How to Build a Social Media Sales Funnel: Your Guide to Automating Revenue Generation

Introduction

Today I’m going to show you how to build a social media sales funnel that sells—that is, how to generate direct revenue from your business’s social media marketing channels. Without a funnel, you could be stuck in Donkey Land forever, doing and lead nurturing manually and ultimately wasting valuable time and resources. But with a funnel in place, you can create a seamless path to Unicorn Land. Here, you can guide prospects through the customer journey efficiently while automating the process from lead capture to conversion. So how can you create a social media sales funnel and start automating revenue generation? Here’s your guide to this unicorn tactic: We’ll build a social media sales funnel together.

What is a social media sales funnel?

A social media sales funnel is a path or a series of steps that your prospects take as they move along the customer journey. A typical funnel has four stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty.

Awareness stage

At the top of the funnel, the awareness stage attracts the largest number of potential customers. At this stage, you want to focus on introducing your business and relating to customers. Content that entertains or educates works well during this stage. Save tutorials and hard sells for later.

Consideration stage

The consideration stage is where prospects start to evaluate whether your product or service is the right fit for them. Here, you want to provide content that provides social proof or inspires trust. Tutorials, blog posts, customer testimonials, and user-generated content (UGC) are ideal for driving consideration.

Conversion stage

The conversion stage is where you prompt prospects to make a purchase or sign up for a service. Content that captures the lead or closes the sale works best during this stage. Irresistible offers and limited-time or -quantity sales can be effective for securing conversions.

Loyalty stage

The loyalty stage is where you focus on encouraging engagement and shares from your existing customers. Content that offers rewards or incentivizes repeat purchases fits well with this final stage of the funnel.

Content for each funnel stage

To create a funnel, you need to know the best type of content for each step of the customer journey. Let’s brainstorm content for each funnel stage.

Awareness stage content

At the awareness stage, think about content that entertains or educates. Focus on introducing your business and relating to customers—and save tutorials and hard sells for later.

Some content ideas for the awareness stage include:

• Funny videos that resonate with your target audience.
• Webinars to introduce your business and go behind the scenes.
• Engagement ads to get prospects to interact with your top-of-funnel content.

Consideration stage content

For the consideration stage, create content that provides social proof or inspires trust. Tutorials, blog posts, customer testimonials, and user-generated content (UGC) are ideal for driving consideration.

Some content ideas for the consideration stage include:

• Sharing content your customers created to show your products in action.
• Talking about customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, or industry awards.

Conversion stage content

At the conversion stage, prioritize content that captures the lead or closes the sale. Irresistible offers and limited-time or -quantity sales work well for securing conversions.

Some content ideas for the conversion stage include:

• Offering a free trial or a product demo so prospects can experience your product.
• Promoting a discount or a downloadable ebook or report.

Loyalty stage content

For the loyalty stage, develop content that encourages engagement and shares. Content that offers rewards or incentivizes repeat purchases fits well with this final stage of the funnel.

Some content ideas for the loyalty stage include:

• Asking customers to share what they’ve achieved with your product or service.
• Hosting an “Ask Me Anything” and sharing your best secrets with your customers.

Keep in mind that new prospects will continue to enter your funnel over time. Aim to publish a steady rotation of content geared toward each stage of the funnel so you can keep guiding prospects through the customer journey.

Building a social media sales funnel

In the tutorial below, I’ll show you how to build a sales funnel that works for both Facebook and Instagram. You can apply the same strategy and tactics to digital marketing channels like Twitter and LinkedIn.

Step 1: Attract attention and drive discovery

Start with paid or organic videos and carousel posts that attract attention and drive discovery. This is your opportunity to introduce new prospects to your funnel.

Try these ideas:

• Create a funny video or meme that resonates with your target audience.
• Host an Instagram or Facebook Live session to introduce your business and go behind the scenes.
• Run an engagement ad to get prospects to interact with your top-of-funnel content.

For example, the @Customers.ai Instagram post above is designed to entertain marketers. By using humor to connect with prospects, we can start to build trust and create interest. We can also use the video post as a data source for advertising. If we ran Instagram ads to reach prospects further down the funnel, we could retarget people who watched this (or any other) video.

Step 2: Convey the value of your products or services

Next, publish social media posts that convey the value your products or services provide. If you opt for paid content, use a custom audience that retargets people who watched your videos or engaged with your content.

Try these ideas:

• Share testimonials from satisfied customers.
• Talk about customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, or industry awards.

The Instagram post by @kim_larry above features a customer testimonial. By letting the customer speak for himself, the post shows prospects what they could achieve with Customers.ai.

Step 3: Create an irresistible offer or call-to-action

Now it’s time to create an offer that your prospects won’t want to refuse. Encourage prospects to visit a landing page or request a resource from you—letting you slide into their DMs and collect contact info automatically.

Try these ideas:

• Offer a limited-time discount or a downloadable ebook or report.
• Provide a promo code or a limited-time discount to create a sense of urgency.

In the @Customers.ai Instagram post above, we prompted prospects to comment a keyword to see our Instagram comment guard tool in action. Anyone who comments receives a DM and enters our automated lead capture funnel.

With Customers.ai, creating an Instagram comment guard to capture leads is super simple. In Customers.ai, open the panel and select “Comment guards”. Click the “Create” button to create a new Instagram comment guard. By default, comment guards work with all Instagram posts. But in this case, we only want it to work with the post above—so we’ll click the “Select Posts” button. Next, create the dialogue for your Instagram chatbot. In this case, we’ll add an “Await” widget so we can prompt people to reply with the provided response. It’s always a good idea to collect contact info so you can follow up with leads or remarket to them later. Here, we’ll add an “Ask Phone” widget and save responses to the “Phone” attribute. Then send your lead magnet. We’ll use a “Send Message” widget to send a link to the beta. We’ll also add a “Tag” widget to automatically tag people who received the link. That way we’ll know who to follow up with later.

Step 4: Leverage your existing customers and loyal followers

Finally, it’s time to leverage your customers and loyal followers. With loyalty-focused content, you can grow your audience, drive more sales, and increase customer lifetime value over the long term.

Try these ideas:

• Use Ads Manager to create a custom audience of people on your VIP customer list.
• Retarget existing customers with Instagram ads and offer upsells or cross-sells.

With a well-designed funnel, you can guide prospects along the customer journey and turn casual followers into paying customers. When you add a tool like Customers.ai to the mix, you can capture more unicorn leads and boost conversion rates automatically—so you can focus on closing done deals.

Conclusion

Ready to get more value from your marketing efforts? Get your funnel up and start building your social media sales funnel today. Learn all about Customers.ai with a spotlight on features to optimize your social media sales funnel and turn social media into a revenue driver for your business. See the new Customers.ai sales outreach automation platform. With X-Ray Website Visitor Detection and automated email and SMS outreach to help mid-market companies find their perfect customers. Request a call to learn more about sales outreach automation today! Thank You!

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I hope this guide has helped you understand how to build a social media sales funnel that sells. By implementing these strategies and tactics, you can increase your revenue and automate the lead generation and conversion process. Remember to continuously optimize your funnel and test different content types to find what works best for your target audience.