Your Business Funnel

Whether you design, monitor, and maintain your marketing, website and social media yourself or someone does it for you, it's important to monitor how the process is working for you and your business. You likely had a goal in mind when you set up the process (ie: We want x number of subscribers by this date, we want to increase client satisfaction by x% by this date, or we want to increase referrals by x% or x#, etc...). When you set that goal, you should have had known how you were going to measure the results. Social media is just like any other sustainable project. Yes, there will be changes along the way, but knowing where your going and how you're going to get there is the key to a truly successful program.

We encourage our clients to think about social media as a funnel. Your Twitter account should not be at the base of the funnel, your Twitter account should give customers/clients and potential customers/clients a preview of your offerings and should drive them somewhere else. Only you can determine where that somewhere else is, but below is an example to give you an idea of a social media funnel.

What this funnel shows if the various ways that a particular company drives interest in their company. Their YouTube videos contain information or links to their company website, their Twitter posts may link to an article, but ultimately they are driving potential customers/clients to their company website. Just driving someone to your Twitter account isn't going to give them enough information about your business to keep their interest. Make sure that posts are keeping this in mind. It's okay to encourage 1,000 facebook "likes", but once they are 'liking' you, it's important to provide them with value added information that takes them the step further to your website. I can "like" Menards, but if I never step foot in the store, I'm not a customer and therefore not creating revenue.

You or someone in your organization (or contracted by the organization) needs to track the traffic at the base of the funnel. It's not important how many Twitter followers you have, or how many Facebook "likers", it's important how many people are checking out what it is you want to check out. In the example above, they are driving people to their company website. So, using the analytics behind the scenes on their website gives the company a good idea of what referral source is giving them the biggest 'bang' for their buck (see below)

Referrer Types	Visits	Percentage
Direct Traffic	337	56.90%
Social Network	128	21.60%
External URL	67	11.30%
Search Engine	58	9.80%
News Message	2	0.30%

Then they can dig one step further and analyze which types of social media are working hardest for them.

Social Network	Visits	Percentage
Facebook	115	90%
Linkedin	10	8%
Twitter	3	2%

In this particular example, the focus should not be on Tweeting, it should be on improving the number of people they are reaching on Facebook. They may not want to discount Twitter completely, but may want to analyze what they are Tweeting, are they using hashtags? is their information interesting? They should ask others for advice, see what's trending, etc... and make their decision from there.

It's never a good idea in marketing to continue blindly - make sure you have a schedule to analyze what is and isn't working and ask for fresh and edgy ideas to stay ahead of the competition. Things move fast in this technological world and being prepared is important, but being creative and opportunistic is even more important!

If you have any questions or aren't sure about any of the information contained in this post, let us know and we would be glad to clarify.

Sincerely,
Relax Consulting - where we do the work so you can RELAX!