Considering myself to be a bit of a sales buff I was a tad embarrassed upon the realization that a humongous chunk of my sales savvy knowledge was totally missing.

Facebook suggest that there a four key ways in which a business will successfully use Facebook  and I was right with them! I understood utilising Facebook to develop and grow the brand, to connect with your market, to engage your audience and to drive sales.

Wait – what was that last bit – drive SALES?  I’d often used Facebook to promote a service, event, special promotion or offer but, and here is the honest truth, I’d never even THOUGHT about using it as a platform to generate sales leads

So you can imagine my glee when I came across this article on hub spot about how to use Facebook to generate sales leads for your business. Along with defining what direct and indirect sales leads actually are this article is important because it recommends six ways to capture leads on Facebook.

These are:

1) Use Calls-to-Action in Cover Photos

2) Include Links in Captions

3) Host a Fecebook Chat

4) Make Facebook Events for Webinars

5) Use Targeted Advertising to Extend Your Content’s Reach

6) Build Forms on Tabs

Knowing how to capture leads on Facebook is a significant way that a business can improve their digital marketing because it directly impacts profitability (in terms of lead generation and SALES)

Number six requires some skill and a little more expertise, but in basic terms a Form on Facebook is similar to your websites Landing Page.  One thing that is particularly important to understand in this context is ensuring you have the appropriate Landing Pages  to gather your potential customers info and to ensure to have a sales strategy to follow up the leads.

There is no point putting all the energy to get them if you are not going to follow up and turn them into SALES.

We’ve all done it; you open your emails in the morning and ruthlessly cull anything that doesn’t appeal, based on primarily one thing – the subject line.

The ‘right’ subject line can make or break the success of your Electronic Direct Marketing Campaign (EDM).  So, how do you ensure that YOUR email is the one that your customer actually opens?  The following article explores The Most (and Least) Effective Keywords in Email Subject Lines.

The subject of well – subject lines is absolutely crucial for any Marketer to understand. Marketing expert Mark Brownlow asks How much email do people really get?  The answer is hard to pinpoint, but on average, a Hotmail Inbox will receive between three to four marketing emails per day, meaning that competition is fierce (at the height of my consumer email fatigue I once received 42 marketing emails in the period of 48 hours, motivating me to hit UNSUBSCRIBE).

Therefore, using Keywords in your email subject lines is the way to ensure you cut through your competition to reach your customer and increase that conversion rate!

One factor that is often overlooked is the financial resources that your business as actually spent to get that EDM out there in the first place.  You had the marketing team come up with the concept ($$) who then translated it to the graphics department ($$) who then put a design together ($$) which was sent back and forth several times before it was finally approved ($$) Sound familiar? And THEN you had the cost of sending it.   So essentially – by not using the most effective keywords in your subject line, not only are you not reaching your customers – you are using A LOT of resources in the process (you may as well individually call each person!)

To improve your digital marketing, other than understanding what keywords work (See this related article from Jericho for ones to avoid) you must keep subject lines short, to the point, and accurately explains the subject matter of your email. It helps your recipients decide whether the email is relevant to them, and therefore whether they will take the time to open it and read more.