Is the marketing funnel obsolete, or does it just need a makeover? This episode of Marketing con Sabor, hosted by Samantha Hollyfield, challenges the notion that traditional sales funnels are no longer relevant. We explore the evolution of the funnel from the classic “know, like, trust” model to contemporary frameworks that account for today’s savvy consumers who demand more control over their purchasing journey.
Rather than discarding the funnel, we discuss how marketers can adapt it to fit the nonlinear paths buyers now take, turning outdated criticisms into opportunities for strategic enhancement. Harnessing the power of micro conversions can transform social media engagements into robust sales opportunities. In our discussion, we delve into utilizing tools like ManyChat on platforms such as Instagram to automate interactions and effectively capture leads. We highlight the importance of meaningful metrics, focusing on aligning social media efforts with tangible business objectives like lead generation and sales.
By understanding the nuances of micro conversions, you can create a sales funnel that not only engages but converts initial interactions into significant returns on investment. A strategic mindset is crucial when navigating the ever-shifting dynamics of digital platforms. This episode emphasizes constructing a coherent strategy for social media that aids in building a community capable of driving sales. We address the challenges marketers face in maintaining consistency while adapting to different platforms and generational preferences. By crafting a well-structured funnel that guides users seamlessly from engagement to decision-making, businesses can ensure that their marketing efforts result in meaningful growth rather than wasted resources.
Where to dive in:
(0:00:01) – The Evolution of the Marketing Funnel (10 Minutes)
This chapter focuses on the marketing funnel and the misconceptions surrounding its relevance today. I discuss the different models of sales funnels, including the traditional “know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, refer” and the more modern “awareness, interest, consideration, decision, loyalty, and advocacy.” By exploring these models, we gain insights into how to effectively guide potential customers through their buying journey. I address criticisms that the funnel is outdated, emphasizing that while the buying journey is indeed nonlinear and customers desire more control, these factors necessitate an evolution of the funnel rather than its dismissal. Additionally, I critique the notion that funnels are too transactional, highlighting the importance of adapting strategies to current market dynamics. Through this discussion, we aim to clarify how to use the funnel effectively in contemporary marketing efforts, ensuring it aligns with evolving consumer behaviors and expectations.
(0:10:10) – Leveraging Micro Conversions in Marketing (16 Minutes)
This chapter explores how to effectively leverage micro conversions in a social media sales funnel, using Instagram as an example. We discuss using tools like ManyChat to automate the process of sending resources in exchange for comments, and how to capture and utilize emails for targeted advertising through Meta Ad Manager. The strategy involves retargeting users who have downloaded a free resource with a low-ticket offer and eventually upselling them to higher-priced products. Emphasizing the importance of focusing on meaningful metrics rather than vanity metrics, I stress the need to align social media activities with business goals like lead generation and sales. Understanding and optimizing these micro conversions can lead to significant ROI by converting initial engagements into sales, all while maintaining a structured and strategic funnel.
(0:25:46) – Building Engagement and ROI Through Funnels (12 Minutes)
This chapter explores the intricacies of creating an effective marketing funnel that aligns with audience preferences and platform dynamics. We emphasize the importance of understanding your target audience and tailoring content to fit seamlessly into their digital experience, thereby making the marketing process feel less transactional. By leveraging algorithms and retargeting in a way that feels natural and engaging, we can empower audiences to control their journey with our brand. We highlight the challenges marketers face, such as bridging generational gaps and maintaining brand consistency while adapting to different platforms. Ultimately, the key to a successful funnel lies in building a community and fostering ongoing relationships rather than focusing solely on transactions.
(0:37:40) – Optimizing Sales Funnel for Engagement (5 Minutes)
This chapter focuses on enhancing the sales funnel by guiding potential customers through key stages: engagement, consideration, and decision. We explore the importance of clearly instructing users on how to engage with content, whether through comments, polls, or downloads, to facilitate retargeting and extend website visits. Moving from awareness to consideration involves leveraging retargeting strategies, personalized email follow-ups, and SEO tactics like comparison articles, case studies, and webinars. We emphasize the significance of optimizing product pages for SEO by focusing on user experience, keyword usage, and seamless checkout processes. As social media and buying behaviors evolve, adapting funnel strategies is crucial to remain effective and relevant, ensuring all platforms work cohesively to guide users through the funnel.
(0:42:40) – Strategic Approach to Social Media (2 Minutes)
This chapter focuses on the importance of evaluating the time and effort invested in business activities, particularly on social media, to ensure they yield tangible results. We explore the necessity of understanding the strategy behind your actions and the value of creating a clear funnel to engage your audience effectively. By identifying what works and what doesn’t, businesses can avoid the inefficiencies of a scattergun approach and instead build a community that can be converted into leads and sales. We emphasize the need for a structured process, including lead magnets and low-ticket sales items, to enhance ROI from the outset. Without a solid strategy, evaluation becomes impossible, and growth remains elusive.
