How to Build a Social Media Sales Funnel That Converts

It's no secret that social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available today. With over 4.74 billion social media users worldwide, it's a goldmine for businesses looking to reach new audiences and drive conversions.

But simply being present on social media isn't enough to guarantee success. To make the most of this powerful channel, you need to have a solid social media marketing funnel in place.

Social Media Sales Funnel

The social media marketing funnel is a process that businesses use to turn prospects into customers. It helps them target their marketing efforts and track their progress. Businesses can tailor their messages and content to fit each stage by understanding where potential customers are in the funnel. This helps them generate more leads and convert more prospects into customers.

Building a Social Media Sales Funnel

• Awareness: The awareness stage is where people first become aware of your product or service. They may hear about you from your advertisement, social media, word of mouth or recommendation. There are several tactics to create awareness for your funnel (free and paid tactics). Facebook live and social media contests are methods you can employ freely, while ads (YouTube, Facebook, Google) are paid options.
• Evaluation: The evaluation stage is where people compare you to your competitors or similar products—they decide whether or not to buy from you. To make sure you come out on top, it's essential to have a strong marketing strategy that differentiates you from the competition. Some things to keep in mind during the evaluation stage include:

- stressing the unique features of your product/service

- emphasising the benefits of using your product/service

- highlighting what sets you apart from the competition

- providing social proof (testimonials, reviews, etc.)

• Acquisition: In the acquisition stage, you get prospects to buy or convert today. This is the most important marketing funnel stage, as it's where you generate revenue for your business.

To succeed at the acquisition stage, you must clearly understand your target audience and what they want. Then, you need to create compelling content that speaks to their needs and drives them to take action. Track your results so you can continually optimise your acquisition strategy.

• Engagement: The engagement stage is how you'll keep in touch with the customer so that you can sell more things later. There are a few options available to you, and the best one will vary depending on your business and customer base.

One option is to send periodic emails. This can be a great way to keep your customers updated on new products, special offers, and anything else that might interest them. Just be sure not to overdo it, or you'll risk annoying your customers and driving them away.

Another option is to stay in touch through social media. This can be a great way to connect with your customers on a more personal level and allows you to quickly and easily share information about your business.

Finally, you can also consider sending out physical mailings from time to time. This can be a great way to stay on top of mind with your customers, and help you build a more personal relationship with them.

• Advocacy: The advocacy stage is how you get your customers to advocate for your product to their families and friends.

First, ensure you have a great product that meets or exceeds customer expectations. This seems like a no-brainer, but it's important to remember that customer satisfaction is the key to advocacy.

Second, create a brand with which customers can identify and feel proud to be associated. This means having a strong identity and emotionally connecting with your customers.

Third, make it easy for customers to share their positive experiences with others. This could mean providing social media sharing buttons on your website or creating marketing materials that are easy to share.

Lastly, offer incentives for customers to advocate for your product. This could be anything from a discount on their next purchase to simply saying "thank you" personally.

Strategies for an Effective Social Media Sales Funnel

1. Know your audience

You need to know your audience. The first step in building a social media sales funnel that sells/converts is knowing who you're selling to or trying to sell to. This can be done in several ways:

• A demographic breakdown of the people who are likely interested in buying from you (age range, income level, gender)
• An interest graph showing what types of content they like and don't like.
• A knowledge graph showing what kind of information they would most likely be interested in learning about when the time comes for them to purchase something from your business's website or app. A conversion rate model would show how many people convert after visiting their website/app.

2. Share valuable content

The content you put out on your social media sales must be valuable to your target audience. This means it needs to be interesting and relevant to them; otherwise, your audience might stop following you and move on. They won't be interested in hearing about how brilliant you are or what a great deal you can offer them.

It would help if you gave them something that will make their lives better or easier, whether that means helping them solve a problem they have, teaching them something new, or simply entertaining them with the latest memes.

The more shares of your content that occur naturally within the system (as opposed to being paid for), the better the chance of converting followers into leads and sales later down the road. The trick is to be as relevant and helpful as possible. If your content is interesting enough that people want to share it themselves, they’ll naturally engage with your brand on social media.

3. Get leads

The building block of any successful funnel is the leads you hope to convert to customers. To get leads, you can use a lead magnet. This is a free or low-cost item that people sign up for to receive more value from your brand.

A lead magnet is a tool that helps you generate leads for your funnel. It can be an ebook, checklist, video, or even guide to help people with a particular problem. The key here is to ensure your lead magnet offers some value and doesn't feel like an advertisement.

Lead magnets are great because they're something the customer has already signed up for and is interested in getting more information about what's coming next.

You'll create an email form on your site so that customers can fill out their contact details and submit them directly through the website.

Once you've created this form, make sure it looks good. Your goal should be to ensure people feel comfortable filling out their information. Hence, they know exactly what kind of content, services, or products could help them once they've read through your offer description below.

4. Use calls to action throughout the funnel

Even though you may be tempted to keep the calls to action simple, don't be afraid to use more than one call to action within your sales funnel. This will help you better target your audience and get them engaged.

Additionally, you should vary the type of calls that appear in each stage of the funnel, for example:

In Stage 1, ask for an email address; in Stage 2 and beyond, ask for phone numbers or website addresses instead (or both).

Consider using different kinds of images and text links, as repetitive things cause boredom among users.

5. Optimise your sales funnel continuously

You can use analytics to track the number of sales, leads, and people who click on your CTA. This will help you better understand what's working and what isn't.

Analytics also tells you how many people are opening emails or visiting your website from Facebook ads, so it's essential to know how many people opened those emails or visited those websites before they converted into sales.

Conclusion

Social media is a great way to drive traffic and sales into your funnel, but it’s not enough on its own. You need to have the right content and strategy in place so that people will be drawn in by your brand or product.

So, make sure you have a compelling message that resonates with your audience and uses calls to action throughout your social media posts.

Finally, optimise your website for search engines and easy navigation. Your social media posts should link to your site so that people interested in learning more can easily find the information they need. Then use analytics to track how many people are visiting and converting on your site. This will give you an idea of what's working and what isn't.

Other Social Media Marketing Resources

Would you like a FREE social media audit? Let’s schedule a call:?https://calendly.com/metricconnect

The Power of Storytelling in Social Media Marketing: https://metricconnect.co.uk/the-power-of-storytelling-in-social-media-marketing/

How to Measure the Success of Your Social Media Campaign:?https://metricconnect.co.uk/how-to-measure-the-success-of-your-social-media-campaign/