Rev & Reach Episode 19 – The Social Sales Funnel

00:00

Hello, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Rev & Reach by PopSpeed Digital Marketing LLC. We are pulling back the curtain on how we do things to help you get more ROI from your digital marketing efforts. So today I want to talk about the social sales funnel and how to build one that actually sells. Because one of the things that we notice is that a lot of people that are using social media are stuck at one place. They’re just out there telling people what they’re doing, and you’ll ask them, “So what do you use social for?” “We tell them what we’re doing.” So most people think social media is about going viral, but the smartest brands, they use it to guide people step by step, from complete lack of awareness of your brand to becoming a loyal customer. So today I’m going to break down how to build a social sales funnel that actually sells without being salesy, because nobody wants to be salesy. I spent 30 years of my career in sales. I do sales every day. I never sell. I simply build strong, positive, connected relationships with people who need what I have to sell, right? What I’m offering, they need. Sales really aren’t necessary. Just awareness and taking them through this funnel is what helps them make the decision to buy.

01:33
So social media isn’t a magic slot machine. You don’t just stick posts in and clients start coming, or customers start coming immediately. That’s not how it works. There are stages to the relationship: awareness, nurturing, conversion—and by the end of this episode, you’ll know how to turn likes into leads and leads into loyal customers using social media. It’s not that hard, but you do have to be strategic about it. So the funnel—defining a funnel—basically, it’s the path that a consumer takes from being completely unaware of you to becoming a loyal fan that recommends you, that engages with you on social, that says, “I tried that, and it was great,” that kind of thing. So in simple language: awareness means, “Hey, I’ve heard of you.” Interest means, “Huh, I might need what you have.” Decision: “I’m ready to buy, make it easy.” Loyalty: “I’m telling all my friends about you, and I know if something goes wrong, you’ve got my back.” So those stages are completely supportable on social media. You can actually bring people through that funnel. By simply going out there and just pushing content out, you won’t be as successful. You will not be as successful.

02:58
We’ve worked with clients where the entire campaign was all about closing, converting, converting, converting. Well, if you show a conversion ad to someone who doesn’t even know who you are as a company or a brand, it just goes right past them. They don’t even bother. So what you need to do is pay attention to every stage of the funnel. Match your content to your intention, and I’ll tell you what that means. Awareness is those “stop the scroll” posts—those little short videos, relatable insights, shareable tips, things that get attention. It might be your CEO, it might be one of your customers sharing a testimonial about how happy they are with your product. It may be a testimonial that’s treated in a really interesting way visually. So awareness is the stop-the-scroll posts. Interest is storytelling and education. At this point in the journey, the customer is not really interested in buying from you. They might have heard your name, they know who you are, but you need to tell them—show them and tell them—why your service exists or your product and who it helps. And the goal of this stage is to build connection. Helpful information is really good here. For example, if you are a dermatologist and you’re targeting women in their 50s who are worried about wrinkles, share skincare tips that really work, not the ones that don’t work, but the ones that you personally recommend to your patients. If you are a social media agency, share tips on how to get better ROI from your social media. It works, let me tell you.

04:47
So at that point in the interest stage, you are building connection and creating a relationship, right? The next stage is decision, and that’s where you’re going to provide proof—proof that you are as good as you say you are. And that can be case studies that have really great results, before and after photos, testimonials—even special offers. If you have, you know, a new customer 40% off deal, that can help people make a decision to actually buy from you. So the decision-making stage is where you’re going to build confidence in that consumer’s mind about you and your product, right? So now, loyalty is after they’ve bought. There are all kinds of things you can do for loyalty. For example, reposting your customers’ content, which we call UGC—it stands for user-generated content. Reposting, paying attention to what’s going on out there, and when you see a customer actually mention you, share it and thank them. Show them that you are paying attention and that you appreciate it. Use those really happy customers as testimonial visuals or testimonial videos. That builds loyalty because it tells the client or the customer that you think they’re so awesome you want to put them in your advertising, and people love that. They really do. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of them do.

06:17
And what it does is it keeps them connected to you. So you want to keep people connected to you. Social media contests can do that. You can run contests with your current followers on social. It’s Halloween time around now—it’s October 27 when I’m recording this—put a big thing of candy up, take a picture of it, let your followers guess how much candy is in the bowl, how many pieces, and send out a $100 Amazon gift card. Generates a little excitement, might get you some new followers, and helps customers understand that you appreciate them and that you’re not, you know, not above a little bit of bribery, right? I mean, people love winning things, so that’s something you can do on a regular basis. So when you are crafting a social post, you should be asking yourself: where are we in the funnel, and what’s the next step I want this consumer to take once they’ve read this? And that’s how you’re going to craft your call to action at the end. So give it thought. Be strategic. Really think while you’re writing your copy and creating it, putting it out on the Internet—give it some serious thought on what sales funnel stage you are in with that particular post, and what you want that consumer that’s in that stage to do next.

