When you hear the words "sales funnel", do you automatically think of email click funnels or have flashbacks to the old school cold calls sales process? Well my friend, this is not that. This is a sales funnel created specifically for Social Media Marketing. And the cool part is that it can be customized to fit your Social Media Marketing strategy! You can do all the pieces or just a few as long as you hit something from each funnel section. Plus while this addresses mostly Facebook, you can still incorporate the pieces to fit any other Social Media platform like Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest! Woohoo! What are you waiting for? Scroll down to learn all about it!
Gain Interest:
Start with your business page. It can be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn – pick one or pick all. The process is generally the same for each.Posts to your business pages should be informational, value added, positive and inspirational. The content should be helpful and engaging and attract your ideal target audience. This is not the place to be salesy or pushy. Your goal is to gain engagement in the form of likes, follows, comments, shares etc. Your posts can be videos, live streams, images and text. Be creative, be informative and most important – be you!
To be clear, these are organic posts meaning you did not spend any money as an ad or boost. These are posts you make to your business pages. Keep in mind, these organic posts are put in front of a small percentage of your page followers on Facebook and Instagram. The more engagement a post gets, the more it is delivered to followers. That’s why it’s so important to be creative, informative and unique.
Narrow Interest to Sales:
To narrow interests, you can start by offering a value added freebie such as an eBook, a checklist, a video, a how to – anything that someone would find valuable and helpful. For this piece in particular, an ad is most likely the best way to get your freebie out there. In order to do this you need:
- A value added freebie
- A website and/or landing page
- An email list platform
In addition to your value added freebie, you can also create a Facebook group that is free and open to anyone interested. Refer to your group on your organic posts and provide a link to that group. You will most likely want to add some qualifier questions to join the group but the group will be open to the public and free of charge. This is where you can drill down a little more with your content and information. This is also a place to encourage member involvement and interaction. Start discussions, ask questions, get people to contribute.
You can also have a closed free group. You can offer the group membership in addition to a value added freebie or a promotion or even small purchase. As with the free public group, ask some qualifying questions or require a code that can only be found from a value added freebie or purchase. This group will need to be more specific to the information required to join. You will also need to encourage involvement and interaction. This group can be used as tips and tricks for specific courses or how tos. It can also be used as a precursor to a product launch such as a full course or membership group. It can be for a limited time or for as long as you wish. It is recommended and a best practice to require an email address to join the closed group. That way, you can set up another email campaign for these folks and market like products and services to them. You can also create a group from folks who attend a learning webinar. Members will be able to ask questions after a webinar and support each other with questions and stories of their experiences.
A small offer purchase would be something like a how to video or course or webinar or process that is a little more in depth and entailed than a value added freebie. Let’s just get this out in the open right now…Don’t sell yourself short and don’t under value your skills and knowledge. You can provide great information and not provide your specific tested and true process. This could be a mini course, or a specific process that people would want to learn or find out without having to pay a lot for it. For example – an audit of a process including recommendations, or a quick tip to create a graphic or edit a graphic. These people get added to an email campaign list for sure!
You can even have a paid closed group but be very careful to provide value at least weekly. That value can be in to form of a live stream with how to’s or weekly lessons or webinars. Please don’t charge for a group and then not follow through with value. That’s the best way to lose customers so this type of group can be part of a membership site or a course where the member has already paid or the course is presented on the group. And yes, these people will be put on an email campaign list.
Sales – Gain/Keep Customers
You’ve made some sales and now you have customers. YAY! Now it’s time to make more! Your customers will most likely fit into three categories:
- One time buyers/Small purchase sales – these are the people who will probably follow you and take advantage of your great value added freebies and maybe a free group. They will of course be on their own email list.
- Recurring customers/Larger purchase sales – these may be people who are part of your monthly membership group or someone who has purchased a large ticket item such as a full on course. Yep, you got it. Separate email list.
- Resellers – if you are an MLM, these are the people who will sign up to sell your product under you. These can also be brand champions who promote as affiliates and/or influencers. And finally – yes these folks will be on a separate email list.
You can do a few of these or all of these. It’s your choice. Obviously, this is geared a little more towards Facebook and Instagram, but a well planned out, pared down version of this can certainly apply to LinkedIn. You can run ads on LinkedIn to promote your valued added freebies and paid products and services.
You may have noticed a trend throughout…Email Lists. So you may ask – why do I need so many email lists? Well technically speaking you don’t – however – if you want to grow you customer base then I would highly recommend it. Why? Because customers aren’t one size fits all. I get super annoyed when I sign up for something and then either get bombarded or get marketed to for something I’ve already purchased or done or taken or attended. I’m sure you do to. By separating lists out, you can drill down further with your emails and even Facebook and Instagram ads to the people who are the warmest leads. Let the funnel put people where they are most valuable. And you can focus on moving those folks hopefully through the rest of the funnel.
Just remember to be consistent, have a structured plan, be creative and be you. By establishing yourself as knowledgable, helpful and adding value, your customers will find their way to you.