Social media platforms gather user interest and behavior data to tailor a unique user experience to each person. The goal is to make users stay on their platforms for longer durations.
*Updated 9/20/2024
However, the feature also allows marketers to place content in front of people who are only interested in that particular type of content.
Data science consulting can help you analyze your social media funnel results and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategy for better ROI.
That doesn’t mean that social media marketing is foolproof, though. You still need to implement a proper social media strategy to convert those leads. For this, you need a social media marketing funnel.
What are the 6 Stages of a Social Media Sales Funnel?
A social media sales funnel is a process that guides potential customers through various stages, ultimately leading to a purchase. Here are the key stages:
1. Awareness
- Objective: Make potential customers aware of your brand or product.
- Actions: Create engaging content (videos, blogs, posts) that educates or entertains. Paid ads, influencer collaborations, and viral campaigns are common in this stage.
- Social Media Tactics: Use brand storytelling, viral posts, or partnerships to increase visibility.
- Example: Airbnb uses Facebook ads to promote unique experiences and destinations. These ads are targeted to specific audiences, driving traffic to blog posts that engage potential customers with visually appealing travel ideas. This technique helps create awareness and attract potential leads to their platform.
2. Interest
- Objective: Capture the attention of users who have become aware of your brand.
- Actions: Offer more valuable, specific content, such as how-to guides, webinars, or case studies.
- Social Media Tactics: Share blog posts, tutorials, and relevant content that shows how your product solves a problem.
- Example: HubSpot effectively uses Instagram Stories to boost engagement by inviting users to join free marketing webinars. They often incorporate clear calls-to-action (CTAs) like "Swipe Up" to register for the webinars, which encourages interaction and helps drive leads directly through their social media marketing funnel. This practice has been discussed in various articles highlighting effective CTA strategies for Instagram, emphasizing how businesses like HubSpot leverage Instagram Stories to increase user engagement.
3. Consideration
- Objective: Move potential customers closer to making a decision.
- Actions: Highlight customer reviews, offer demos or free trials, and provide comparisons of your products with competitors.
- Social Media Tactics: Use retargeting ads, testimonials, and interactive content like polls to encourage deeper engagement.
- Example: Warby Parker, the eyewear brand. Warby Parker offers a virtual try-on feature using augmented reality (AR) on their app. Customers can see how different glasses frames look on their face before purchasing, enhancing the consideration stage by providing an interactive and personalized experience that helps users make a more informed decision before buying. This strategy is similar to product demonstrations but tailored for online shopping, where users can try on products virtually without needing to visit a physical store.
4. Conversion
- Objective: Lead the user to purchase.
- Actions: Use clear calls-to-action, limited-time offers, and promotions to push users to buy.
- Social Media Tactics: Utilize targeted ads with discounts, flash sales, and direct product links on platforms like Instagram Shopping or Facebook Shops.
- Example: Shopify runs retargeting ads on social media, leading users back to abandoned cart pages with a discount offer, optimizing their social media sales funnel.
5. Loyalty
- Objective: Retain customers and encourage repeat business.
- Actions: Provide excellent post-sale support, offer exclusive deals, and engage customers with loyalty programs.
- Social Media Tactics: Keep customers engaged with newsletters, personalized offers, or exclusive content through platforms like Facebook Groups or private Instagram accounts.
- Example: Sephora does an excellent job through its Beauty Insider loyalty program. Customers earn points for every purchase, which can be redeemed for exclusive products, early access to sales, and other perks. Sephora also personalizes the experience by offering birthday gifts, event invitations, and product recommendations based on past purchases.
6. Advocacy
- Objective: Turn satisfied customers into brand advocates who spread the word about your product.
- Actions: Encourage reviews, referrals, and user-generated content.
- Social Media Tactics: Create shareable content, run referral programs, and highlight user-generated content to increase organic reach.
- Example: Morning Brew runs a referral program via Twitter, incentivizing customers to share links with friends and completing the funnel process.
These stages help guide the customer journey from initial awareness to becoming loyal advocates of your brand.