Proud to be in the 918 and from the 956!
Transcript:
0:00:01 – Samantha Hollyfield
Welcome to Marketing con Sabor. I am your host, samantha Holyfield. I am an MBA, a marketer, an entrepreneur of a small business right here in Tulsa, oklahoma, and in every single episode we talk about the difference between strategy and tactics so you can produce marketing with flavor sabor. And in today’s episode we are talking about the marketing funnel. It isn’t dead, you might just be using it wrong. About the marketing funnel it isn’t dead, you might just be using it wrong. Now, if you have tuned into previous episodes, you know I have mentioned the sales funnel as know, like trust, try, buy, repeat and refer, so that repeat is so special. But today we are looking at the sales funnel from a slightly different angle and this is how a lot of people look at the sales funnel and that is awareness, interest, consideration, decision and loyalty and advocacy. Now it doesn’t really matter which way you might have been looking at the sales funnel. In fact, you might have been not using really either of those things. You might just say oh, you know, I’m trying to capture people on social, give them something free, then sell them something small ticket and something high ticket. That’s a funnel, that’s okay. Now, in marketing world we tend to use things like no, like trust, try, buy, repeat, refer. And awareness, interest, consideration, decision, loyalty and advocacy, in order to kind of help us look at those stages of whatever funnel we’re doing and say, okay, where is intent to buy of the person? What are they feeling? You know, how well did they? Do they know me? How well do they like me? Do they trust me? You know where are we at in terms of awareness and interest and consideration. And so when you kind of put those labels on whatever your funnel is, it helps you determine what type of content you’re producing there, what type of conversion you are expecting, conversion rate you’re expecting, because obviously if somebody doesn’t know you very well and you’re putting out some kind of mass thing trying to convert to sale, you’re probably going to have a lower conversion rate than if you did that same ad to people who are further down the funnel. So those are just lenses that we look at our funnel with. Now, again, it doesn’t matter which one you’re using.
So many gurus and this or that people out there talking about marketing are saying the funnel is dead. Here’s the thing. I hate the term guru. Now I’m not saying you don’t have to do a really traditional path like me, you don’t have to have an MBA, you don’t have to have served as a marketing consultant or under. You know like I worked for a long time under the dean of the College of Business, who was a big time marketer for people like McDonald’s and Jiffy Lube and all these. You know, huge national global companies. I learned everything I know from this man. But that’s really traditional right Now. I’m not saying you have to have my experience in order to have an opinion on these things. Not at all. I have a wonderful client who was a OD consultant at Disney. Now she really talks about branding and positioning, that it really is marketing and she does copywriting and she’s brilliant at it. But all of that to say. I’m not trying to say oh, gurus on social media, but kind of, oh, gurus on social media.
Everybody’s giving you this hot take of why something isn’t working and you have no idea what their capacity is behind those things Meaning. How many have they executed? How well they do these things? You know what is their knowledge base, what is their? What was their testing like? Were they ever able to refine or did they really do something and be like? You know what this worked for my business for the past past five years and now it doesn’t. So it’s dead. I mean, marketing evolves, platforms evolve. Google’s algorithm updates, youtube’s algorithm updates, social media algorithms update. How people interact on those platforms changes. You know our political I don’t know cloud that we all live in now. That’s you know all over our dynamics on social media impacts, how we use it. Like there are just so many factors that when somebody says something is dead, that is a strong marketing concept, regardless of all of that change. Y’all.
I got questions, I have questions, because maybe it’s not dead, maybe it just needs to adapt to the times. Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox and we’re going to get down to business. So the lens that we are looking at for this episode is not my usual. No, like trust, try, buy, repeat, refer. We are doing awareness, interest, consideration, decision and then loyalty and advocacy, and we are going to put into play some of the things we’ve talked about in previous episodes, like SEO, because it plays a role on where you’re at in the funnel and getting people to convert.
So why are people saying the funnel is dead? Let’s just stop right there. Let me not hate on gurus. Let me, you know, not hate on all the clickbaity stuff, even though I really do dislike it. Let’s talk about why these people are saying it’s dead. So a big one is that the buying journey is nonlinear. Well, yeah, that is true, the buying journey isn’t linear, but doesn’t that just mean we got to update the funnel? The next thing is customers want to control the journey. Well, duh, we are in this space on social media where we feel like we’re being tricked into believing things or there’s so much false information out there it’s hard to know what’s true. What’s AI? What’s this, what’s that? I mean, yeah, customers do want to control the journey. That doesn’t mean the funnel doesn’t work, guys again.
