As a business owner who wants to grow your business, an essential part of your strategy should be to find and retain clients. This is where your marketing comes into play, and as we all know, there are many different options for marketing your business. Marketing can involve building a great website, developing your SEO, email marketing, and social media, which is what we’ll be discussing today.

Getting Social

Social media is essential as a business owner today, and when used correctly, it can be a very powerful tool. It’s one of the few tools that meets the customer at every stages of their journey.  Social media will help you:

• grow your audience
• educate your followers and earn their trust
• encourage purchasing decisions
• foster loyalty and build a network

As a marketing nut, I particularly love how social media supports each level of a marketing funnel. (If you’re not familiar with the marketing funnel, check out this post that will help you master it!)

Here’s What the Social Funnel Looks Like…

The great thing about social media is that you can create posts that will reach your ideal audience at each stage of their journey – from Discovery, to Engagement, to Trust and finally Loyalty. Asking questions, being informative, and standing out from others in your industry will help you to generate more clients and conversions.

Here’s a visual of what the Focial Funnel looks like.

The Top of the Funnel – This is the discovery stage where people are first hearing about your brand. They may see you tagged in someone else’s post or may find you organically through hashtags or location tags. Either way, having a clear message with an updated profile and current posts is essential to first-time visitors to entice them to follow. Here’s an example of a post that speaks to your audience at the top of the funnel.

The Mid-Funnel – This is when your followers start to engage with you. They might not be aware that they need your products or services, or perhaps they are narrowing down their options. They may be following you as well as some of your competitors to determine who will be able to provide the best solutions for their needs. On social they may comment or like, or even save a post they like for reference in the future. Here’s an example of a mid-funnel post.

The Lower Funnel – This is when you have earned their trust enough for them to take action. On social media, they may DM you with specific questions. They may click your link to book a call. Bottom line your presence on social media has helped them realize that you are the expert in what you do and they are ready to trust you. Here’s a lower-funnel example.

The Bottom of the Funnel – This part of the funnel is all about loyalty and over-delivering with your current clients so much so that they share what you have done and even recommend you to their own network. I once had a client tag me as her “marketing guru” and saw a huge uptick in new followers. (see image below)

Don’t underestimate this part of the funnel. Return customers and referrals are a huge part of many people’s businesses. When you create posts, make sure you are also speaking to them and not just focused on new client acquisition. Here’s an example of a bottom-of-funnel post.

Expert Tip: Taking it even further, you can also utilize paid advertising on social media to target clients at specific stages of their journey, such as retargeting on Instagram them after they have visited your website or filled out a form.

Does Social Media Seem Overwhelming?

If you are struggling with your social media, you are not alone. Consistently posting compelling content is a challenge in and of itself. But you must also set goals and calls to action for your audience.  You need to be consistently engaging and have your brand show up in new places to grow your audience. 

This is what we LOVE to do! Let us help you leverage your social media with our Start – Grow – Scale services for social media. Reach out to us today to learn more!