How to Build a Social Media Marketing Funnel
- Identify the proper channels
- Test various marketing channels
- Decide your offers
- Optimize landing pages
- Configure your social media funnel
- Track your performance
Knowing how to create a marketing funnel is a key skill in marketing. The marketing funnel is a visual representation of how a lead goes from a total stranger to a customer and then a loyal customer.
Different marketing content types are used to bring a lead down the marketing funnel until they convert.
To ensure an effective social media marketing strategy, we must determine how to get social media channels to fit into our overall sales funnel. Here’s our guide on creating a winning social media funnel.
1. Identify the proper channels
With dozens of social media channels out there, it’s virtually impossible for businesses to be active on all of them, at least not without compromising performance. That’s why it’s critical first to identify the best channels to focus on.
Generally speaking, you shouldn’t try to hop onto too many platforms when starting out. You risk stretching your resources which could ultimately affect your results.
Instead, you can identify two or three platforms with the highest potential. Double down on those platforms until you’ve mastered them, then start introducing new channels gradually.
For example, you could start with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Then, over time, adopt other channels like TikTok, Snapchat, etc. These are the details you may need to add to your digital marketing proposal template when working for a client.
How do you pick the platforms? Well, the platform you choose will ultimately depend on your target audience.
If your market consists of young professionals, you can market on LinkedIn. If your market consists of video content consumers, you may take to TikTok and YouTube to promote your services.
To know the social media platforms your target audience use, ask them directly through focus group discussions or surveys.
You can also analyze your customer database and competitors to determine which channels will likely generate the highest ROI.
2. Test various marketing channels
Market behavior changes over time. For example, TikTok exploded in popularity in 2019, and marketers quickly adapted to the new social media giant.
You must test what social media networks work best with your current customers. Identify which of the social media networks you’re on right now gets more engagement.
Also, whenever a new emerging social media platform starts gaining traction, check to see the type of content uploaded there. See if your target audience has embraced the platform and whether your competitors have hopped on it.
Testing various marketing channels ensures your brand doesn’t leave any money on the table. It also helps you optimize efficiency and ROI.
Plus, it’s a great way to stay ahead of the curve. You don’t want to be the brand hanging behind when the market has shifted to a new trend.
3. Decide your offers
You'll need an irresistible offer to create a sales funnel that converts. You have to give potential customers something valuable for free.
However, ask the prospects for their email address to access the resource. These are known as gated content, and they help you generate leads while moving prospects down the sales funnel.
Hubspot offered free buyer persona templates on Facebook to social media marketers. These templates aim to help marketers research their buyers more effectively.
Once the lead clicks on the CTA (or call-to-action) button, “Learn More,” they’re brought to a blog article about creating detailed buyer personas.
In the blog post, leads are immediately given the option to download the buyer persona templates, as shown above. They’re also required to provide their email addresses and phone numbers.
It’s a simple funnel—Hubspot offers a free template to prospects who need it. They then collect email addresses to nurture those leads into customers. You need something similar.
4. Optimize landing pages
Your social media strategy is of no use if your site is unengaging and unoptimized. You’ll need an optimized landing page to make the most out of your social media funnel.
Below is Hubspot’s landing page for their free buyer persona templates. It’s a compelling example of a neat and effective social media landing page.
The landing page contains imagery and a stand-out CTA at the first fold. The lead may also scroll down to learn more about the offer.
Shown above are details about the free offer that a lead will see after scrolling.
There’s also a CTA at the bottom to allow leads to take action after thoroughly learning about the lead magnet. They won’t have to scroll back to the top to claim the offer. That’s smart.
Here are some tips to help you build effective landing pages:
- Use valuable imagery on your landing page.
- Create a compelling copy explaining the benefits of your product
- Place a CTA at the first fold and towards the bottom, just like what Hubspot did.
- Focus on your page load speed.
Be sure to A/B test and adjust your social media landing page frequently. This ensures that your social media funnel remains optimized at all times.
5. Configure your social media funnel
A proper social media sales funnel uses valuable, relevant content throughout the customer journey.