Okay, what’s the next thing? They’re saying? Funnels are too transactional. I hear that nobody wants to be pushed into buying something. But here’s the next thing they’re saying Funnels are too transactional. I hear that Nobody wants to be pushed into buying something. But here’s the deal If you have something that is of great value and actually solves a problem, you don’t have to push anybody into buying anything. What you have to offer makes sense for what they need. So there’s nothing wrong with transaction. Y’all we got to earn. We got to put food on the table. Somebody on the other end of that.
Okay, I am a business owner, I’m on social media a lot. I enjoy doing social media for my clients. I do not enjoy as much putting my own face out there. But here I am doing it as an example because we all got to. But I mean, I’m on there, consuming just like you as a small business owner, even though, yes, I’m a marketer and I’m talking about marketing and how to do this and how to do that. Um, I am consuming. I have to because I have to evolve.
And so when they’re saying it’s too transactional, yeah, I hear that it can be, but I mean, I am seeing so many, uh, influencers, so many thought leaders, so many, I’m going to say, you know, people who have substance to what they’re talking about. Yeah, they have a transaction there, but they are giving so much value, they’re building so much community that that transaction is easy. So, okay, I just I’m failing to see how that means the sales funnel’s dead. I just I’m failing to see how that means the sales funnel’s dead. Here is how the funnel I’m saying needs to evolve and has evolved, Because, as many people are saying that the sales funnel is dead, there are, you know, like thousands and thousands of people who are leveraging it, even the ones who are saying it is dead.
Y’all have some kind of funnel that they’re using. So let’s just skip past the BS, right? The person who’s saying the funnel is dead is the same person who has, like some kind of carousel and then at the end they’re saying like comment, you know, snack pack, and they’re going to give you some kind of free download that’s going to tell you what you should do instead of the funnel. Guys, that’s a funnel, that’s literally a funnel. It’s like when you see some sort of sob story on TikTok and you’re scrolling and at the end it’s like some ad for vitamins and you’re like, okay, that felt really gross and sleazy. It’s a type of funnel. I’m not saying it’s a good one, but it’s a funnel.
Guys, there are really quick. I keep saying guys, and it reminds me of this time. Um, my family lives in deep south texas. There is no more texas. Y’all people are like corpus, no, san antonio, no, keep going south. We are the same distance from houston that we are to monterrey. It is the rgv. Put on 956, y’all. Put on rgv’s, go Okay. So we’re in the Valley. I am on a dolphin watch with my six nieces and nephews. They are adorable, and the guy leading the tour keeps saying guys, over and over and over, and that is what I’m reminding myself of right now. So I’m going to try to stop saying that and get back at it.
And so there are so many people talking about how funnels don’t work as they use them. It’s driving me bananas and that’s the whole point of this episode. It’s not that the funnel is dead, it’s that we’re not adapting with the times, we’re not leveraging it correctly, and all the points that they’re listing on why it’s dead are really great reasons to adapt, not to abandon it. I mean, here’s the other side of that. Why are they saying to abandon it? Often, their funnel is trying to upsell you on digital ads Still a funnel, okay, so this is a big thing. We’re saying people want to be in control. Well, when we’re talking about how funnels has changed, what that has led to the people being in control is that we have to really pay attention to micro conversions.
What is a micro conversion? A micro conversion is when somebody comments something. I gave that example where somebody was like oh, comment snack pack and I’m going to give you a free download. That’s a micro conversion, or it’s they might like your post, they might share it to stories. It’s engagement. A micro conversion is a type of engagement. Maybe they downloaded something from you, maybe they watched a video, maybe they clicked from point A to go to your website. All of those things are micro conversions that you can use. You can only use them, though, if you are tracking. And how do you use them? I would say very strong ways through digital ads.
So, for instance, if you are on Instagram, here I’m going to give you an example of leveraging micro conversions through the funnel. Um, let’s say that you did that thing where you said hey, comment, and I’m going to deem you a free resource, and you’re using something like ManyChat. Manychat is it allows you to automatically send something when somebody comments a specific word. I love this tool. I use it for myself and a lot of clients and people get discouraged when it doesn’t work on one post or this or that. Y’all that doesn’t matter. Keep doing it, keep leveraging, keep trying and testing. Okay, so throw some dollars behind something, all right.
