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Most marketers know by now that Facebook is an important business tool for companies of every size and industry. With a daily active user base of 1.13 billion (1.03 billion on mobile alone), you know it can help you reach new audiences you may not have been able to reach otherwise. It can also help you get found more easily in search, create a community around your business, promote the content you create, and develop a strong brand identity.

But what about using Facebook for lead generation? Attracting new leads using Facebook — leads that might eventually turn into paying customers — is one of the most intriguing reasons to use Facebook in your marketing.

And yet, we find that only about half of marketers use Facebook to source leads. This needs to change. And even if you are generating leads on Facebook, we all could probably use a little boost in our lead generation efforts.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s start with what a lead is (and isn’t), and the two types of leads you can generate on Facebook.

The 2 Types of Leads You Can Capture on Facebook

Although definitions can vary, in general, a lead is a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service by giving you their information in some way. People can show interest in a variety of ways: filling out a form to download an ebook, requesting a demo, or completing an online survey. 

Unfortunately, simply Liking a status update, photo, or video on your Page doesn’t make someone a lead. That type of action doesn’t indicate interest in your company or product — it’s possible they just Liked your post because it had a cute puppy in it, ya know?

On Facebook, there are two ways you can generate leads: direct leads and indirect leads.

Direct Leads

Direct leads are generated by sharing content that links directly back to a form on your website where visitors can share information in exchange for an offer — whether that be an ebook, coupon, infographic, or any other piece of content. This form is housed on a landing page dedicated to that specific offer.

Indirect Leads

Indirect leads are generated by using Facebook on the path to conversion. For example, if you shared a blog post that had a call-to-action to a landing page at the bottom of the post, your initial Facebook share is helping direct visitors to that landing page.

While directly promoting landing pages is an instant gratifier of leads generated, providing content without a form makes your Facebook presence a friendlier home for content that your fans will want to come back for again and again.

Now, let’s dive into 12 ways you can capture leads, whether they are direct or indirect.

12 Types of Facebook Posts to Help You Generate Leads From Your Business Page 

1) Post landing pages for offers directly to Facebook.

One of the best ways to generate leads on Facebook is simply to send people directly to landing pages for lead-generating offers. (If you don’t have many lead-generating offers yet, read this blog posts for ideas.)

When you do this, make sure the offer has a compelling featured image that’s getting pulled into the Facebook post. To ensure Facebook pulls the right image from your blog post into your Facebook posts, you’ll need to first optimize the image size for Facebook and then add the proper open graph tags to your website, which you can learn how to do here.

You’ll also want to make sure it’s clear to the reader where you’re sending them. If they think they’re clicking into a blog post and find themselves needing to fill out a form, they could get confused or frustrated. Use verbal phrases like “Download your ebook” or “Get your cheat sheet” to indicate where you’re sending them. 

Here’s an example from IBM’s Facebook Page, which reads, “Explore our 2015 Corporate Responsibility Report”:

In addition to using clear language, you may want to nix the stock photo from that image in favor of your own, custom image. Even the least design-savvy of marketers can easily create a custom image in PowerPoint that includes the name of the offer, just like we did in the example below. (Click here to browse through and download our collection of 100 free social media image templates.)

2) Post the blog posts that generate the most leads.

Another way of generating leads from the content your team is producing is to simply pick the blog posts that generate the most leads, and post those ones to Facebook. (Learn how to do a blog lead generation analysis here.) The topic and title of the blog post will intrigue your audience to click and read, and then they’ll find a CTA within that post — preferably high up, near the intro — to either a solution to a problem they’re having or to something they want to learn more about.

Pro Tip: Our social media managers have found they’re able to generate more leads from Facebook by posting blog posts containing anchor text CTAs in the introduction. If you aren’t using anchor text CTAs yet, you may want to read up on the study we did on anchor text CTAs on the blog and consider adopting them yourself. In every single post we tracked for that study, the anchor text CTA was responsible for between 47% and 93% of a post’s leads.

Here’s an example of a Facebook post linking to a blog post that includes an anchor text CTA in the introduction:

And here’s that anchor text CTA, indicated by the red arrow:

3) Include links to landing pages in your image captions. 