Essentially, it creates a win-win situation where you’re helping potential customers resolve a problem while promoting your products. That said, there are two ways to get leads into the funnel:
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Using paid ads for your funnel
Running paid ads can be a crucial element in your funnel social media strategy, helping move users from awareness to decision-making.
You can use paid social media ads to generate leads for your business. If you have Facebook Pixel configured on your website, you can also use paid social media ads to retarget those who have visited your site. This practice reminds your leads who you are and warms them up to a conversion on your website.
For example, Babbel, a language learning company, retargets website visitors with the offer shown below.
You save a lot on ad spend when you narrow your targeting to those who have already touched base with your brand.
Retargeting website visitors is only one way to convert prospects through a social media funnel. This technique requires leads to see your website first before being retargeted.
You can also create a wide-reaching ToFu ad that potential customers will see first on social media. This helps you build more brand awareness, bringing more leads into your funnel.
The good news is most social media platforms provide excellent targeting options. This helps you show your ads to people likely to convert into customers.
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Using organic social media efforts for your funnel
The upside to using organic social posts for your funnel is that they’re free and target only those who are already engaged with your brand—in this case, your social media followers.
Your social media postings can push followers to a conversion, like claiming a discount, downloading a lead magnet, etc.
A case in point is Burger King offering free Whoppers to those who download their app—a conversion action.
You can use social media posts to nudge followers to actions such as heading to a URL or answering a data-collection survey.
However, organic social media campaigns rarely generate substantial results, especially if you don’t already have a large following.
6. Track your performance
You must monitor the results of your performance if you want to assess how your social media funnel is performing. Doing this can help you determine what works, allowing you to make the necessary optimizations to your sales funnel.
A social channel ad platform, such as Facebook ads manager, provides you with plenty of marketing data. Among the analytics you should be looking at are:
Cost per reach. A lower cost per reach is an indicator of a cost-effective ToFu. That means your ad creative and copy are engaging.
Page likes / Account Followers. Leads familiar with your brand may like your social media page. Those who like a page tend to be more dedicated consumers in the deeper stages of the sales funnel, just like in an email list.
Website visits. More website visits from your social media campaign indicate more leads moving down the funnel.
Purchases. If you notice more purchases rising in proportion to your social media metrics, i.e., video views, reach, engagement, etc., that’s a healthy indicator of an effective social media funnel.
Knowing if your social media funnel is generating desired results allows you to decide whether or not to invest more resources into your marketing.
FAQs About Social Media Sales Funnel:
1. What is a social media funnel?
A social media funnel maps out the journey users take from being aware of a product to becoming a customer.
2. How does a social media funnel work?
It uses targeted content to nurture leads through different stages—awareness, interest, decision, and action.
3. What are the benefits of a social media funnel?
It helps guide potential customers through a structured process, increasing conversions and sales.
4. What are social media funnel examples?
Examples include lead magnets on Facebook, Instagram Stories ads for promotions, or YouTube tutorials that link to landing pages.
5. What’s the difference between a marketing and sales funnel on social media?
A marketing funnel attracts leads, while a sales funnel focuses on converting leads into customers.
6. How do I track my social media funnel’s success?
Monitor metrics like reach, engagement, website visits, and conversions through social platforms’ analytics tools.
In Closing
Social media is an effective marketing medium for finding potential customers. You can make an efficient marketing funnel with social media’s targeted and remarketing functionalities.
Know your audience and identify the best social networks to target them on. Next, decide on your lead magnet offer to entice your audience to action.
Optimize your social media landing pages to prevent bounce rates and improve conversions. Also, set up your social media funnel to retarget and nurture engaged leads. Finally, track your performance. Look at your key metrics to see how your social media funnel performs.
Building a funnel on social media will maximize your marketing efforts, resulting in more brand reach and revenue. Good luck.
Author Bio
Michal Leszczyński is immersed in developing, implementing, and coordinating all manner of content marketing projects as the Head of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse.
He has 10-plus years of expertise in online marketing with a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Marketing and Consulting from the University of Birmingham (UK).
Michal is the author of more than 100 articles, ebooks, and courses for both GetResponse and renowned websites like Crazy Egg and Social Media Today.