So let’s say you’re leveraging many chat, somebody commented something, you dm and you get their email if you have the paid version of many chat and you send them on their way with whatever free resource. You can now take all of those emails and you can go into MetaAdManager and you can create an audience and through that audience you can now go retarget all of those people who downloaded that free thing and you can upsell them with, I would say, something like a mini sale and so a low ticket item. And so what’s really cool let’s say they did the free download, now you’re targeting them with something low cost that is highly relevant and highly related, and then they buy that thing and so now they’re in your sales system and from there you have the opportunity to then upsell them to maybe something high ticket. It could be coaching, it could be some kind of other item who knows what it is. But do you see that funnel it’s?
I’ve been building my community and engagement on social media. I’ve been testing, testing, testing, trying to get people to comment, to get my free resource. Now I’ve captured their email, now I have put it into my digital ad manager to retarget them and sell them on something low ticket and then, once I know those people who have all now bought something low ticket, I have the opportunity again to now upsell something of a higher price or a bundle or just selling something again, and so that is really a powerful way to generate ROI off of something free. That is a funnel. That is a darn funnel. Now I like to close some of those gaps and kind of speed up the sales process.
And now people can say well, that’s why it feels too transactional. I will always say this when something you have actually solves a problem and has value and you have proof that it does that, don’t worry about being too transactional. Worry about those other things first. How good is your product? How well does it solve that problem? And do you have any social proof in order to kind of reduce risk and fear, because then people don’t care about the transaction.
Okay, so those are micro conversions. Okay, so those are micro conversions. People take small steps before buying and so, with all of the things I’ve just said, you have to get good at reviewing your metrics. And it’s not all about vanity metrics. You know people will just hire somebody for social media and all they want to see is like just some growth over time. I want to see my likes going up. I want to see my engagement rate high I want to see okay, great. But in the words of my longtime mentor, he would say so what? So your likes went up. What did that do for you? Your engagement rate went up Okay, great. How did you leverage that? So what?
Now, if you have a monetized platform, that’s different, right. So what is that? It’s like bringing literally bringing you in dollars. But if you don’t, and you’re just doing these things, so what? How is it impacting your sales? What is it doing for you in order to bring in leads? So what? You have to get good at not just evaluating metrics, but the right metrics. Stay away from vanity metrics. The truth is, I don’t really care how many likes somebody has on Instagram. Now, it can add to a little bit of credibility when somebody comes off your page. If you’re in the thousands, that looks better than if you’re in the hundreds. Okay, cool, we can work toward that.
But you know, as you’re working toward that, you can still be impacting lead generation sales. You know traffic to your website. You can still be influencing things that matter. There are more important metrics, and you cannot judge what those metrics are if you haven’t established something like a funnel, a strategy. That strategy is what is the purpose of my social media? What is my end goal? Now, if my end goal is always going to be lead generation, sales, traffic to my website, okay, well, I don’t want to just be, like these people said, super transactional Okay great. Well then I know I have to produce so many posts with lots of value and then every like fifth post, or you know, every third day, something in my stories has to be doing that thing where it takes people from that first part of my funnel to the next.
So that’s still a strategy. That means when the boss comes asking, you can say, okay, I can’t. You know, I don’t want to create diminishing returns, so I have to give, give, give before I ask. And here’s how I’m doing that. There is an answer and a strategy here. And it is still a darn funnel y’all. Because again, when the boss comes knocking on my own boss, it’s like what’s the point? You know, how are we getting somebody from here to point of sale? And so that is where the funnel’s dead. The funnel is everything. It’s just we’ve changed how we’re doing it. We might be evaluating different metrics of this funnel and we might be saying, hey, this is now a KPI and this is not KPI, is key performance indicator.
Okay, micro conversions that’s really this big thing that I want you to see first is, whatever your funnel is, I want you to know how to measure micro conversions and know how to take advantage of them. So, if we are talking about engagement as a micro conversion, I want you to know how to turn that into an audience in Meta Ad Manager to retarget people for the next stage of your funnel. If we are talking about the free download as a micro-conversion, I want you to ask yourself okay, what is my conversion rate on post that offers this free download? And my next step, step how am I then taking that data for retargeting? Or how am I taking that person to the next phase?
Let’s say you’re like Samia, that I I don’t really want to pay for the upgrade on many check guys it’s not that expensive. But let’s say you don’t want to pay for the upgrade on many chat to collect an email, but you do want to use the free version to just send somebody your free download, okay, well, if you send them a link, you could send them a link that’s off your website that has that free download that has an immediate upsell for like a mini low ticket item. So you’ve taken something free and you’ve now increased your chances for ROI immediately. You can’t know any of those things if you’re not measuring the right stuff. And so if you are saying, okay, I know that my KPI I need to be looking at my key performance indicator is the conversion rate on these posts that offer something free. Now I have this funnel from free to ROI.
