You are in the right place if you are looking for how to create a high-converting social media or digital marketing funnel that generate traffic, leads and sales.
Today, social media marketing is an integral part of the marketing mix.
Whether you are a service brand or a B2B company, a startup or a physical business, in 2020 and beyond, you cannot succeed without investing in social marketing.
With people spending 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media, the stakes couldn't be higher. So, smart brands create a social media marketing funnel alongside their sales funnel to maximize growth.
In this article, we'll look at how to create a high-converting social media funnel that drives traffic, leads, and sales.
Table Of Contents
- What Is a Digital Marketing Funnel?
- How to Build a Social Media Funnel in 6 Simple Steps
- Retargeting: What It Is, How It Works, And Example
- 8 Questions to Ask When You Create a Custom Social Media Marketing Funnel
- Social Media Marketing Funnel Scenarios
- Digital Marketing Funnel Tools and Best Practices for Building Converting SMM Funnels
- Supercharge Your Funnel with Social Media Marketing
What is a Digital Marketing Funnel?
A marketing funnel is a predefined path of interconnected stages that you have mapped out for your prospects to follow on their journey to becoming customers. It moves future customers from a state of not knowing your brand to the awareness, consideration, purchase and post-purchase stage where the customer becomes a brand evangelist.
A social media marketing funnel has a social media bias.
Here are the four stages of the buyer's journey in a nutshell, and the best social media activities for each stage.
1. Awareness Stage
A prospect who previously had no idea who you are or what you do notices the existence of your business, the problems you solve, and the services/products you offer. They may not even be aware that they have a problem to solve.
Activities and Tactics: Contests, giveaways, Facebook and Twitter ads for content promotion, YouTube videos.
2. Consideration Stage
At this stage, the prospect is aware of his problem and the solutions available to her. She looks for unique solutions and weighs her options based on the information she has.
Activities and tactics: Twitter chats, LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, IGTV, YouTube videos.
3. Purchase Stage
The prospect finally decides which solution will remove or alleviate their pain, and they become a buying customer. All things being equal, the brand with the best unique selling proposition wins the sale.
Activities and Tactics: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Ads, Buyable Pins on Pinterest, Buy Now Buttons on Instagram and Facebook.
4. Post-purchase Stage
After the initial purchase, the customer becomes a loyal, loyal buyer and brand advocate who can't stop talking about your business. People at this stage need incentives, so they continue to drive awareness of your brand.
Activities and Tactics: Gifts, Partnership and Affiliate, Loyalty Rewards Program.
Did you know? With GetResponse you can create conversion funnels using all the key channels – paid ads, landing pages, email campaigns, marketing automation, webinars, and social ads. No need to pay for any extra tools.
Neal Taparia, a former public company executive and founder of brain training startup Solitaired, explains:
Matching the social media channel with the stages of the buyer's journey ensures that the marketing message is relevant. It maximizes the chances of conversion.
The choice of a channel depends on several factors. For example, the target audience, their preferred mode of communication, the cost involved and the objective of the campaign.
Also, there are several content formats to choose from. For example, videos promote a new product or service. Blogs and white papers provide detailed product information at the thought stage. Case studies and comparison pages are used at the purchase stage to persuade customers to make the purchase decision. »
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Digital Marketing Funnel Example: The Factory Carpet Outlet
A social media company, Inspire To Thrive, helped their client The Factory Carpet drive traffic to their site from their Facebook page.
They've always had a much older audience thanks to their old print and TV ads. Now they wanted to target a younger audience online. Here's how they did it:
- Grew their Facebook page from 300 followers to 1,100 followers through engaging content.
- Ran a Facebook ad targeting a younger audience in the areas nearby their store who had shown interest in home remodeling.
- On clicking the ad, users landed on a shop-from-home sign-up page and then received a call from a company rep thereafter or placed an order straight away.
Using this strategy, they drove 81 clicks to their landing page at a reasonable $1.23 Cost Per Click (CPC).
Likewise, my blogging friends at WPKube are taking advantage of Facebook lead ads to grow their lists and drive targeted traffic.
Facebook Lead ads allow users to collect contact information such as name, email address, phone number, etc., from people who may be interested in your products or services. With just $17.75, they were able to collect up to 80 leads at a mind-blowing cost of $0.22 per lead.
With Lead Ads, your potential customer isn't redirected to a landing page, but stays on Facebook while their data is posted to your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
How to Build a Social Media Funnel in 6 Simple Steps
It’s time to reveal the major building blocks of a solid funnel. Remember, these foundational steps cut across every industry or niche.
