How to measure social media lead generation: the numbers that matter

The five numbers

• Captured: people you saved from a source.
• Contacted: people you messaged or followed.
• Replies: people who answered.
• Conversations: replies that turned into a real exchange, a call or a trial.
• Customers: conversations that ended in a sale.

Rates worth watching

• Reply rate: replies divided by contacted.
• Conversation rate: conversations divided by replies.
• Acceptance rate: on networks with requests, accepted divided by sent.
• Source quality: replies and conversations for each source, not in total.

A weekly scorecard

1. List each source you used this week.
2. Next to each, write how many you captured, contacted and heard back from.
3. Mark the best and worst source.
4. Decide one change for next week: drop a source, tighten who you contact or change a message.
5. Review the month for the trend, not the week.

What to ignore

• Followers gained, unless they are your customers.
• Likes and reactions on your own posts.
• Raw lead counts with no replies behind them.
• One lucky week. Look at a few weeks together.

What to do with the numbers

1. If captured is high and contacted is low, you are collecting more than you can work. Capture fewer, better sources.
2. If contacted is high and replies are low, the message or the targeting needs work. Test a new first line.
3. If replies are fine but conversations are few, your follow-up is the weak point.
4. If conversations are good but customers are few, the problem is probably your offer or price, not your outreach.

Setting a first target

Do not copy a target from somewhere else. For the first month, simply record your own numbers each week, then set the next month's target a little above them.

A realistic goal is one more conversation per week than last month. Small, steady improvement beats chasing a figure from someone else's business.

Key takeaways

• Track captured, contacted, replies, conversations and customers.
• Replies per source tells you where to spend time.
• Keep the scorecard small and review it weekly.
• Judge on trends, not single weeks.

Where Avocado Leads fits

Avocado Leads does the collecting, ranking and pacing part of this work. You paste a post, a profile or a search, and it saves the people who commented, reacted, followed or match, then scores each person from 0 to 100 on buying language, how recently they were active, how well they fit your business and how reachable they are.

It then runs a paced follow or connect campaign from your own signed-in browser, with a message after where the platform allows one. It never asks for your social passwords, and it keeps to hourly, daily, weekly and monthly caps for each network. The limits that come with each platform are on the platforms page, and the safety page explains what it will not do.

Questions people ask