How do I make it better? Funnel ain’t dead y’all, no, mamas. Okay. The next thing Funnels need to be more personalized. Duh, people want to be in control. That was one of the things that these gurus are saying Okay, know, funnel doesn’t work because people don’t have control. Well, they sure do when you have targeting done correctly, when you are looking at the right metrics and you have the right tools in place in order to give the people what they want.
I’ll say this strategy is up here and tactics are down here. So the tactics are all the things that change. The strategy remains the same. The tactical stuff change in order to achieve that overall strategy. People get lost in the tactics of all of these things that they forget about the overall strategy, they forget about the overall goal, they forget about the overall goal and they start saying things like the funnel is dead, y’all. The funnel is the strategic thing that you have in mind taking somebody from point A to point of sale and to recurring sale or to referral or to whatever it is. The strategy are the ticky tacky things below that have to change with the times, that have to change with updated platforms, that have to change with the mood of social media. So when we’re saying people want to be in control and I’m saying, hey, you’ve got to change your funnel to be more personalized, those are the same thing, we’re speaking the same language, we’re just saying it differently.
Now let’s say I, let’s look at myself, for example. I am a marketer. I don’t just talk about SEO, I don’t just talk about digital ads, I don’t just talk about social media, I don’t just talk about podcasting, and so I’m going to have some people who maybe have some very key interests. Now I did an episode last week that was more focused on SEO. I have a free download for it that is focused specifically on achieving the. I have a free download for it that is focused specifically on achieving the goals associated with that episode. And when you do that free download. Guess what? It’s going to upsell you to a mini course specifically for SEO that is highly personalized. So anytime I’m promoting, you know, reels and things from that podcast episode on my social media, that is an SEO funnel.
The content is clear, the free download is clear, the upsell is all clear, it is all personalized and that is a segment of my audience that specifically wants that content and I will keep feeding it to them because it remains a critical piece of the marketing puzzle. So if I have these people labeled as those that are interested in things about SEO, I have the power to then create more products, more tools for these individuals that they will be interested in to purchase. If they have downloaded once, that means they are a prospect for sale and if they have bought, that means they are now somebody I can upsell to. That’s a clear funnel. That is also somebody that I could eventually offer higher ticket SEO services to for their website, for their social, for their podcast Clear funnel. But it’s just a segment and that’s the point. So you’re going to have different people coming through these different avenues through your website, through your social media, maybe through your YouTube channel that are very segmented.
It doesn’t matter if you sell one thing, you probably have segments of your audience. So let’s say you’re a service that is really family centric, well, you might have a whole segment that is specifically mom related. You might have a segment that is dad related. You might have a segment that’s about grandparents, like, if you can delineate those things within your messaging, within your free downloads, within your upsells, you now have a more powerful way to get people to convert. The more you know about your target audience, the better chance you have of getting them to convert, because you have identified their wants, their needs, their desires.
And even then, okay, let’s talk like this. Let’s say you do some lead generation and you’re maybe potentially running an ad and it’s to everybody who has engaged with your page that has been really focused on reaching out to moms on this one specific platform, because you know they’re there. Well then, if you are running a digital ad that is segmented for these moms, it’s going to speak to their needs and and then from there let’s say you get them, you collect their email somehow. Maybe you gave them a discount, maybe you gave them something free, whatever. Now they’re in their system. Now you can send them reviews from other moms about why your product or service is going to solve their problem.
Nobody sells you better than your customers and you see that as an example of like improving the conversion rate in a way that is very specific and targeted to the segment you are speaking to. Your conversion rate is always going to be better when you get that tighter, when your messaging and your audience are so close, and you will obviously do a better job at converting them because they will feel seen, heard and known. But all of this comes down to your tracking and your strategy. So again, let’s say we’re using one platform to really target moms because they’re really there. Well then you know that that funnel is all going to be speaking to that segment. Let’s say you really know men are on another platform, so you’re gonna use whatever that platform is to really speak to men. Same deal. You can’t get there. You can’t get to that point of making sure your messaging is really close to the person you’re talking to if you haven’t even identified what platform they’re on. You can’t be crafting content to them so specifically if you haven’t done that strategic groundwork. So maybe your funnel isn’t dead, maybe it’s your strategy, maybe it’s that you have not. You’re not doing a great job at identifying where you’re at audiences on these social media platforms and then creating content to that specific segment or group. Maybe it’s that your website is trying to be all things to all people and so you’re just speaking to no one. You know there is so much work to do in order to understand whether or not your funnel is dead. It could be a bajillion things. You can’t diagnose that without truly knowing who you’re talking to and why you’re talking to them, and you can’t get personalized if you don’t do that work. But duh, we’re coming back to.