Most marketers understand the importance of using visuals like images and videos in your Facebook strategy. For example, Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images. To turn these higher engagement rates into lead generation opportunities, consider including links to your website in the descriptions for your images — especially your profile picture and cover photo descriptions.

Whether it’s to a blog post, a piece of lead gen content, or just an “About Us” page, links are opportunities for interested folks to get to know your company better, and the descriptions of your profile picture and cover photo are prime real estate to do it. That way, any time people view your cover photo directly, they can access the download link.

Make sure you shorten your links and add UTM codes so you can track clicks on them. Shortening and tracking features are available in the HubSpot Marketing Platform and in tools like bitly.

Here’s this practice in action on HubSpot’s Facebook Page:

4) Use videos to promote lead gen offers.

Facebook’s organic reach has dropped to 52% so far in 2016, thanks to the tweaks in Facebook’s algorithm to help mitigate the increasing amount of content on its platform. But videos are the big exception here. In fact, posting videos has actually helped neutralize some of that pain for marketers.

Why? To start, Facebook’s algorithm favors video content. As a result, video posts have 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. So if you’re trying to increase your lead gen efforts on Facebook, you’ll want to start using videos to help introduce and promote those lead-generating content, whether they’re offers, events, courses, or something else.

In addition to the text CTA you can add in the video’s description, remember to add a verbal CTA to the video to “register” or “download,” both earlier in the video and at the very end.

Check out how L.L. Bean used a video to encourage sign-ups for their course:

Here’s another example from us here at HubSpot, in which we used a how-to video to introduce a gated offer:

We’ve also created videos specifically to promote lead-generating content, like we did here for our career assessment called The Next Five: 

5) Use Facebook Live videos to remind people to register.

Videos can be pretty time-intensive to create. (Not to mention intimidating.) But you don’t necessarily have to pull together the time and resources to create a perfectly scripted and edited marketing video to leverage the power of video on Facebook.

Facebook Live is Facebook’s live video platform that lets anyone broadcast live videos from their mobile device straight to their Facebook News Feed. The best part about these live videos is that they’re meant to be a little scrappier and more spontaneous than normal marketing videos — that’s what makes live videos special.

What’s more, Facebook Live has proven itself pretty incredible for engagement rates. Facebook’s initial data revealed that people comment 10X more on Facebook Live videos than on regular videos.

So get the conversation going about your lead gen offers by creating a live video to promote them. You might promote an event by showing the setup live, for example. Or, you might promote an offer by hosting an open Q&A on live video where you actually interact with Facebook commenters live and on camera.

Just like you’d do with your normal videos, add a verbal CTA to the video in addition to the text CTA. In a live video, though, you’ll want to repeat that CTA even more than you would with a pre-recorded CTA. Why? Because when you first start live streaming, you may have zero people watching. Even a few seconds in, you could only have a handful of viewers.

As people find your video on their News Feeds, they’ll join in — but that means you’ll want to repeat the CTA a few times to catch people up. You can also add a text CTA in the video’s description.

6) Pin posts that link to lead gen offers to the top of your feed.

Pinning a post to the top of your Page’s Timeline allows you to highlight what would otherwise be a typical post. It’ll stay at the top of your Timeline for up to seven days, after which it’ll return to the date it was published on your Page’s Timeline. A pinned post is signified by a small blue-and-white pushpin icon on the top right of the post.

Here’s an example from Apttus’ Facebook Page:

You can pin any type of post, from text to images to videos; even live videos. If you pin a Facebook Live video, that video will simply show up at the top of your profile with the whole recording, indicating that the Page “was live” at a certain point. Here’s an example of what that looks like from Refinery29’s Facebook Page:

7) Add a call-to-action button to your Facebook Page.

Alright, this one isn’t technically a type of Facebook post, but it’s a pretty crucial lead generation tactic that no marketers will want to miss out on. Back in late 2014, Facebook added a feature to its business Pages allowing users to place a simple call-to-action button at the top of their Facebook Pages. This button is simple but powerful, and it can help drive more traffic from your Facebook Page to your website — including landing pages, contact sheets, and other lead generation forms. You can learn how to install and use the Facebook CTA button here.

You’ll find you have seven pre-made button options to choose from: “Sign Up,” “Shop Now,” “Contact Us,” “Book Now,” “Use App,” Watch Video,” and “Play Game.” Once you choose a button and link it to a page your website, the button you chose will appear up at a fixed location right below your cover photo and to the right.

