How to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Sales Funnel


sales-funnel-social-media

The internet has made the traditional sales funnel something of a relic. Leads and customers can now access your business from any part of your website. Sometimes it’s the home page, and other times they find themselves instantly on a product page. The sales funnel can begin at almost any stage.

That’s why it’s important to not only understand your own unique business funnel, but also how you can incorporate social media into it. After all, it is estimated that there will be roughly 2.67 billion people using social media by 2018. Let’s find out how you can start incorporating these potential leads into your sales process.

Understand Your Unique Digital Sales Funnel

In order to maximize your profits as a startup, you need to understand how your sales funnel functions and how you can incorporate social media into it. To help you define your own unique funnel structure, let’s take a look at three examples of excellent sales funnels:

  1. Groupon

Groupon is a well-known brand that has enjoyed years of growth and loyalty from its customers. Because the company is structured around exclusive deals and offers, their sales funnel is highly dependent on earning email subscribers.

That’s why, when you arrive on the website, the first thing you’re asked to do is type in your email address. It seems like a small thing to do, but it allows the company to keep you in the loop and win you over at a later date, even if you’re not buying anything today.

  1. Basecamp

Basecamp is a well-known brand and they leverage that brand awareness to make bold claims on their website that instantly help people recognize and trust their services. The sales funnel here is dependent on pulling people in and convincing them with a 60-day free trial.

The sales funnel here is special because of the mass amount of social proof it offers. The company’s impressive statistics also help immensely. A long trial period, combined with a simple two-step signup process makes it hard to say no.

  1. LeadPages

LeadPages is a well known tool used for making landing pages that are well-designed, with a convenient drag-and-drop builder. When you’re building a website, designing your landing pages properly can mean the difference between success and failure.

This funnel works really well because it’s focused on educating the customer and it also relies on a landing page that is devoid of navigation. Once they have a lead in the final stages of the funnel, they don’t leave any distractions in place that could allow them to leave.

They also use a blog to earn email subscribers and further educate potential leads. It’s a multi-faceted funnel that always seeks to engage and educate before pulling them into their excellent landing pages.

So, now that we’ve seen how your sales funnel can be unique to your business, let’s take a look at how you start incorporating social media into your efforts.

Incorporating Social Media Into Your Sales Funnel

Social media is an excellent way to connect with your audience. There are several different ways that you can incorporate it into your funnel as well. Doing so will allow you to maximize your startup’s profits quickly by bringing more leads and customers into the fold.

Here are a few ways you can start incorporating your social media into the sales funnel today:

Lead Generation

Studies have shown that social media can increase revenue by up to 24% when used for lead generation. As part of any sales funnel, you’re going to need leads. You can generate them by being active on the top social media platforms where your audience is spending time.

Let’s look at a few of today’s platforms and how you can generate leads with them:

1. Facebook

Facebook has the largest user base by a longshot, but the organic reach is incredibly low. You’ll need to utilize targeted advertising to really reach a significant number of people in your audience. That being said, you can also run contests on Facebook in conjunction with these ads to capture emails from people in your audience and gather them as leads.

Furthermore, you can create custom tabs on your business page to include contact forms or information that goes beyond a simple place for your brand to post about content and blog posts.

  1. Twitter

With Twitter, you can also capture leads through paid advertising, or by tracking brand mentions. Either way, you should always use great call-to-action text and eye-catching images to ensure your ads are being seen.

When tracking brand mentions, looking for tweets with your brand or company name as the hashtag. There are social media tools you can use to monitor these kinds of things. These will reveal opportunities for you to enter the conversation and potentially earn a lead.

Social landing pages

Social landing pages are a little different than the kind you would find on your website. These are more fluid landing pages that you place into your social networks. They allow users to make comments, which provides social proof. In addition, they are shareable through the platform which, again, is beneficial for spreading the word.

Depending on how you create the landing page, you may be able to capture the information without ever requiring the user to leave the social media platform. This is the ideal situation as it doesn’t interrupt what they were doing there in the first place.

So let’s recap social landing pages:

  • Make it easy to share
  • Provide social proof through “likes” and comments
  • Potential for viral exposure
  • Make it easy to engage, ideally they shouldn’t have to leave the platform

Final Thoughts

Generating leads is an integral part of any sales funnel. In order to maximize your profits and sales, you need to incorporate social media into your funnel, regardless of its structure. These strategies will help with that.

How do you utilize social media in your sales funnel structure? Let us know in the comments!

Author Bio:

Omar Davis is a social media marketer with experience on all of today’s top platforms. He specializes in Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.