Some of those concerns are like people don’t like being funneled, y’all. I’m going to say that that’s a lie. Here’s why, when I am on social media, my algorithm is so tailored to everything I am looking at it’s funneling me, whether I like it or not. Yeah, I do like being funneled. Tell me about this new product that is going to make my garden what I want it to be. You know it was last week it was zero degrees and yesterday it was 70. Feed me the gardening stuff. I want it. I want to be outside, you know, I just I’m like a little sunflower. I’m gravitating toward the sun. So if you are presenting. I don’t care if I killed that plant last year. If you tell me about it and I really liked it, I’m probably going to buy it again, because it’s not the plant that I care about, it’s gardening and being outside and hearing my child laugh and play in the sprinkler. So we don’t like being funneled yeah, we do. We like and click and engage in all these things that funnel us constantly. You know how the conspiracy theories happen we get funneled into them. We don’t even know it’s happening.
When you have something that is so drilled into your target audience, they don’t care about being funneled. They care that you’re giving them something that they want, and that’s the key here. So it’s less about being salesy and hearing the fact that people hate things being overly transactional and instead speaking to those interests, speaking to those things that naturally pull them in. It’s a funnel, but it’s one that they like. You know, um, there are brands out there that I just love and they do. Yeah, they sell you know this or that lifestyle stuff, but they do such a wonderful job of speaking to things that interest me that when they do sprinkle in the stuff that they’re selling, I’m like, yeah, I’m gonna save that and then I get another ad for it and I’m like that’s right, I really liked that and I do actually intend to purchase it. And so when, as they retarget me, I don’t mind because I’m a busy person. Come back at me. I didn’t have time to look at it then because I was dealing with my kid, I was dealing with a client or whatever I’m working, and so sure, retarget me. I want the thing you know.
So we’ve said, people don’t like being funneled, people want to control the journey. Isn’t that what they’re doing? When they engage with your content and they are influencing their algorithm to feed more of it to them, does that not put them in control? When they save something you post and it just so happens to talk about one of your products or services in a way that really speaks to their need and is lifestyle and is creative, isn’t that them controlling the process? Because they engaged with it and now you can retarget them, they literally are in control. And so if they are influencing their algorithm and you’re part of it, they literally are controlling the journey. You are simply taking advantage of the processes that are there in order to then again like, do things, like retarget them or reach out to them on other platforms or whatever it is. They still are in control. You just have to get good at doing it well and not cringy. Yeah, that’s the hard part. That really is the hard part Doing these things on social so that way you can produce know, produce engagement that results in you getting you know, sending free downloads, collecting emails or getting engagement, so you can retarget and then sell and then upsell and then email and do all those things.
Whatever your funnel is, the hard part is doing it in a way that matches the mood and the user experience of the platform that you are on. It is very difficult. Even for marketers it’s difficult. You want to. I mean, you can always see when, like a very Gen Z marketer is doing something versus an older one. Some of us get too stuck in our ways and some of these younger, this younger generation, is coming out social media in this way. That is very creative. Now, they don’t necessarily always do a great job when they’re speaking to boomers, and you know, my generation doesn’t always do a great job when they’re speaking to the younger generation. There’s a balance here. They have to get better at this and we have to get better at that. But the point is is we all have to be looking at how our whatever target audience that we are trying to reach out to is using the platform on, and we have to fit right in.
That is the hardest thing, because you’re not going to create great engagement, you are not going to create great community, you are not going to see all of these, um, catalystic things happen if you can’t get this part right. And so it does take testing. It does take things like setting brand guidelines so you understand the tone and the messaging and the look and the feel of what you want to produce in the world, because as you try new stuff, you don’t want to get so far away from your brand that people don’t recognize you anymore. That doesn’t align with the values of yourself and your brand and all of those things. It’s really hard. And so, again, maybe it’s not that your funnel’s not working, maybe it’s that your content is you know, and so the funnel never gets a chance to even happen.
You can’t build community if you haven’t figured out how to leverage a platform well and show up on it well and fit right into that person’s algorithm, because I mean, that’s one of the challenges right, like if somebody, every single user, on any kind of platform, is working this algorithm, tailoring it as they like things, as they engage with stuff, to feed them more stuff, just like it. And so you have to know what your target audience is engaging with and how they’re doing it in order to get fed to them. So then, if you fit right in being overly transactional, I mean, that’s not going to be a thing. You’ve done such a good job at creating content that is feeding the algorithm, fitting you into things, creating engagement, that people are ready to be part of your community, people are ready to engage, people are ready to be upsold. That is the whole hard darn thing. But you have to step way back and understand the fundamentals. Who is my target audience? What are the segments of that audience? What segment of that audience is on this platform? How are they using it? How do I create content to fit right into that algorithm and show up in a way that these people actually like and want to engage when they engage, what is that first step of my funnel that I’m feeding them into so I can get them to a point of sale, so I can get them to be a recurring buyer. So I can just you know, not just one and done and be overly transactional, which apparently they don’t like. But to get into this thing where I’m part of that community and they are part of mine Because the big ROI maker for any funnel, it comes at the end. Let me give you an example. So I’ve talked a lot about upsells and all those things. A funnel that I absolutely love, that is time tested and true on social media. Granted, their tweaks do have to happen. Testing does have have to happen. It doesn’t mean that it’s foolproof right out the gate.
