Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with your customers and building your brand. But how does it fit with your sales funnel? Find out the importance of social media in your sales funnel and why it's necessary for your business.
In recent years, social media has evolved into one of the most effective tools for businesses to find their audience and extend their reach. As of 2018, nearly 97% of all Fortune 500 enterprises have reported using at least one social media platform.
There is no doubt that social media plays a vital role in engaging customers and fostering brand awareness. However, if you are using social media to attract customers, you also need to ensure that your efforts are driving sales for your business.
Not only can social media be used for brand awareness, but as a crucial part of your sales funnel. Social media helps to build relationships with customers and prospects, thus it’s an important part of your sales funnel.
The use of social media within a company's sales funnel helps potential customers to become aware of your product or service.
Moreover, by effectively integrating social media into your sales funnel, you can drive a lot of traffic to your site and convert those visitors into paying customers. This article covers what a social media marketing funnel is and how you can use social media within your funnel.
What is a Social Media Marketing Funnel?
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Marketing funnels are journeys that your customers take. The relationship begins the moment they learn about your brand and continues until after they have purchased your product or service. This funnel can be complemented with social media at every stage of the sales process, allowing you to take it to the next level.
Social media sales funnels are typically organized in five stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Action
- Engagement
- Advocacy
Before you start on your social media marketing journey, it is important to establish clear goals on what you plan to achieve. In most cases, this involves driving traffic or increasing revenue.
Also, before engaging on social media, it is essential to identify your target audience. Since each social platform is different from one another, a one-size-fits-all approach will barely work. Study the platform where your audience spends time to find out about the types of content that work well on each platform.
For instance, a B2B company may reap greater benefits from using platforms like LinkedIn, while a B2C company may do better on Instagram. Therefore, it is important to create user personas based on your ideal customers. In this way, you can target the right audience on the right platform.
In this section, we will discuss each step of your sales funnel and how you can use social media to supplement it.
Awareness Stage
By sharing your content on social media platforms, you can reach potential customers and spread awareness about your business.
The goal is to provide valuable and educational content that provides value to your target audience. For example, Slidebean uses YouTube as a platform for sharing informative videos with its subscribers and has over 300K subscribers.
In order to ensure the success of your marketing efforts, you must create high quality and relevant content for your audience. Furthermore, you can also schedule posts and manage multiple social media accounts using social media marketing tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite.
The following method can be used if you're wondering which platform is right for you:
- Share your company's articles, blogs, guides, and other written content on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Share visual content such as images, infographics, videos, and live stories on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Consideration Stage
Further down the funnel, your potential customers evaluate your product or service and consider whether it will be suitable for them. This is known as the consideration stage.
Potential customers are interested in learning more about your business. Hence, as a way to further establish your credibility and trust, you can share content as to why your product is better than the alternatives. This also includes sharing testimonials and case studies of other customers who have had great results with your product.
Essentially, even if the potential customer isn't ready to make a purchase, you should continue to nurture potential customer relationships.
Action Stage
In this stage, potential customers are highly engaged and are willing to make a purchase. It is the perfect time to hard-sell your product.
As the action stage is all about taking action, you should make it easier for people to share their details. Make sure that all your call-to-actions are highly optimized for conversions.
Through paid retargeting campaigns, you can encourage people who showed interest in earlier parts of your funnel to take action. Furthermore, you can also share offers and discounts on social media to nudge users to buy your product or service.
Engagement
After a customer has made a purchase, many businesses fail to continue to nurture the relationship - this is where they make a mistake. The last two stages of a funnel are essential for creating a lifetime customer.
So, the best way to do that is by continuously engaging with them and fostering the relationship.
Organise webinars and other group events for your existing as well as potential customers. It gives them a sense of belonging and makes them feel like they are still a part of your community.
Advocacy
The advocacy stage begins after your customer has made a purchase. As this is the most important part of the funnel, your goal is to convert your customers into advocates or ambassadors for your brand.
Word of mouth is the most effective channel for most businesses, so it pays to cultivate strong relationships with existing customers.
Express gratitude and reward them for spreading the word about your brand. In addition, you can also ask your customers to leave feedback and reviews about your product or service. This will help you understand if you were able to provide the experience that they had expected. Lastly, share these positive reviews and testimonials on your social media accounts.
Author Bio
Shahul Rashik is a community lead at Remote Tools and Remote Clan. He is particularly interested and writes on topics related to startups, community building and social media marketing.