There's something incredibly satisfying about getting a rise in your follower count. It's validation that the content being posted is resonating well with the audience and that the social media marketing is doing its job. As such, for many businesses, being able to point to a growing follower count is the easiest metric to reference when it comes to their marketing performance. The reality for many such companies is that, at some point in the growth curve, they came to a disheartening realisation: the follower count climbed steadily over months, and the revenue barely budged. That is where the difference between followers vs leads becomes important. Businesses need to understand that: - Not everyone who follows is going to become a lead - Not every lead will necessarily become a customer

The real question is whether the attention being generated through social media marketing is creating opportunities for the business to grow.

What are Followers?

Followers are the people hitting the follow button and staying in your bubble. They see your content in their feed and may engage with it.

Having a healthy number of people following a page on social media is an important metric that indicates the reach of the content being shared there.

Audience growth such as this is valuable: -It creates familiarity. -It adds the brand a public face. -It reassures prospective clients that others trust the service after seeing the follower count.

Social media followers are not a guarantee that someone will buy. They don't provide contact details. Many have followed for: - A free trial -A discount code -A giveaway

And others could be those who mindlessly hit follow and then forget about it in the next 24 hours.

A follower is an indication of interest but not commitment. It's the equivalent of someone glancing at the shop window from across the street. It's nice to have their attention but they haven't actually walked through the door.

What are Leads?

A lead is someone who has expressed interest in learning more about a specific product or service. Put simply, it's the difference between someone who has seen your post and casually scrolled past, and someone who has paused to ask "tell me more".

In practice, this means that a lead is a visitor to a landing page who has taken some action to express that interest and intent to buy. It could be: - someone who clicks the link in your bio to a landing page and leaves their details -someone who sends you a direct message inquiring about your products or services.

These are the kinds of people who have already taken one step towards becoming a customer.

Social media lead generation is the process of identifying those potential customers and get in touch to help them take the next steps on their buying journey.

It's entirely possible for businesses to have a very large number of followers, but very few leads. It's also possible for businesses to have a small number of followers, but a healthy number of people showing interest in becoming leads. Generally speaking, the latter are far more likely to be able to help keep a business afloat.

Followers vs Leads

The reason why people confuse the two is because visibility is important. Having a higher number of followers means that the company has greater visibility and reach. Companies know this, and they can report back to investors about how they have increased their social media footprint.

Followers vs customers is really a conversation of breadth vs depth. While reach is wide and shallow, engagement is deep but narrow.

Engagement vs conversions tells a similar story. A brand with modest reach but a steady stream of enquiries can be generating more meaningful business opportunities than a company with viral posts and an empty inbox.

It's the follower count being the applause whereas the lead is the customer walking up to the counter. A company with 10k followers and 50 leads per month is generating more immediate sales opportunities than a company with 100k followers and 5 leads per month.

None of this means that followers are without value. They're part of the audience that eventually gets converted. Mistaking applause for sales is where the company's marketing budget gets quietly wasted.

How to Convert Followers Into Leads

How does anyone move a follower from simply watching to actually showing interest? It starts with giving the reason to do so.

Give every post a destination A link in bio, 'DM us for pricing', swipe up and form. If people have to hunt for how to contact, most won't.

Offer something that makes the exchange worthwhile Instagram lead generation works best when a benefit is given before asking for anything. A free consultation, downloadable guide or early access code can give people a reason to hand over their details.

Use features aimed at this exact role Instagram and Facebook both have lead forms, quick reply buttons and click to WhatsApp ads. This removes friction and makes it so that a person doesn't have to leave the app or type out an email to get a way to contact. Talk to the people who have engaged. If someone has asked a question or saved a post, it's a warm opportunity to reply and gently encourage them towards services.

Retarget the ones who have shown interest Not everyone will convert on the first engagement. Running ads to people who have engaged or watched a post keeps a business in front of a warm audience as opposed to starting from scratch.

This is how businesses convert followers into customers over time. It usually happens through a series of useful interactions rather than a single clever caption.

Measuring Success

Where the company only measures followers, they're measuring popularity.

When they want to measure business impact it's time to look at the social media ROI instead. This means asking harder questions: - How many leads have come from this campaign? - What did it cost to get each one? - How many of those leads became customers?

Social media conversion does not have to be that difficult to track, as long as there are the appropriate attribution settings in place.

It is important to follow up with the customers to understand how they found the brand.

It is also important to analyse the data to see which posts are getting: - Views - Clicks - Inquiries

Once this data starts getting analysed, patterns will start to emerge.

• Users will notice that certain videos get a lot more views than others.
• They will notice that certain posts get a lot of engagement, but not much enquiry.

This allows the brand to tweak its social media marketing strategy and maximise its social media conversions.

It focuses the company on the types of posts that get the best engagement and the ones that get the best conversions.

Conclusion

A follower count is useful in many ways but, on its own, it is not going to increase revenues.

Leads are what can be turned into customers, and businesses which are looking to grow should consider focusing less on their overall audience reach, and more on turning those who have expressed interest into leads and then customers.

If the page is booming with likes but quiet with leads, it may be the approach that needs to be rethought and not the platforms. That's the work that makes up the core of us at Creato, a boutique social media marketing agency in Dubai that values lead generation in Dubai just as much as reach and reputation.

A following is nice but a pipeline of actual customers is better.