While some marketers choose a CTA and keep it the same for weeks and months at a time, consider taking your marketing game a step further and switching up that button — and the web page it links to — to match your team’s and business’ goals and the campaigns you’re running at the time. For example, you might align the CTA both with your cover photo design and a pinned post around a single campaign.

8) Ask for input on your products.

One way to feed two birds with one scone (as my colleague Carly Stec would say) is to post a status update to your business’ Timeline asking for feedback on one of your products or tools and linking to a landing page where people can sign up for a trial — or, if it’s free, to simply download the tool. You’ll encourage sign-ups by linking directly to the landing page, and your followers will love the opportunity to give their two cents.

The obvious risk here is that you’ll be opening up the floodgates for negative commenters, so be selective on the tools and products you post for feedback. Make sure you’re posting something you’re proud of and ready to receive feedback for. You’ll also want to have at least one or two people ready to respond to Facebook comments as they roll in — both the positive and the negative.

If you do receive negative feedback, respond as quickly as you can to show you care, and prevent them from turning into something more serious. If you get complaints about the product, use the “customer is always right” approach and say you’re sorry. You’ll get respect from other customers for being upfront. Share you appreciation for folks’ feedback. Finally, ask how you can help — and then actually help. Take notes on the feedback you get and send it to the people who can make things happen. (Read this post for more tips on dealing with negative comments on social media.)

9) Run a contest or giveaway.

People love contests and giveaways. Not only are they fun for your followers, but they can also teach you a lot about your audience — all the while engaging them, growing your reach, driving traffic to your website, and (drum roll, please) generating leads.

If the goal of your contest is to generate leads, publish posts on Facebook (in addition to your other social media accounts) that include an attractive featured image or video, language that’s compelling and simple, and a link to your contest page where they can fill out a form. Read this post to learn more about running successful social media contests.

(Before you start your Facebook contest, though, make sure you can actually run it legally by reading through their Page Guidelines. Facebook has cracked down on contests due to liability issues, so read through their strict rules ahead of time.)

Below is an example from Canva’s Facebook Page. Notice they pinned the post to the top of their profile.

And here’s another example, this time from Yoplait. They promoted their contest using a video to get more visibility on folks’ News Feeds.

10) Make a Facebook event page for your next webinar.

While we’ve already covered sharing landing pages with dedicated content offerings such as ebooks or contests, webinars are another great format for capturing leads. While you can promote your webinar’s sign-up form by posting them to your business’ Timeline, another way to spread the word is by creating a Facebook Event with with a separate registration page on your website.

Once you invite someone to a Facebook Event, you can encourage them to register on a separate landing page, where they’ll become a lead. In terms of reaching new audiences, Facebook Events are also more visible than standard Facebook posts on the News Feed.

Facebook also added new features that help businesses promote their events and see how they’re performing. For example, you can create ads for the desktop and mobile News Feed that boost awareness of events and drive responses.

Image Credit: Facebook

If you host events and webinars often, you can also use the Events tab on your Page to share with your followers in a single view. That way, people visiting your page can scroll through your upcoming events and webinars. (If you don’t see the tab on your Page, click “Manage Tabs” at the bottom of your tabs and reorder them so Events is one of the first to appear.) Read this blog post for more tips on hosting great webinars.

11) Run targeted ads to extend your content’s reach.

One of the best things Facebook can do for your business is expand your reach to new audiences that are likely to be interested in your content — and possibly become followers, leads, and even customers down the road. This is thanks to Facebook’s very sophisticated targeting options, which let you target your ads to people based on things like location, age, gender, interests — even the things they do off of Facebook.

There are three, overarching formats for Facebook ads that I’ll cover in brief here: boosted posts, right-hand column ads, and News Feed ads. The main distinction here is the placement of the ad, as well as the amount of writing and size of image that is allowed.

