media field, Facebook remains a household name with a vast reach. There are over 2.08 billion Facebook users, amounting to about 30% of the world's population. These factors make Facebook ideal for reaching vast online audiences.

Unfortunately, organic reach on Facebook through a Facebook business page is difficult these days.

So if you want people to see your Facebook posts, you’ll most likely need to run ads or participate in Facebook groups and network with people through there.

Key benefits of Facebook:

Algorithm does a good job of showing your ads to the right people
Older people are one of Facebook’s fastest growing demographic
Facebook own Instagram which allows you to advertise on there too
Faebook groups are a great way to network with other like minded people

When it comes to generate leads on Facebook you have two main options.

Option 1: Facebook groups

If you want to generate leads on Facebook for free, your best option is to join Facebook groups where your potential customers are hanging out. Then interact in the group, help people and provide value to them.

Once you’re well known, you can add some of the people you speak to regularly as Facebook friends. Then once you’re connected, they’ll be able to see anything you post about your business.

Admittedly, this is a fairly long approach to generating leads via Facebook. But in many cases, it’s still a lot easier than going to networking events with people in person since everything can be done from the comfort of your laptop.

Option 2: Facebook ads

If you’re looking to get faster lead generation provider provider results with Facebook, then you’re best option is to use ads. Facebook ads allows you to target potential customers instantly. The more you pay Facebook, the more people you can reach.

With Facebook ads you get precise audience targeting by sorting users according to location, interests, age, gender, and even language. You can make Facebook ads in different formats, such as a single image or video, carousel ads, or even collection ads.

4. Instagram

Like Facebook, Instagram is used by over 1 billion users worldwide but is geared towards photo and video sharing. Instagram has a better organic reach compared to Facebook and it’s also an excellent place to advertise on.

To place an advert on Instagram, you don't necessarily need to set up an Instagram account; you can link your Facebook account and activate the ad campaign on both platforms.

Instagram also supports various ad formats, with ads that can be placed on users' IG stories, explore pages, and in their direct feeds.

Key benefits of Instagram:

Integrates well with Facebook ads
Instagram posts can help build more brand awareness for your business
Instagram stories allows your posts to go viral (similar to TikTok)
Instagram shopping makes it easy for people to purchase products from your brand

Overall, Instagram is a great social media channel to use for generating leads. Since links don’t work on Instagram posts, it’s a good idea to direct people back to the link your profile if you want people to take some kind of action.

5. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a potential goldmine for the right kind of business. If you’re looking to target a specific type of person based on job title, industry, company size and other B2B demographic information, then LinkedIn would be one of the easiest ways to do this.

Key benefits of LinkedIn:

Drill down and target very specific types of business people
Great for B2B lead generation
Can be automated using LinkedIn automation software

When it comes to using LinkedIn, you have two main options.

Option 1: LinkedIn prospecting

This is where you use LinkedIn automation software to reach out to potential clients who are interested in working with you. LinkedIn automation is when you automatically connect and message prospects who would like to work with you.

However, it’s important you do this the right way!

So many people just spam other people’s direct messages with links to their website or requests to schedule a call.

Instead, I recommend asking people IF they want to watch a short video that explains how to solve a problem. Potential clients will be a lot more inclined to say “Yes” to watch a video vs “Yes” to schedule a call with you when they don’t yet know, like or trust you.

The video (or any other type of educational content that you use) will essentially be used as a lead magnet. You’ll use it to generate leads on LinkedIn, provide some value and then give them the option to schedule a call with you if they prefer.

Option 2: LinkedIn ads

This is where you would pay ads to Linkedin to get your message in front of potential customers. LinkedIn ads can work well if you’re looking to target a very selective audience. For example, if you’re looking to target “CEOs” in companies with 11 to 50 employees, then LinkedIn would be a great way to do this.

However, if you’re looking to target business owners in general and your audience is more broad, than other social media channels such as TikTok, YouTube, Facebook or Instagram would likely work better because they are a lot more cost effective compared to LinkedIn.

The bottom line

All the social media channels mentioned above can work well. However, for best results, I recommend you only focus on one (or a few) channels at a time.

If you’re looking to target specific types of business owners, LinkedIn is a great place to start. If you’re looking to get organic reach for your long-form videos, then YouTube would be an excellent social media channel to use. And if you’re looking to reach a large audience with short videos, then TikTok is another great option.

Top 5 Best Social Media Channels for Lead Generation

Intro