Why Social Media Marketing
TLDR:
Marketing your business on social media carries a lot of upside. But at the same time, there’s a lot of over-promising and under-delivering regarding how a company can capture customers on these free platforms. Here I’m going to break down why I like social media as a marketing platform. I’m going to show how a strategy will align your business goals with what you want to accomplish on social media. Whether your goals are to get new customers, or just staying top of mind for existing customers.
Let’s start backwards with the bottom of the sales funnel.
At the bottom of the sales funnel, customers already know what your company does, is interested in how it does it, and is familiar with how you position your company. Here, you can use your existing marketing materials and the sales team to gain followers—followers that have already bought from you and know what you do. And as far as “What should I post,” I have an answer for you.
Sarah Levinger didn’t come up with the idea of a sales funnel, but she did flesh out the ideas behind some content frameworks to help us figure out what we should post. For bottom of the sales funnel (BOF), you want to focus on “Evaluation” and “Exploration” frameworks to create content.
Exploration content answers:
Why they should want it?
Who else already has it?
What those people think about it?
Why you created it.
What's cool about it?
Evaluation content answers:
Why should they choose YOU?
What pricing options they have?
What sets you apart from competitors?
What customization options they have?
How fast your shipping is?
Here are some simple content ideas based off of the Exploration and Evaluation frameworks: case studies, customer reviews, features of your product or service, pricing options, sales/offers, how soon they can receive your product/service if they order today, competitor comparisons, before and afters, and a lot more.
Now moving backwards towards the top of the sales funnel (TOF). Here customers need to notice you, and perhaps have some loose understanding of what your company does. TOF is not the time to show features or really even make offers. The customers either just noticed your company, or aren’t aware of it at all.
What you should post for TOF are Emotional Pressure content and Trigger content.
Emotional pressure tries to relate and identify:
“This is for people who [aspiration/goal]."
“Why wait to start living the way you’ve always wanted?”
“You’ve seen what’s possible—now's the time.”
And Trigger content speaks to a life event or potential change for the customer. Think:
New dads looking for blackout curtains.
Marathon runners searching for chafe-free shirts.
30-somethings who needs compact furniture.
Ideas for this should be benefit oriented. Also, the messaging means more than the media type (professional photography, smartphone photography, User Generated Content, Videography, meme, or some viral trend or voice over, etc). As long as the idea is good and it relates to something potential customers are experiencing.
So if you sold insurance policies to small businesses, your TOF content would say something like, “Small business owners looking to win more projects need a better insurance policy.” No mention of features or even an offer. It’s just trying to put your products into their situation.
Now that you know all of these frameworks to create more marketing materials, your next step is to conduct research. Find the right phrases customers are using, or understand the consequences of their problems. If this is done right, you can just fill in the information you discover upon your research. Before you know it, you’ll have a full content calendar trying to capture attention and leads.