1. Boosted Post: This is Facebook’s way of letting marketers turn otherwise normal Facebook posts into ads by “boosting” them. The post will show organically to some users, but to get better reach, the admin will press “boost” on the post (shown only to admins, not to other users) so it shows to a larger number of fans and to targets you can select ahead of time.
2. Right-Hand Column Ads: This is the most traditional on Facebook, it appears on the right side of a user’s Facebook News Feed. We often see less expensive clicks and conversions when using these ads, along with more advanced testing options.
3. News Feed Ads: These appear directly in a user’s News Feed and look more like native advertising, although you can also add a small CTA button. They’re part of a tactic called “dark posts,” which means using News Feed-style ads that don’t actually get published to the News Feed of your Page. In our experience, these ads have a higher engagement rate than right-hand column ads (which makes your Page look super healthy), but they can also be more expensive.

While we won’t go too much more in depth on Facebook advertising (download our Facebook advertising ebook if you want to learn more), here are two examples of Facebook ads in users’ News Feeds. This first one is a boosted post that targets people based on their Facebook connections:

This second one is a News Feed ad, which lets you add a CTA button to the post — in this case, “Sign Up.” These CTAs are only available for News Feed ads.

12) Run lead ads to simplify the mobile signup process. 

As if Facebook’s addition of CTA buttons to its link ads wasn’t exciting enough, Facebook added an entirely new feature called lead ads in 2015, which lets users sign up for lead-generating offers and content without leaving Facebook. It was created specifically to simplify the mobile sign-up processes by making it super easy for mobile users to fill out your forms.

Why? Because the forms will autopopulate instead of mobile users having to pinch-and-zoom and type into tiny form fields. Basically, when you click on a lead ad, a form opens with your contact information automatically populated based on what you’ve shared with Facebook already, like name and email address. Talk about solving for form friction. Of course, you can edit your contact information before you click “Submit.”

Image Credit: Facebook

We won’t go into too much detail about lead ads here, but creating them is easy: All you have to do is choose your ad creative, set your targeting and bidding type, and then customize your form fields. (Learn more from Facebook here.)

How do you extract the leads you get from lead ads? If you’re a HubSpot customer you can integrate Facebook Lead Ads directly with your HubSpot account. If you’re not a HubSpot customer, you can export a CSV straight from your Facebook Page, download them from Ads Manager or Power Editor, or request it directly through the API. 

We hope you found these ideas for ways you can generate leads from Facebook helpful. Remember, though, that Facebook is constantly changing. While the ideas here are a strong start to success, nothing beats testing each strategy for your own audience. 

These are just a couple ways you can generate leads from Facebook, so we’d love to hear from you. How do you generate leads through Facebook? What works — and doesn’t work — for your Facebook Fans?

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in August 2013 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

Blogging can be a powerful way for you to build your personal brand and increase the visibility of your company within your industry. Ideally, both at the same time.

Your end goal, of course, is to become a top leading expert on the topics that matter to your niche. And when you’re first starting out, committing to a niche is important. You must own and dominate it.

Yet, a day will eventually come when you’ve exhausted your niche. You’ll realize that you have finally worked “until you no longer have to introduce yourself,” as the great anonymous once put it so eloquently.

What do you do then, when the “law of diminishing blogging returns” kicks in?

If you’ve reached this point, you may want to start exploring topics that are outside of your core niche. After all, writing off-topic posts can have many benefits. To help you better understand this strategy, let’s walk through some of the reasoning, as well as a few tips for getting started.

5 Smart Reasons to Create Content Outside Your Niche

1) You can reach much bigger audiences.

Once upon a time I was a nobody, writing for an internet marketing company nobody had ever heard of. A smart content promotion strategy changed all that.

Suddenly, I was no longer writing about marketing topics just on the WordStream blog. I was writing for major industry publications like Search Engine Land, Moz, Search Engine Watch, and Search Engine Journal about PPC, display advertising, social media marketing and advertising, and SEO.

At this point, I was thrilled when a blog post would become a “unicorn” — getting tens of thousands of views, and absolutely thrilled whenever one would get a couple hundred thousand views.

This was a great achievement. But I soon realized I was hitting my own point of diminishing returns by writing about advertising and marketing. So I started going off-topic a couple of years ago. I started writing for Inc.com, mainly about startups and entrepreneurship — which I’m ridiculously passionate about.

Now, suddenly, the unicorns were even more sparkly and amazing. When I’d hit a home run with a blog post, it might get a million views. And if I hit a grand slam with a blog post, it might get more than 10 million views.

And they weren’t all about marketing; they spanned across topics like boosting your intelligence and making a first impression.

