Captivate Your Customers with a Marketing Funnel
How do you turn strangers into paying customers through social media? By incorporating the marketing funnel into your social media advertising strategy.
But what exactly is this metric—and how can you use it in your social media marketing? You’ll learn more about it in this post.
What is a marketing funnel?
If you think of your marketing as a funnel—where you fill the top with new traffic, which comes out at the other end as a result—for example, a booking, an order, or a newsletter sign-up—then you’ve got the answer to what a marketing funnel is.
But what on earth can you use that information for?
Why use a marketing funnel?
Brands that work with ads often make the mistake of creating direct-sales ads for an audience that has never heard of their brand. The consequence of using this strategy is that you’ll reach the audience too early in their buying journey—leading to poor results.
That’s why it’s absolutely essential to refine your funnel strategy and ensure that you’re communicating the right messages at the right stages of your target audience’s buyer’s journey.
That's why you should use a marketing funnel:
- To avoid wasting advertising dollars
- To turn as many strangers as possible into fans in your store
- To attract as many customers as possible in the most effective way
This theory can and should be applied to all marketing efforts, but in this blog post, I’ll focus on how to make your funnel strategy on social media a success.
The Theory Behind the Marketing Funnel
The simplified marketing funnel consists of three layers:
Top of the funnel – Awareness
Middle of the funnel – Consideration
Bottom of the funnel – Purchase/Decision
Top-of-the-funnel
. Here, your goal is to spread your message and build awareness of your brand or product. Therefore, you’ll typically target a very broad audience that may not have heard of your brand or product yet.
Mid-funnel
Here, you go one step deeper into the buyer’s journey, where you may be able to bring your target audience one step closer to converting into customers. The target audience will likely begin researching your product—or alternatives from competitors.
That’s why it’s important for your brand to position itself in the market with the USPs that set you apart from your competitors.
Lower-funnel
In the lower funnel, we work with a target audience that has shown significant interest in your product or service. They may have visited your online store and added products to their cart without completing a purchase, or they may have downloaded your white paper.
Here, we work with what’s known as the retargeting audience, using calls to action that encourage this audience to become your customers.
The Marketing Funnel with Social Ads in Practice
Topfunnel
At the top-of-the-funnel level, you’ll be working with “cold” leads. In practice, you’ll target a broad audience based on demographics or interests that match your target audience—or lookalikes, if you already have data on your customers. This could take the form of a customer database or newsletter subscribers.
In the early stages of the buyer's journey, you'll want to educate and inform your target audience about your products or services. It's important not to ask too much of your target audience at this stage.
Recommended campaign-level objectives: Traffic, Engagement, Video Views, or Brand Awareness.
Example:
If you sell skincare products, you could create a video for your campaign that educates your target audience on how to take good care of their skin or what to avoid in order to keep their skin looking young and beautiful.
If your brand has expertise that creates value for your target audience and can position you as experts in the field, you’ll likely gain their trust and pique their curiosity. In this example, you could choose traffic as your campaign goal and direct the target audience to a more detailed blog post on your website.
Mid-funnel
At this stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll be working with a target audience that’s already familiar with your product. This could include, for example, people such as:
1. Has interacted with your Facebook or Instagram page.
2. Has visited your website.
3. Has watched, for example, 50% of your videos.
4. Is subscribed to your newsletter.
So we're now working with what are known as retargeting audiences.
At this stage, you can gently ask your target audience for more—for example, to provide their contact information, such as an email address or phone number. However, it’s important to remember that you need to offer some form of value if you’re going to ask your target audience for their information. This could be in the form of a digital guide, a white paper, access to a webinar, etc. You might also offer your audience a free trial of your product or service before they decide to become your customers.
Recommended campaign-level objectives: Traffic, lead generation, conversion, messages.
Lower funnel
At this stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to convert your hot leads into customers in your store.
These could be people such as:
- Have visited your website or specific landing pages.
- I have downloaded the white paper, e-book, guide, etc.
I have subscribed to your newsletter. - Added to cart (without completing the purchase).
- Past Customers
By now, your target audience has had time to get to know your brand and product well, and they’ve had a chance to think it over. That’s why, at this stage, you can create campaigns that provide the final push toward your goal: converting your leads into customers.
This is a great place to promote your campaigns and offers, run catalog sales, or encourage your target audience to fill out their contact information so your sales representatives can reach out to them. If you have an online store, it makes sense to use dynamic product ads, as this allows Facebook to show the products that each individual has viewed on your online store.
At this stage, you should also run campaigns targeted at current customers to build loyalty and encourage repeat purchases. For example, you might launch a new product and offer a 10% discount to your loyal customers, or you might ask your customers to leave a review of their experience.
Recommended campaign-level objectives: Lead generation, conversion, catalog sales
Get help with your social media strategy
A good start is half the battle. A bad start is… well, not good. If you don’t have the resources to develop a well-thought-out social media strategy, feel free to email me atseo@webamp.dkor reach out to one of my colleagues atinfo@amplify.dk.
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