What Is A Marketing Funnel And Why Every Online Business Needs one
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Research shows that 3 out of 4 consumers turn to social media when considering a purchase. And when they made the purchase, they use social media for customer service and keep up with companies updates.
Therefore, it is important for businesses to think about the metrics across the customer journey. By breaking down the consumer's journey into four distinct blocks, you can start creating and targeting social content with measurable impacts for your brand.
The customer lifecycle also known as Marketing Funnel is the step by step process you use to lead a prospect through to purchase your products and/or services, and can be broken down in 4 steps:
Awareness: You are focusing on getting your brand out there and raise customers awareness by creating shareable, engaging and interesting content to your niche or target audience. (i.e. sharing content on social media)
Consideration: You attracted the consumer's interest and they are now interested in getting to know more about your brand by visiting your website. It is now time to build a relationship with your niche.
Leads: Your customer resonates with your brand and is ready to take action on the product you offer via the CTA or Call To Action you implemented
Sale: You customer answered to your CTA and bought the product you offered
Here is a sketch that illustrates how it is broken down.
Awareness
The first step of the Marketing Funnel is to attract new followers. Building your audience means creating and sharing content that resonates with your niche and encourage engagement regularly.
However, quantity does not outrun quality.
Focus on defining your ideal niche, what quality content would they be interested in and then promote it. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think about what they actually want to see. Here is what you can do to attract an audience
Define a goal
Create a social community that attracts users at the top of the funnel. Encourage your audience to engage with your content and begin to consider yourself as an expert in your field. Become an influencer your audience can identify with.
Metric
What you will want to look at are: Engagement, impressions, reach, clicks, shares, followers and fan growth
Best practices
Make your content helpful
Connect with other influencers in your niche
Create content shareable on multiple social media channels to improve awareness
Consideration
So you have built brand awareness and gained followers that could be potential buyers at the top of your Marketing Funnel, now what?
The consideration step is all about turning those fans and followers into leads. It can usually easily been done by offering premium content that lives behind a form.
This is the kind of content that helps your fans and followers solve the problems and challenges they face and shows your expertise. (don't forget, you are the influencer. i.e. Sign-up to my newsletter to get this FREE ebook. You collect emails in exchange of a free e-book you created. That way you can continue the conversation with them on different channels.
Goal
Drive your audience to download content by filling out lead generation forms on landing pages and turn them from fan to leads.
Metric
Landing page conversion rate from social media, email list growth
Best Practices
Create a great offer (e-book, PDF, Webinar, video training, etc…)
Invite your audience to Webinars and live streams
Leads
So far we brought your audience down the funnel and converted them into leads. To do this, you need to build quality content, target your niche and promote strategically. At this stage, you have their attention and they just need a little push to go further down to the next step of the social media sales funnel.
That's when the communication piece via a different communication channel comes into place. So far you have been tracking growth and engagement, now this stage is where you should track dollars spent VS dollars earned. It's time to put some money behind targeted posts and help your leads turn into customers.
Goal
Turn leads into customers from social media
Metric
Conversions directly on social, product pages, trial conversions
Best practices
Feature your customers success stories
Put your price upfront
Make it FREE at first
Showcase your product if you got one
Use Paid advertising to fast track your results
Sale
This last stage of the Marketing funnel means that you have successfully solve the customer's problem by answering their questions and helping them to achieve their goals. Be aware that social media plays an important role in the customer experience: From researching and purchasing to loyalty and retention.
If you have created a great strategic social content for Awareness and Consideration, you have already created a great customer experience.
BUT now that the sale is done, do NOT forget about your customer. Make some time to be there and listen to their feedback. Your customers are the fuel that helps your business running. If they have a bad experience with your product, they will let the world know about it and that will affect your business in a bad way if you do not take action on it ASAP.
On the other hand, it is a great opportunity for marketers to build a relationship with customers for life.
Best practices
Respond and personalise your answers to customers
Educate customers about product usage
Inspire customers in their day to day
My Secret Formula
High converting Product + High Converting Sales Funnel =
Automated Online sales
The most important thing of the Marketing Funnel is the product you are selling. Is it going to bring value to your customer? If the answer is no, no one will buy from you and you are wasting your time.
If you are reading this today, I don't know if you are just starting online or struggling to make an income online, but if you wish to run a successful online business and reach your 6 figures fast, I know what you should NOT be doing: Trying to learn everything and do everything on your own.
The fastest way to make money online when you just get started is to license an existing product.
The product already exists, got brand recognition and brings value to the customer. What you need to do is become an affiliate and promote the product. You will receive a commission for every sale that you make and your job is done.
Eliminate the hard work and focus on building your brand and generating traffic.
Sounds good right?
Well, that's exactly what I did when I started my online journey. I joined a mastermind group from which I have had a mentor with whom I was in contact every day and who has taught me everything that I needed to know to setup a successful online business and run it 80% on auto-pilot.
I just used a proven system to promote my product and I outsource the skills that I don't have.
Once you understand how to leverage some key systems, your business will basically run on auto-pilot. That means more time to do the things you love and more money in your pocket!(YAY!)
Since I started, it allowed me to allocate more time to social media ONLY and that's when I started earning a profit. Since then, I can focus on what matters the most for my business and do the things I love which are traveling and photography.
You can check my instagram page @themillennialnomad dedicated to all my travels that are mainly financed by the money I earn online!
Social media marketing is not easy. It requires time and a great content strategy to answer the needs of your aspiring clients and get them through the four steps of the Marketing Funnel.
Social media plays an important role nowadays for businesses. It can help you build your brand image and interact with your audience on daily basis.
And the great thing is that you get constant feedback on your work and you have ways to see the results and focus on what works and what does not.
But on the other hand, one mistake that triggers a customer's bad experience with your product and everything breaks down like a card castle.
So make sure to listen to your client's needs and feedbacks in order to improve your product and provide the best customer experience as possible.
Remember, the key here is to imagine yourself in the shoes of your aspiring clients from the first step to the last.
And finally, find a high valuable product in which you believe and try to eliminate the hard work so that you can focus on promoting the product you are selling.
If you need help setting up your Marketing Funnel, do not hesitate to book your FREE discovery call with me where we will discuss the strategy you will be able to implement to bring your business to success and how we could work together.
Or if you would rather try to do it yourself, I’d recommend you to better understand how the basics of social media marketing through this free training to help you understand how to leverage social media to promote an offer online and make money.
As always, if you enjoyed reading this post, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. Subscribe to my newsletter if you would like to receive updates straight in your inbox. And if you know anyone that needs help to setup their Marketing Funnel, feel free to share this blog post with them.
