If you have been in sales or marketing, chances are you have heard of the sales funnel. If you haven’t, here’s a quick rundown of what it is.
A marketing or sales funnel refers to the path that your potential customers take from their awareness of needing a product or service to finding you and figuring out that they actually are interested in your product. They go through stages of learning about you and deciding whether to buy from you or not.
This is all done through a series of ads or contacts; i.e. the 5 to 7 touches that it takes for someone to complete a sale.
So we know that about the sale process. But did you know that there is a same type of funnel that you should be using for your social media marketing? After all, we are in the same process. At the end of the day, we want a sale. But how we get there may look a little different.
Social media has become a huge part of our life, personally and professionally. Many entrepreneurs use it solely for the sales function. While some do very well with sales, some will hit and miss. What’s missing for some is a clear strategy for completing the sales process for your visitor or follower.
When you find a business page that you like on Facebook or Instagram, you usually see some type of image or video that causes you to like or comment and, hopefully, follow the page. You probably poke around, read articles, gather information, and continue to like and comment on product images and memes for the first few times you see them in your stream.
However, the owner of the page really wants you to do more.
Clicking through for more information is usually handled through an ad process or perhaps you’re encouraged to sign up for emails by responding to a free offer or something else that would allow for additional contact to complete the sale process.
Once you get to the site, there are probably call to actions that will urge you to purchase or complete another action. Does all of this sound familiar?
Having a strategy is very important in the social media arena. Here are some things you need to plan and prepare for to make sure your social media sales funnel works right for you.
What do you want from the posting? Whether you are placing an ad or you are putting up a meme or video, you have to have a specific goal in mind. What do you want them to do? Is the call to action clear?
If you are taking them off site to your website to complete an action, make sure you have a strong sales page, dedicated to that promotion, for tracking purposes and an increase in sales closure.
Don’t try to be on every social media site with your business. Each site has a different way of interacting, marketing, and even completing the sales process. Focus on the ones that are geared to the type of business you are in and build those funnels impeccably.
It’s critical in this arena to track the activity level. You need to know and understand what type of images get the comments and interactions. Spend the time dissecting your ads -what worked well; what did not work well. You want to give your followers what they want.
Planning out your posts will help you figure out activity levels and mixing up interests so that you reach many levels of customers and followers. Keep the information interesting and intriguing, but make sure to have fun too.
Selling on social media can be effective, if you follow a strong social media sales funnel strategy. It doesn’t matter what you market or sell. What matters is you follow a strong procedure that works.