Is the free download? That okay? So when let’s say, let me, let me get a little granular here. Uh, let’s say I run an ad, or let’s say I post a reel and it’s talking about um solving some kind of problem or other, and then I ask people to comment some kind of word, I don’t know, dish soap, no, that’s not it Engagement. And so then I’m going to send them a free download that’s going to help them solve this problem I’m talking about. Well, let’s say I am using ManyChat, so I go to ManyChat and I don’t necessarily leverage the email function. Instead, what I do is I just leverage the link and I send them directly to a checkout that has that free download.
But as they scroll they have an option to add a low ticket item and this low ticket item might be like $10, $15, $25, and they can get it along with this free guide and it’s going to be that extra missing puzzle piece to take maybe the idea and make it more actionable. Or it’s just like here’s the what and here’s the how, like you’re getting the what, now let’s pay for the how or or. It’s just, it’s something that is so relevant and makes so much sense. It’s just like the easiest upsell to make. It’s just common sense. That, right, there is what makes ROI happen. When you are truly running a lead generation kind of digital ad. It is everything and the next thing. Okay, so that person has now bought this low ticket item.
The next thing I’m going to do is they’re going to get into some kind of segmented sequence where I’m going to sell them things around that related products that will help take their brand to the next level. None of these things feel disjointed, none of these things feel pushy and salesy, because I am feeding, feeding, feeding the whole time. They’re becoming part of a community that is talking about these things because it’s top of mind for them. They’re actively trying to solve these problems, so they want to be in, you know, whatever the group chat is, they want to be in the thread on YouTube talking about these things. They want to be in the comments on social and it’s not overly transactional, it’s like hey, we are trying to create community around these problems and solve them together, and so then the upsells just happen naturally.
But on the ticky tacky tactical, I went free download, immediate upsell and I produced ROI. And that is where there’s so much power in the funnel when you can get it right. All of that ROI happens in that post-purchase growth kind of thing, new growth engine. And so, for example, let’s say you know you’re selling a digital course, your upsell is going to be high ticket coaching. You are offering a free trial. The next thing is going to be the premium plan. You are selling a computer. Now you’re going to sell accessories and you know a warranty and all those things. That ROI often happens, that better profit margin happens at the end. But you can never get there if you’re not doing the legwork. And so again, maybe it isn’t your funnel, or maybe your funnel isn’t working because it has not done a great job at that relevancy thing, that free download to the what? Now let me upsell you the how? Um, you know you have the how you’re. You’re struggling to do it. Let me do it for you. Let me sell you white glove service um, all of those things have to be so drilled in and engaged. They just make sense to the person on the other end.
And so let’s talk about the funnel in terms of SEO. I’m going to give you a quick rundown on what the funnel looks like in terms of SEO. So the first thing is awareness. Now, from an SEO standpoint, I’m thinking blog posts, I’m thinking YouTube videos, I’m looking at social media content. You know what is the text that I’m doing along with these social content, along with my social content, because the algorithm is looking at that for keywords. You know my YouTube videos. What keywords am I using in the title? What problems am I solving for customers in these YouTube videos? That they see the video, then they get my free thing, then they get my mini upsell, then they get my little bundle, then they get my white glove service. That is awareness. What am I putting out there in terms of awareness in order to start my funnel. It’s not just social media. I’ve talked about many chat and that comment for a free thing as a funnel here, because it’s just so easy. It’s such a great way to start. It’s a low cost way to start and it’s a low cost way to kind of even start going with things like retargeting for digital ads, because it produces that engagement that you need in order to retarget or create a lookalike audience. But speaking of SEO and awareness, it ain’t just social. We got blogs, we’ve got YouTube videos, duh the social media content, but you’ve got like listicle type articles all of these things that are speaking to what people are looking for to bring them into awareness of you. If you can create content that speaks to their needs, you come up in search engine results.
The next thing in the sales funnel is that engagement that we’re looking for. Okay, so they found the thing. How do you want them to engage? Have you made it clear? Have you told them to comment something? Have you asked them to engage with a poll? Have you offered them a free download? I mean, tell people what you want them to do. You know, tell them how you want to hear from them. Create that engagement because it quite literally gives you something to retarget. It also creates, like time on your website Visitors. Again, visitors can be retargeted from your website. People who engage with your content on social can be retargeted through medigital ads. But you have to get them to engage. So tell them what you want to do and then give them something to do.
