Sales funnels — we love to hate them and hate to love them.
From measuring marketing KPIs to analyzing user behavior, there’s a lot to keep in mind when planning a sales funnel.
You might get preoccupied with tough questions like:
- What stages should I include in my sales funnel?
- Do I need a funnel matrix?
- How can I optimize each stage in the funnel?
- How can I cater to leads who jump back and forth between stages?
But don’t forget about integrating social media data into your funnel — it can be a powerful sales tool. If you’re currently using a sales funnel to boost conversions, but you haven’t tapped into the power of social media data yet, then you’re in the right place.
In today’s article, we’re revealing how social media data can support your sales funnel. We’re also walking you through how to integrate social media data into your sales funnel, step-by-step.
Ready?
Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
- How can social media data support my sales funnel?
- 1. Map out your current sales funnel
- 2. Identify gaps in the funnel
- 3. Gather and analyze social media data
- 4. Brainstorm ways to integrate the data into your sales funnel
- 5. Test your ideas
- 6. Finalize your ideas
- 7. Map out your updated sales funnel
- Wrap up
How can social media data support my sales funnel?
With 3.6 billion social media users worldwide — and counting — many of your customers and your target audience are already on social media.
If you’re currently taking advantage of social media marketing, you can use the insights you’ve gathered to level up your sales funnel. But if you’re not taking advantage of social media marketing, you could be missing out on insights that can help you grow your business.
Why?
Because social media data gives you a closer look into your audience’s needs, likes, wants, behavior, and pain points. It’s essentially advanced user behavior data you can use to fill in any gaps in your funnel that aren’t personalized to your ideal customer.
Bottom line? Whether you have a traditional sales funnel, an upside-down funnel, or a circular funnel, you can integrate social media data into it to reach your audience in a personalized way.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s explore exactly how to integrate social media data into your sales funnel.
1. Map out your current sales funnel
The first step to integrating social media throughout your sales funnel is to simply map out your current funnel.
To illustrate this in an easy-to-understand way, create a diagram.
On the left side of your diagram, include your sales funnel. And on the right side of your diagram, include your sales pipeline activities.
Here’s an example:
Next, ask yourself if your current sales funnel is serving your sales and marketing goals. If your funnel hardly ever helps you hit your goals, it’s time to design a new one. If your funnel does a pretty good job, but you know there’s potential for more, keep your current funnel and proceed to the next steps.
2. Identify gaps in the funnel
In this step, peel back the layers of your funnel. Take a hard look at each stage in the funnel, the corresponding sales pipeline activities, and your marketing goals.
Then, run through the following checklist to identify gaps in the funnel:
- What’s currently not working well in your funnel?
- Which stages in the funnel are prospects having a hard time navigating through?
- Which sales pipeline activities are a poor use of company time?
- Which sales pipeline activities could be improved?
- What potential audience pain points do you notice?
- What specific goals are not being met?
- Are you distributing messages through the wrong channels?
- Are there any poor responses or lack of engagement?
- Are you targeting the right customers? How does your average cart value or deal size compare to industry benchmarks?
- Is your messaging in line with your audience’s needs and preferred communication style?
If you notice any gaps, be sure to note where these gaps exist throughout the funnel. Then, take this exercise one step further by considering an idea or potential solution for each gap using social media data.
Of course, the best approach to do this isn’t to rely on guesswork, but to rely on usable data.
3. Gather and analyze social media data
In the third step, start by making a list of the various social media marketing channels you’re currently using.
For instance:
- Stories
- Facebook ads
- Instagram ads
- Pinterest ads
- Live videos
- Lead generation cards
Next, gather and analyze the corresponding data from each channel.
When analyzing the data, connect with it, understand it. Look for patterns that can help you improve your funnel. Be sure to also look for pain points, successes, and positive and negative campaign results. You’ll also need to measure your KPIs to highlight what’s working best and what needs improvement.
See what social media users are saying about your brand. Do you notice any positive brand mentions or visuals you can use later?
To take this one step further, consider hiring a dedicated team to help monitor social media analytics for you. If you don’t want to deal with hiring, insurance, and taxes, consider working with a PEO company so you can focus on improving your sales and marketing.
Having a dedicated social media analytics team can help you make the most of your data. You want to use the data you’ve analyzed to single out goals for each social media channel. When doing this, try to make it as relative to the buyer’s journey as possible, so you can understand which insights to integrate and where.
For instance, if your top three goals are awareness, consideration, and decision, then your allocations might look like this:
- Stories → Awareness
- Facebook ads → Decision
- Instagram ads → Decision
- Pinterest ads → Decision
- Live videos → Consideration
- Lead generation cards → Consideration
4. Brainstorm ways to integrate the data into your sales funnel
If you’ve made it this far, pat yourself on the back because you’ve done some substantial work.