Bottom line: What you lose in topical relevancy you’ll make up for in volume.

2) You can start biasing future customers.

When you’re creating content, there are a couple of types of people you need to think about:

• People who know they need the product/solution you sell.
• People who don’t yet realize they need the product/solution you sell.

Writing about off-topics is a brilliant way to reach and start biasing that second group of people toward you and your brand. And that’s why I started writing about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs probably aren’t actively looking for articles about AdWords, but small business owners are definitely interested in marketing topics.

Writing about off-topics allows you to connect with people before they even need the types of services your company provides. By establishing a relationship through a shared interest now, you can increase the odds that later on those same people will come to you first and become your customers when the need arises.

3) You can increase your social media engagement.

If you’re fortunate enough to write for a large publication such as Inc.com, which has millions of fans on Facebook and Twitter, you’ll see your follower counts soar. All you have to do is write about interesting topics.

Every time Inc.com shares my content organically, I pick up more followers: When I started writing for the publication couple of years ago, I had less than 100,000 Twitter followers. Now, I have more than 300,000 followers.

Medium is another great platform to pick up new readers with your off-topic posts. Plus, publishing on Medium might help you get noticed by a publication with a large readership.

Just as one example, I published a post on Medium about multitasking that generated almost half a million views.

It was so successful that it ended up being syndicated on a couple major publications, and it was tweeted by the Arianna Huffington. Amazing, right?

Is multitasking killing your brain? Yes! https://t.co/n1Jne0MxxS

— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff)
February 5, 2016

At the end of the day, having more followers gives you an even larger promotional vehicle for your on-topic content, so why not give it a try?

4) You can truly express yourself.

Going off-topic gives you the opportunity to share more about yourself.

Simply publishing generic posts doesn’t cut it anymore. There’s way too much competition. You need to think about the tone and style of your content.

In case you couldn’t tell, I really like unicorns and memes. It’s kind of what I’m known for.

I want my posts to be useful by including data and actionable tips. But it’s equally important for me to write memorable posts, which is why I try to add some humor and use lots of visuals.

Remember: A little personality goes a long way and will make you more interesting. 

5) You’ll keep your sanity.

Once you’ve been writing for a few years, you’ll find that it will become increasingly hard to come up with new and interesting things to say about the same topics.

Take me, for example. If I were just writing about nothing but AdWords features and tips for years, I’d go nuts.

Diversify! For the sake of your own sanity.

How To Get Started With Off-Topic Content 

Now that we’ve covered why you need to write about a wider variety of topics, how do you get started?

• Do your research. Before you expand, think about how the off-topic posts you want to write will help advance your career. What audience could you reach and how could that help you?
• Find a way to set yourself apart from established influencers in the same space. How are you going to be memorable? Make sure you know what you want to accomplish and have a strategy to achieve your goals.

Once you sort through the initial research and planning, you’ll need to nail down where you want to publish. To get started, do a search for popular sites that feature posts on the topics you want to write about. Read the sites and figure out their style and what types of article perform well.

To do this quickly and easily, you’ll want to lean on BuzzSumo. With BuzzSumo, you can look into the top performing posts for any domain to generate a better understanding of what works well.

It’s also helpful to take a look at a publication’s guest blogging guidelines, as these typically offer insights around what type of content they are looking for. (Check out this post to learn more about the content submission process for 11 popular sites — from The New York Times to Business Insider.)

When you send your email, don’t just pitch one idea. Pitch a few original ideas with a unique angle to choose from. Or build off an existing article they’ve published:

I saw your great article on [topic] and wanted to see if you’d have interest in publishing an article about [topic] that I could write exclusively for you.

Look for content gaps and offer to fill those. Editors will be more receptive when you show that you’ve done your research. And if you’re having trouble coming up with unique, interesting ideas outside of your niche, turn to these tips:

• Use Twitter to audition topics. If you want to know whether you should invest your time writing about a certain topic, tweet about it on Twitter. If your tweet generates lots of engagement, then you can be confident that there’s an audience interested in that topic. If your Twitter audition bombs, forget about that topic for now. You can always revisit it in the future.
• Use BuzzSumo to discover topics. Again, BuzzSumo is a powerful tool that helps you discover which topics are super hot in any industry, and which posts are the most popular on individual websites. Yes, it’s paid, but I’d consider it one of the wisest investments if you’re serious about your content strategy.