The next thing in our sales funnel here is consideration. How are you taking them from awareness to engagement to really considering you? Okay, so you’ve brought them in by speaking to you know, solving a problem for them. Then you’ve encouraged them to engage with you by downloading something, by commenting something, by doing a free workshop it’s free community blah, blah, blah, and now you want them to consider the sale. How are you going to do that? A powerful way I’ve already talked about is retargeting. You’re going to show up in their feed, um, addressing one of those things you talked about and offering a solution. You and okay, what’s the next way? If you’re not doing digital ads and retargeting? Let’s say they downloaded something, you can email them with things like testimonials. Remember, the more segmented your email list is, the more you know about that person. On the other end, the better. You can feed a testimonial to them that will help them buy, because nobody sells you better than your best customers. It’s just the real deal. They trust this person. They don’t know talking about their experience with you, over you. That’s just how it works.
Personalizing that follow-up in order to get them in that phase of consideration and moving them to a point of purchase is huge. So, in consideration, what does that look like in terms of SEO? You can have things like comparison articles. So let’s say they did the free download and, yeah, there was an upsell. Maybe they got it, maybe they didn’t. Let’s say they didn’t get it. Now they got fed into an email segmentation that has comparison articles of of like, maybe how to do it this way or how to do it that way, and what worked better and what didn’t work, and that particular thing takes them out of engagement and into point of purchase. Because, again, remember, if we did the free download and we had that little thing I love with the mini upsell, and they did that, did not work, did not upsell, that’s still a lead.
So what’s the next thing they go to? Well, in terms of SEO, it could be a comparison article. That’s still something that can appear on your website and help with the SEO. Maybe it is a case study, maybe it is a different kind of webinar. Again, webinars are beautiful. You can do them once and then feed them into different parts of your sales funnel to help with conversion. Maybe it’s a lead magnet. I mean what’s some kind of checklist or discount or tool or whatever.
But the point is, from an SEO standpoint, those things that you create end up on your website, end up on your YouTube channel, but they might also end up in an email segment, an email automation, but they might also end up in an email segment, an email automation. And the next part in terms of thinking about SEO and the sales funnel is we have gone awareness, we have gone engagement, we have gone consideration. Now we’re at decision. So what does that look like in terms of SEO? How are your product pages optimized? Quite literally. So remember way back when this funnel I keep offering free download into immediate bundle for a mini or sorry, immediate mini upsell. What does that product page look like? Quite literally, in terms of SEO? We want to. What is the user experience? What are the keywords on that page? What are you know? How fast does it load? What does that checkout process look like? Because Google’s indexing all of those things and that user experience matters. That thing probably isn’t just going to be found when somebody downloads. Somebody else might come at it another way, and so it needs to be functioning properly. What are your call to actions? All of that is part of SEO. What are the FAQs on this thing? You know, did you send them to a sales page that’s being indexed and read by Google? People often do not come to you one way. So here’s the deal.
I do not believe funnels are dead. I think that is the top level strategy. I think it’s the tactics that are really hindering people as social media evolves, as the buying process evolves, as people evolve, and so we have to get better at saying, okay, what do I need to change within my funnel in order to adapt to the times and the mood of the platforms that I’m promoting this funnel on, that I’m bringing people through on, and when you can do that, then you can keep having a process that makes sense. So when you look at, why am I doing social? Why am I doing YouTube? What is my email doing? You have a rhyme and a reason for this stuff.
All of this has costs in business, even if it’s you doing it yourself. The cost is your time. You could be doing other stuff, so you have to really look at the what and the why behind it in order to know that you are doing something that is going to yield results, and so you can see what is working, what isn’t working. If you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, it’s really hard to know what to improve, and so I’m going to say it If you’re on social and you have not thought about the funnel you’re using there, now is a great time, because why are you there?
It doesn’t have to be a super salesy thing, it’s just like okay, I know I have so many posts that are about building community and engagement, so that way, when I need them to engage with something to get a lead, they do it. You know. That’s just step one, and then I know from there, when they put in their information for that lead, I have a process to bring them to the point of sale. Maybe I have that lead magnet, maybe I have that, you know, mini um, low ticket sales item that I love to do to improve ROI of that lead right away, or of that digital ad right away, but that is what you have to evaluate, and you can never get to the evaluation process if you haven’t thought of the strategy in the first place. Okie doke, I hope that was clear as mud. Ask me questions in the comments, because there is so much to dive into and it’s so hard to do it in one single podcast episode.
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