Episode 8 of the Halftime Mike Podcast dives into how companies on Facebook can use posts and tabs to create a Facebook sales funnel.
[powerpress]
Facebook provides marketers with tremendous opportunity to connect with their target audience.
Facebook is a place to intersect with people that can become customers. 2012 stats give credence to the Facebook sales funnel potential, including 77% of B2C companies reporting they have acquired customers via Facebook, and 41% of B2B’s reporting the same.
The key is growing your Facebook community so that you reach more and more relevant people, then having methods to move fans into the funnel so that they become known leads (like capturing their Email address), and finally, being able to help move those leads from interested to becoming a customer (bottom of funnel).
Below is a summary and Infographic overview of the funnel.
This is the top of the funnel goal! You are trying to attract as many visitors as possible and you want to get them to engage with your content. Use images, videos, infographics and more. This helps catch the eye of the user in the News Feed, inspiring them to engage.
One way to do this is to run promotions in the news feed. See my eBook, "Guide to Timeline Contests" for a complete guide on how to use this to create more top of the funnel activity!
Brands on Facebook need to post in a social way. There’s a style of writing that is not directly sales speak but communicates socially what you have to offer. Check out this post by Starbucks for an example of promoting their Pumpkin Spice Latte without directly selling it.
As Jay Baer says, “it’s difficult to be amazing all the time, but you can be helpful 100% of the time.” Struggling with “what” you can post about? Be helpful! A real estate agent’s fan page can’t push the newest listing in the market each day, but they can inform their fans about school redistricting, new businesses coming to town, community resources, and more. It makes sense for a real estate agent fan pages to be offering helpful community information!
![Slide11 Facebook Sales Pipeline Strategy [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://mikegingerich.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Slide11.png "Slide11 Facebook Sales Pipeline Strategy [INFOGRAPHIC]")
With a mix of 80% attention capturing, social, and helpful information mixed with 20% of information that is more “selly sell” (Chris Brogan speak), a Facebook Page can navigate the waters of social media to participate well in the News Feed of users socially and remain top of mind, build loyalty, and move users deeper into the funnel towards becoming a customer.
Mid-funnel content is where fans are moved to become leads via landing tabs, contests, and promotions. These are a blend of social and sales. Offering a free ebook to your fans in exchange for their email sign-up is not a direct sales (the 20%) item but it is a bit more specific than a general post and it serves the very valuable purpose of moving a fan into known customer persona mix when their name and email address is registered.
Tabs can serve at any stage in the funnel. For instance a Instagram or Pinterest tab on a Facebook page can coincide with a Page sharing posts about new pins to see or a #hashtag on Instagram. Mid-funnel tabs are the tab landing pages for ebooks and for promotions where users enter their email to receive access to a coupon for example. As well, photo contests where entrants submit a photo and their information can be mid-funnel opportunities of moving a fan into the “potential customer lead” category.