Proceed With Caution

I can’t leave without issuing one warning about off-topic posts: Don’t overdo it.

The worst thing you can do is to lose focus. To prevent this, I’d suggest following the 80-20 rule, where 80% of the content you create covers your money “bread and butter” topics, and the remaining 20% of your efforts go toward off-topic content to establish yourself in a new niche.

Stay focused. And best of luck as you embark on your new journey and begin growing your influence in new areas.

Have you experimented with off-topic blog posts? Did you see positive results? Share your thoughts and experiences below.

Marketing agencies across the U.S. are in the midst of a revenue boom. In 2015, agency revenue increased 6.5% to a record $46.8 billion. This means more hiring, more promotions, and more new leaders trying to find their footing in the challenging agency landscape.

Taking on a new position of power can be a massive adrenaline rush, but the excitement can sometimes get overshadowed by feelings of inadequacy and panic. Did the agency make a hiring mistake? Can you actually handle this new responsibility?

Just know that you’re far from alone.

Being exposed as incompetent is actually the number one fear of executives worldwide.

Especially in the early stages of your new position, it can seem like an endless battle to push through those uncomfortable feelings. These seven survival tips can help you build your confidence and succeed early as a new leader.

7 Rules to Help New Managers Succeed

1) Don’t get hung up on your own perceptions of how you’re doing.

This is not to say that you should be recklessly unconcerned with your own performance, but you shouldn’t be obsessed with it. In fact, falling too hard into what psychologists call a performance mindset often means getting stuck in a cycle of feeling inadequate and limited by your own failures.

When you magnify your shortcomings and allow them to cripple your confidence, you forget that you’re capable of improvement. And when that happens, you actually stop trying to get better.

Instead of letting your own performance dominate your thoughts and drive you completely crazy, why not put your energy into actually learning the ropes of your new gig? What you see as shortcomings and fixed flaws are actually just opportunities to get better, as cheesy as that might sound at first.

This all just requires a simple mindset change: View each challenging task as a chance to improve on a skill, rather than something that might set you up to fail.

2) Check your ego at the door.

When a promotion suddenly places you above colleagues who were your peers, things can understandably get a little awkward. You want to prove that you deserve your newfound position of influence, but it’s important to remember that your new title doesn’t automatically come with instant leadership qualities and respect.

The best thing you can do is approach your new role with a humble attitude, a learning mindset, and an open mind. You were promoted because your company’s higher-ups saw potential in you, but that doesn’t mean you know everything or that everyone below you somehow knows less. In fact, the best leaders understand that they aren’t always the smartest person in the room.

Keeping your ego under control will help people respect you more, and it will take off some of the pressure you put on yourself to always perform optimally. It’s not your job to always have the correct answer or the perfect foolproof plan; it’s your job to bring out the best in those around you.

3) Give yourself a frank self-evaluation.

Before you can begin to truly thrive in your new role, you need to take stock of where your leadership skills currently stand. Most people think they have a better understanding of their own abilities than they actually do, and this can be a big problem for new leaders. In self-evaluations, people tend to “overestimate what they can accomplish and overvalue what they’ve already accomplished.”

So how can you overcome this unconscious bias and take a good hard look at your skill level? Start by asking yourself what aspects of your new role seem the most unnatural to you. Avoid passing judgement on yourself. Identifying where you feel insecure or less confident is an effective way to get a better understanding of the boundaries of your comfort zone and where you need to improve.

4) Approach everything like a beginner.

Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki famously wrote, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

If you approach your new role with the assumption that you’re already an expert, you unconsciously close yourself off to new learning opportunities. You’re letting your established beliefs derail any chance to absorb new information that could make you much better at your job, just because you feel threatened.

Having the mindset of a beginner in a new leadership position is especially important as it allows you to remain eager, open, and receptive to new information. Being a successful leader hinges on being able to put your preconceived notions aside in the face of facts or people who challenge assumed information.

5) Figure out what type of leader you want to be.

As a new leader, you might feel like you suffer from a lack of clear direction. You have a list of responsibilities that need to be fulfilled, but no one is standing over your shoulder telling you exactly how you’re supposed to do it. This can be a scary realization, but it’s useful to keep in mind that you’re not the first person to go through this, and you can leverage the experiences of others who came before you.