07:37
So let’s talk about how to measure your funnel. Every funnel needs data, not just guesses. You don’t just put it out there and say, “Oh, there’s an awareness post, we’re good.” No, you want to measure on your awareness posts. How many people did they reach? Did you get any new followers? Cost per click if you’re doing ads can be really helpful—you know people who are starting to get aware of you will actually act on that awareness with a click, in many cases. The interest stage of the funnel is when a customer saves something. A consumer on social—and a lot of the channels can now save your posts. If they send you direct messages, if you see they’ve spent a lot of time on your website page, you’re getting email opt-ins, then you know people are starting to get interested. You know you’re doing something right. Now, the decision-making stage: when you’re doing those decision-type or conversion posts, you’re going to pay attention to how many times people continue to purchase your product, which would be a repeat purchase rate, you’re going to look for referrals, and you’re going to look at your community engagement. Are people commenting and sharing your content? Loyal customers will share your social and help you get new customers. And one of the things that we’ve learned is that the most effective form of digital marketing is a share from somebody who loves what you do on their personal social media accounts, because that credibility of someone you know—if you’re a follower of that person and you see that post—you know them and they’re really happy with that company or product, maybe you should give it a try. It’s a lot more effective than anything you could do.

09:26
So you want to spend some time, you know, figuring out how to keep that loyalty going with your customers. And there’s a lot of reasons to do it that I don’t need to get into here. Customer service is another one. Referrals—loyalty can bring you referrals. Good customer service can bring you loyalty and referrals. So those are other aspects of your business that you obviously want to pay attention to. So customer service is a part of social too, so make sure your social customer service is really strong. You’ve got community managers checking on content to make sure that any comments get responded to, any complaints get addressed—those are really important. So the tools that you’re going to use to get into the metrics for those sales funnel stages are Meta Insights, Google Analytics; if you’re using MailChimp, Constant Contact, one of the email clients, you want to look at your email open rates, your click-through rates, and your CRM data. Any CRM data that you have that tells you what your customers are doing, how they’re engaging with you out there in the digital ether, are really important. And if you can’t see movement between the stages, if you don’t see more people converting after you’ve gone through and made these kinds of adjustments to your content—your funnel is leaking somewhere. You’re not doing something right. So you want to go back to the beginning, look at all these stages, and see what you can do to optimize for that stage—whether it’s be a little more friendly, whether it’s shorter copy in your content, whether it’s, you know, thank you emails that go out right after someone makes a purchase. You’re going to look at those funnel stages, the content you created for those funnel stages, the metrics that that content creates, and make adjustments for improvement, which I’ll tell you you should be doing anyway.

11:21
I mean, you really should be constantly analyzing, testing, and learning to see in order to get better ROI from your social. So a couple things that people do that are mistakes—mistakes that people make on social when they don’t pay attention to the funnel as much as they should—are posting too much awareness content and actually never giving the consumer the opportunity to learn more. We see a lot of social media content that doesn’t include a CTA. We always put a call to action and a link in the content that we do for our agency clients. And I heard someone with a nonprofit once say: “Don’t make the decision for your consumer. Let them make the decision by giving them the option of learning more,” right? So always include that little step that they can take if they want to move forward. Some people expect followers to buy without trust-building. If you never share testimonials, you never share case studies, you never share anything that really demonstrates the quality of who your company or product is, you’re not going to get followers to buy. It just isn’t going to happen. If you are ignoring remarketing and retargeting—where you’re retargeting people that have gone to your Facebook, then clicked through, gone to your landing page—if you’re not retargeting them, you’re losing out, and you cannot…

12:49
One of the most important things is you cannot treat every follower like they’re ready to buy. They’re not, and if you do that, you’re in your face, you know, in the customer’s space with the sales message—Fast and Furious, coming at them. That’s like expecting, you know, to have sex on the first date. I mean, it really is. You can’t skip foreplay and expect commitment. I mean, you just can’t. So think about that; make sure you’re addressing the stages of the sales funnel in all your social content. I just can’t say that enough. People don’t do it, and then they don’t get the good results that they could get. So, quick wrap-up for you: social media is not about shouting louder. It’s about guiding the consumer through the stages. And when every post has a purpose, your funnel will fill itself. And I know it’s hard to believe, but we are starting to see it ourselves.

13:48
So I’m going to give you a challenge. Check out your last 10 posts. Label every one: Is it awareness, interest, decision, loyalty? Are you balanced, or are you stuck in one particular stage? So that’s something you can do right now, and it can help you do better, more ROI-creating social media moving forward. So that’s what we’ve got for you today. Again, my name is Lori Jo Vest, I’m with PopSpeed Digital Marketing, this is Rev and Reach. And if you are looking for a digital marketing agency to help you with your social media ROI, please look me up on LinkedIn. I am Lori Jo Vest, an open networker there, so just let me know you listened to the podcast and you can reach out to me there. I just had a potential new client reach out to me after hearing the podcast episodes, so it does happen. We are an active agency, accepting new business and growing, and we approach every single client with a mindset toward ROI and giving them our very best, most enthusiastic efforts. So that’s what we’ve got. Thanks so much again, and I’ll be back to share more great information on digital marketing very soon.