Here we go.
Step #1: Define Your Goals
Clear goals must guide your social media marketing strategy.
What do you want to achieve?
Do you want to:
- Drive traffic?
- Increase awareness?
- Hike sales?
- Top, middle, or bottom of the funnel?
Without obvious goals charting the way, you’ll wander in circles and not achieve much.
Step #2: Revisit Your Customer Avatar
Before you embark on a rampant activity on social media platforms, it is crucial to remember who exactly you are targeting.
Whatever your business model, the best way to achieve this is to review your customer avatar. Reanalyze your ideal client. To engage smartly on social media, refresh your memory on:
- Goals, dreams, and values.
- Favorite channels and sources of info.
- Challenges and pain points.
By observing and talking with your existing customers, you will become more aware of what they really value about your product or service.
Step #3: Research The Platform’s Slant
Because each social channel is different if you apply a blanket one-size-fits-all approach you will fail dismally.
Study the platform where your audience spends time to find out:
- The content type that works best.
- The part of the funnel it suits.
- The ideal publishing frequency.
- The trending hashtags to latch onto.
Step #4: Work On Your Offers
To push customers from step to step, you need to make irresistible offers to your audience. Your offers should persuade potential customers to make a series of micro-commitments that culminate in a sale.
- You could ask them to:
- Download an ebook/guide.
- Book a free consultation.
- Sign-up for your newsletter.
- Watch a demo video.
To get them to accept your offer, make sure it's related to the topic they just browsed on social media. Plus, make sure it fixes a nagging problem. Finally, make sure it's a tantalizing proposition by using powerful words that ooze emotion.
Step #5: Optimize Your Landing Pages
Do you know the worst mistake you can make when switching from social media to your site?
Drive traffic to your homepage.
Your homepage is a busy, busy page with too many distractions. Your visitors will end up not taking the next desired step in the buyer's journey.
To succeed, design special landing pages where you roll out the red carpet for your valued guests. For each campaign, have:
- A specific page.
- A specific goal.
- A specific offer.
This simple step alone will hike your conversions significantly.
The reason?
We create landing pages to maximize conversions.
Step #6: Track, Test, And Tweak
Marketing today is data driven.
You don't have to fumble around and hope for the best.
Take the guesswork out of your funnel strategy by using A/B testing social media data to improve your performance. With a range of native and third-party analytics tools, you can easily analyze the effectiveness of your campaign.
Key metrics to measure:
- Awareness metrics: @mentions, post reach, video views, and impressions.
- Engagement metrics: likes, shares, pins, comments, and engagement rate.
- Conversions metrics: click-through-rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), and conversion rate.
- Share Of Voice (SOV) metrics: @mentions, total mentions vs competitor mentions.
Top-Down Social Media Marketing Funnel Example: Tip
Consulting's Sam Ovens has built a mighty $20 million a year business machine through a social funnel built around Facebook ads and webinars.
As you can see, the ad is generating massive engagement. It initiates the customer journey that ultimately leads to a sale.
Notice how he uses Facebook ads in two ways:
- Drive awareness at the top of the funnel.
- Persuade prospects to buy at the bottom of the funnel.
Here are all the pieces of this insanely profitable funnel’s puzzle:
- Facebook ad.
- Landing page registration.
- Automated email sequence.
- Text message.
- Webinar (free).
- Facebook retargeting.
- Free trial.
If this million-dollar funnel doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will.
Retargeting: what it is, how it works and example
It's something that happens all the time.
A person visits your website, but they click through before converting. Some maybe even put some goods in the cart but they abandon it.
With retargeting, you don't lose those leads forever. You can win them back.
Retargeting is an advertising strategy where you track people who have left your website and place relevant ads in front of them as they browse social media or visit other websites. It links the ad to its last action on your site. For example, a few minutes ago I visited OkDork, then hopped on Facebook right after and saw this:
I clicked the ad and landed on their squeeze page:
That’s retargeting.
Straightforward, but powerful.
And you can learn more about this in this extensive Facebook Retargeting Guide.
OkDork used retargeting or remarketing and other digital marketing strategies to exponentially grow their email list into tens of thousands of subscribers.
Truelist published some appealing figures about retargeting:
- 17.5% of apps running retargeting see a 25% conversion rate.
- LinkedIn retargeting ads can increase CTR by 30%.