Identify a leader at your agency whom you admire, and ask yourself what qualities make them such an enviable leader. Consider asking them to coffee or lunch to pick their brain and discuss the challenges they overcame early on in their tenure.

Having a mentor can be a valuable asset as you begin to navigate your new role. Their experience can help quell your early jitters and remind you that you aren’t alone in the obstacles you face.

Just remember that at the end of the day, a mentor is a general role model, not an exact version of who you need to become to be successful. Use their advice to develop your own leadership style as you progress and learn what works and what doesn’t. 

6) Understand that the big picture isn’t just about you — it’s about your team.

It’s easy to forget in the midst of your own transition that your new team is undergoing a transition as well: They’re getting used to a new leader who they may not be very familiar with.

Don’t try to force your authority. Give your new team the opportunity to get to know you and adapt without pressure. If possible, set up one-on-one meetings with your team members as soon as possible to learn more about their individual responsibilities, their concerns for the future, and what they need from you to be successful.

Plan a group lunch or outing to get to know the team as a whole, and take the time to formally introduce yourself. Share the typical information about your background and experience, but avoid reading off a laundry list of accomplishments. This can make you seem inaccessible.

Instead, show some vulnerability: Discuss the areas where you think you can learn more from your new team. They’ll see you as someone who is willing to take feedback and learn for the benefit of the company.

7) Lean into the discomfort.

Maybe leadership job descriptions should all tack on this bullet point: “Must be comfortable being uncomfortable.” By the very nature of their position, leaders are dropped into uncomfortable situations on a daily basis. Whether it’s giving tough feedback, making cutbacks, or standing by unpopular decisions, get used to it — it’s now part of your profession.

But being uncomfortable is, well … really uncomfortable. We’re wired to shy away from situations that make us feel overwhelmingly awkward or disliked. Part of growing into a leadership role is learning to manage discomfort and do what’s needed for the agency — even when you’d rather hide under your desk. 

To strengthen your tolerance for discomfort, try rehearsing or writing down conversations you know have the potential to get awkward. And remember that having uncomfortable conversations is a lot like jumping into a pool of freezing water: If you keep standing on the edge, you’ll build up the jump in your head and only psych yourself out. Sometimes, you just need to take the plunge. 

Timing is everything when it comes to sales, which is why it’s so important to reach the customer at the right time, with the right message. What timing could be better to engage customers than real-time while they are viewing products/services on your website? Let’s discuss an underutilized tool called live chat and see how it can boost your business and give you a leg up on the competition.

What is live chat?

We all have come across a live chat window at some point during our online browsing. In a nutshell, it’s a customer service software that integrates with your website to initiate real time communication with visitors to your site. Live chat is extremely convenient for customers as it allows them immediate access to support, but it’s also a powerful marketing and sales tool that allows you to engage visitors to your site and start a relationship with them at the point when they’re most interested in learning more about you.

How does live chat work?

Typically a small customizable chat window will popup on the user’s screen inviting them to chat with customer support while still viewing your website. The chat window is usually discrete, yet noticeable and designed to look like part of your website to give users the peace of mind that they will not be directed away from your site.

The chat window can engage visitors with an automated greeting that is triggered when certain conditions are met, or a manual greeting sent by an agent. Either way, the proactive chat invitations are designed to increase customer engagement.

Live chat systems are more affordable than you think

The cost to add live chat to your website varies from company to company, but here are some general pricing plans for all businesses ranging from startups to big enterprises. Pricing can begin as low as $19 per agent per month and go up to $149 per agent per month. You can have as many or as few agents as you want depending on your business needs.

Live chat tracking and reporting features often include daily reporting of online chat activity, post-chat survey, chat ratings, queued visitors and wait times, goals achieved during a chat, and much more. There are also typically options for visitors to leave a message via a ticket form and receive a response the next business day when your live chat is offline.

Why choose live chat?

According to a survey conducted by Forrester Research, “around 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a web site can offer.”

Live chat is a powerful way to communicate with customers immediately and can reduce or replace your need for phone support.

Also, nothing turns off a potential customer faster than waiting on hold on the phone. If you staff your live chat appropriately, then there should be no or very little wait time for a response from a customer support agent. Prompt communication in a chat window will keep your visitors engaged and creates greater potential to convert them into customers.