However, you’re not done just yet.
In this step, refer to the data you analyzed in the previous step and brainstorm ways to integrate it into your sales funnel, and streamline processes from marketing to sales.
When brainstorming ideas, make sure they sound realistic, relevant, and tailored to your audience.
For instance, if you are a popular kid’s debit card company, you may be able to incentivize mommy bloggers to share their reviews of your product on social media. By using a social listening tool to analyze your audience and identify potential influencers, you can integrate an affiliate program into your sales funnel to give a major boost to your social media marketing strategy.
Be sure to also monitor the goals you chose in the previous step.
For instance, if you want to use Stories to drive awareness, what specific ways can you integrate them into the awareness stage of the sales funnel? Can you run irresistible contests? Can you share Reels that highlight audience pain points and offer a solution?
You can create a visual representation of your findings to help you analyze even further and even add some image effects or graphic elements to create a report for later reference.
Dig deep to uncover strategies you can use to connect with your audience in a profound way.
5. Test your ideas
At this point, you should have a concrete list of ideas based on the data you analyzed and the goals you created in alignment with the buyer’s journey.
Next, take some time to test your ideas before finalizing your funnel. Doing so can help you make sure you don’t focus on activities that won’t help you achieve your goals.
A great idea usually starts with a test to see if post concepts are effective. You can try a variety of different content like running contests or starting a video campaign.
When testing your ideas, include variations to spot which specific details audience members gravitate to most — A/B testing is an effective method to use here. For example, HelloRache provides virtual assistant services to healthcare businesses, and you could test whether a piece works better for medical or dental professionals.
You can also conduct polls, questionnaires, and surveys to see which ideas audience members connect with most.
Take testing one step further by personally interviewing your target audience or by hiring a focus group to help you test each idea.
Continual testing is the only way to drive engagement and build an audience in a noisy social landscape. You won’t see positive social media ROI without it. And as a bonus, you never know which test post might bring in a batch of warm leads.
6. Finalize your ideas
In this step, take a look at the ideas that made the cut during testing — and finalize your list.
Here’s an example of what your finalized list might look like:
- Contests in Stories
- Questionnaires in Stories
- Pinterest posts focused on product demos
- Facebook ads focused on testimonials and customer stories
- Instagram ads focused on sharing concrete numbers and stats
- Lead magnets that focus on gaining webinar attendees
- Reels that focus on delivering value/teaching the audience something
Next, decide where and how each idea on your list should integrate into the sales funnel.
For instance, did you test a campaign in the awareness stage but later realized it worked better in the consideration stage? Be sure to integrate that idea into the consideration stage of your sales funnel.
Did you get a poor response when you tested live videos but a positive response when you tested scheduled webinars? Swap live videos for webinars and integrate them into the consideration stage, too.
Here’s an example of how your finalized list might look given the examples above:
1. Awareness
- Contests in Stories
- Questionnaires in Stories
2. Consideration
- Lead generation cards that focus on gaining webinar attendees
- Reels that focused on delivering value/teaching the audience something
3. Decision
- Pinterest posts focused on product demos
- Facebook ads focused on testimonials and customer stories
- Instagram ads focus on sharing concrete numbers and stats
7. Map out your updated sales funnel
And finally, it’s time to map out your new funnel.
Refer to the list you created in step six to create a new, professional diagram that includes:
- Your funnel stages
- The associated social media channels
- Which metrics you’ll be tracking to make sure you hit your goals
Here’s an example of a sales funnel that integrates social media effectively:
Next, train your team on your new funnel and divvy out assignments so they can help make your new funnel live.
We also recommend automating as much of the funnel as you can, without sacrificing quality and audience engagement, of course.
Need a diagram template to complete this step? Grab a free one from Canva, here.
Wrap up
Congratulations, you’ve officially created your new sales funnel based on valuable social media data.
That wasn’t so bad, was it?
For good measure, here’s a quick recap of the steps we covered in today’s article:
- 1. Map out your current sales funnel
- 2. Identify gaps in the funnel
- 3. Gather and analyze social media data
- 4. Brainstorm ways to integrate the data into your sales funnel
- 5. Test your ideas
- 6. Finalize your ideas
- 7. Map out your updated sales funnel
And that’s it!
Looking to simplify your social publishing activities? Then Publer.io can help your team, plan & collaborate, prioritize, and grow a solid social media marketing strategy with our intuitive tools.
Ervin Kalemi