- Retargeting beats all other ad placement strategies with a 1,046% efficiency rate.
You can use retargeting to feed your funnel with warm traffic that converts better than cold traffic.
The best part?
Everything is automated. You don't have to lift a finger. Prospects return to your site to finish what they were doing, whether it's completing their order or signing up for your newsletter.
Now that we've covered the underlying steps to building a marketing funnel, it's time to dive deeper.
8 Questions to Ask When You Create a Custom Social Media Marketing Funnel
Here are 8 key questions to ask yourself when creating a personalized social funnel.
1. How do my best customers go from prospect to prospect, first-time buyer, repeat buyer and brand advocate?
Reverse engineer the steps your perfect customers take as they move through your sales funnel. Use the information to create a framework for your social marketing funnel.
2. Where is the biggest leak in my sales funnel?
If you plug in the weakest link in your sales process, your funnel will convert more. Ask yourself how social media can fill the hole you have identified.
3. How do most prospects normally find out about me and my business?
Optimize the biggest entry point of your funnel. You'll set yourself up for your biggest wins.
4. What are my target audience's favorite social networks?
Use the audience-first approach. Follow them on their beloved platforms, where they are most engaged for the highest conversions.
5. What are my most popular pieces of content that resonate with my audience?
Direct leads to your proven content assets. They convert best and act as conversion gates, leading prospects from one stage to the next.
6. What relevant information should I provide to persuade people to take the next step?
To choose the relevant content asset to use, review your top customers. What type of content did they consume before becoming customers? Discover similar trending content and use content curation for higher engagement.
7. What are my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each funnel stage?
Identify and monitor the vital signs of each stage to double down on what works and improve or discard what doesn't.
8. How are my competitors killing their social selling strategy?
Spy on your competition to unearth hot tactics in their arsenal and spot gaps you can take advantage of.
Social Media Marketing Funnel Scenarios
So how does this all play out in the real world?
Here are two digital marketing funnel models from two different industries to help you imagine exactly what a typical funnel would look like. Yes, every business is unique, but this will give you a good starting point and make it easier for you to start your own.
Social Media Funnel For Coaches and Consultants
Social Media Funnel For Course Creators
Use these templates to inspire your funnel.
Digital Marketing Funnel Tools and Best Practices for Building Converting SMM Funnels
To assemble all of these complex steps into a sleek, high-converting funnel, you need a plethora of tools, right?
Bad.
Not if you have GetResponse.
Because GetResponse is a massive all-in-one marketing machine, you can use it to build your entire top-to-bottom funnel.
You can use it for:
- Retarget website visitors on Facebook by adding the FB pixel on your site.
- Track conversions and attribute them to your ad.
- Set up, run, and manage your Facebook and Instagram ads.
- Generate leads and grow your email list from your social media traffic through sign-up forms.
- Welcome, follow up, educate and nurture your leads through automated emails.
- Target your social media visitors using stunning, SEO-optimized, and user-friendly landing pages that convert.
- Find new followers, delight your fans, and get more traffic using the Social Ads Creator.
- Build a lead and sales funnel with ease. Quickly deploy or tweak templates that cover up to 30 predetermined conversion-optimized scenarios.
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| Conversion Funnel in GetResponse. |
In short, GetResponse has everything you need to create a polished and profitable social marketing funnel, and more. They do all the heavy lifting for you.
Whether you use GetResponse or choose other tools to build your funnel, one thing is clear.
Now is the time to build your funnel! You can no longer afford to leave money on the table.
To create a modern marketing funnel, be sure to follow these best practices:
- Integrations: Your software should be nimble enough to work with the favorite tools you already use. Everything from email marketing to CRM software, landing pages to Facebook and Twitter ads, and webinars to SEO must integrate seamlessly.
- Analytics: Data insights should drive your funnel. Your integrated system must be able to collect and synthesize data in a visually appealing way. The system should select and display all of your key metrics without you having to switch between dashboards.
- Dedicated team: Gone are the days of superman entrepreneurs doing everything on their own: marketing, sales, customer support, social media, etc. To succeed in online funnel marketing, create a dedicated SMM team for a united specialized effort that delivers results.
Boost your funnel with social media marketing
Today's customers are moving targets.
They do business on their terms, anytime, anywhere on any device. Social media is one of the major steps they take on their complex journey to becoming customers. This is why you need to layer your social media marketing funnel into your main sales funnel.
You'll persuade more prospects and customers to take the next step in the customer journey and increase conversions.
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