How to optimize your live chat

Live chat communication should be warm and friendly to assist customers in their shopping experience. One simple way to do this is by using photo avatars that customers can associate with chat representatives as a reminder that they are chatting with a real person. Another way to keep that human touch is to avoid any robotic greetings or responses.

You also should make the most of your live chat software by monitoring the activity on your site to be sure you have adequate staffing for your customers’ needs. Analytics can help you to determine when most visitors are using your site, which will enable you be prepared for surges in chat volume and reduce the amount of time a customer spends in a queue.

What are you waiting for?

Live chat is a powerful and cost effective way to get a leg up on your online competition, tap into your client base to get them out of research-mode, and convert visitors into buyers. Seems like a no-brainer to me!

If you have ever run a Google AdWords campaign, you know how overwhelming maintaining an account can be. Luckily, Google has many features and tools that make managing campaigns easier and more successful. The catch? It is up to us to utilize them. Today, I am talking about an advanced feature that can help advertisers better reach customers by matching their search query. This seemingly magical feature is called keyword insertion.

What is Keyword Insertion?

Simply put, keyword insertion allows you to customize ad text based on the search term a customer uses. This helps provide a more relevant ad to the person searching and, in theory, higher click through rates.

For example, if you sell office supplies and you have an ad group for printer ink with keywords such as HP 564 ink, HP 920 ink, HP 951 ink etc. Using keyword insertion would automatically update your ad text to the term that is searched for. Check out the ads below, the search term “Buy HP 564 ink” and “Buy HP 920 ink” are met by the same ad but with modified text that includes the specific keywords.

Why Would I Use Keyword Insertion?

By having a more customized ad that includes the keyword of a customer’s search query, advertisers are able to speak directly to what the customer wants. For example, if you search for “inbound marketing packages”, an advertiser can set up their ad to say exactly what you typed in. Not only does this draw your eye to the ad with your exact search phrase, but it also gives you a better user experience as you’ve found exactly what you’re looking for.

As you can imagine, keyword insertion is highly beneficial to businesses with large inventories that have variations of the same item. These businesses can then make one ad with dynamic keyword insertion that adapts to each of their ad group’s keywords instead of wasting time and energy on building new corresponding ads.

How Do I Use Keyword Insertion?

Now that we know how convenient using keyword insertion can be, how exactly does it work? This is where our text ad comes in. When creating a keyword insertion ad, you will insert a code into the headline (or the body of text if that’s where you want the ad to change). Here is what it would look like:

Google will then attempt to replace this code with one of the ad group’s keywords. If a searcher’s query is not a match for one of your keywords, the text following the code will be used as a generic replacement. In this above example, “Printer Ink” would be used.

Note that the code in the example above contains brackets, the word “KeyWord” (with my desired capitalization which we will cover below), and the default ad text after the colon that the ad will use as a generic replacement if need be.Ex. {KeyWord:Printer Ink}

A Word of Warning

Now that we’ve gone over how beneficial keyword insertion can be and how to use it, it’s time to bring up a word of warning so you know what to avoid. There are several things that could go wrong when using keyword insertion including:

• One word headlines – If you have a headline with just an inserted singular keyword your ad will not only look boring but also spammy.
• Oddly worded text – Depending on the keywords in your ad group your ad could end up oddly worded. Ad text that makes sense for some keywords may not for others.

• Use of competitor’s name – While it is perfectly legal to bid on keywords that include your competitor’s name, you might run into copyright issues if you use it in the header of your ad.
• Wrong code entered – If the keyword insertion code is entered with extra spaces, parenthesis instead of brackets, or incorrect use of capitalization (see image below). It will effect your ad.

Lastly, keep in mind that keyword insertion is best when used with highly targeted ad groups. Industries such as ecommerce stores are a great example, as they have many products in a specific category.

Learn More

Hopefully this article has enlightened you on how keyword insertion can be of benefit in running an AdWords campaign. Just remember this feature isn’t for everyone and, like any other tool, it has its pros and cons! For more information on Google AdWords and integrating it with your inbound marketing strategy, Check out this FREE eBook “Why Google AdWords Should Be Part of Your Inbound Marketing Strategy“: