Social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that utilizes social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others to increase traffic to your product or service. This type of marketing has been around for a long time, but many businesses are still hesitant to use it for one simple reason: they don’t know how to incorporate it into their conversion funnel.
There are hundreds of options for using social media to market your business. These strategies encourage you to create content, create a social media marketing calendar, and orchestrate creative campaigns to keep your audience engaged.
However, there is a gap in creating a customer journey that takes potential customers from the moment they hear about your brand to the point where they become brand advocates and recurring buyers.
Understanding Social Media Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel is a path through which your customers pass. Marketing funnels lay the path to conversion and beyond, from the moment someone learns about your company to when they make a purchase.
After careful analysis, a marketing funnel can tell you what your company needs to do to influence customers at different stages. It begins when they become aware of your brand and continues until they purchase something. The social media marketing funnel culminates in a customer becoming a true brand advocate.
There are five stages to the process:
- Awareness- Increasing brand awareness by attracting new people who aren’t familiar with your company.
- Consideration- Making yourself stand out from the crowd so that new viewers remember you.
- Action- Persuading your audience to act and buy something.
- Engagement- Using social media to stay top-of-mind with your customers and keep them engaged after they’ve made a purchase.
- Advocacy- Earning the trust of your audience so that they want to tell others about you.
At each stage of the marketing funnel, you’ll have the opportunity to use various techniques and tactics to sway the prospect’s behaviour in the direction you want them to go.
A social media marketing funnel merely incorporates social media into the equation. In the end, social media is at the top of the funnel, though it is frequently used throughout.
When a customer becomes a brand ambassador, the social media marketing funnel should end. This means that the customer will speak highly of your company and spread the word about it.
Creating a Social Media Marketing Funnel that will Lead to Conversions
The tips below will help you create a strong social media marketing funnel and achieve the best results for your business:
- Establish Your Objectives
Before starting your social media marketing funnel, you need to figure out what you want to get out of it. Try to be as specific as possible when setting your goals, as this will help you determine whether you were successful later on.
For example, your goal should be more than just to increase the number of people who subscribe to your e-mail list. Instead, you should figure out how many subscribers you want, what kind of subscribers you want, how many subscribers you want to convert to customers, and so on.
- Create A Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is defined as something of value that can be given away for free to prospects. In the end, it’s something appealing that draws them in.
Articles, infographics, newsletters, and videos are all examples of content. The important thing is to include a call to action that directs them to a sign-up form of some sort. The goal is to get their contact information to use later.
- Enhance Your Offers
You need enticing offers to extend to prospects to get them to move smoothly from one stage of the funnel to the next. These offers should persuade them to make a small commitment that eventually leads to a sale.
Downloading a guide or e-book, signing up for a newsletter, scheduling a free consultation, or watching a product demonstration are just a few examples.
- Optimize Your Landing Page
Your landing page, where prospects land after leaving social media, must be optimized. They don’t want to come to your website’s home page. Otherwise, your warm lead may quickly turn cold, and the buyer’s journey will come to an end.
You should create specialized landing pages with a defined goal and offer where prospects will be directed. This will improve your chances of converting leads.
- Track the Metrics & Make Necessary Tweaks
It’s all about the data in marketing. You should test A/B ads and landing pages to see what works best. This eliminates a lot of the guesswork when it comes to determining what works and converts for you. On social media, you’ll want to track a variety of metrics.
Consider metrics like likes, comments, shares, pins, post reach, @ mentions, impressions, and video views as examples of awareness and engagement metrics.
Remember to pay attention to conversion metrics such as cost-per-click, click-through-rate, and actual conversion rate. If you notice something isn’t working as well as you’d like, try tweaking it to see if it improves. You might discover that your audience prefers humorous posts to news-related posts.
Conclusion
Traditional sales funnels have their place in the world. However, social media marketing funnels can help you engage your audience, build trust, and grow an authentic fan base.
Because social media has proven to be effective at raising brand awareness, it’s only natural that it can play a significant role in the buyer’s journey. When buyers are included in the funnel, they have a better chance of developing a deeper connection with your brand.
