We talk about funnels all the time, but do you know what a social marketing funnel is or how to leverage it for your direct sales business?
Listen to this episode to learn the about the foundation of a social marketing funnel and how it can help expand your business organically (and without being spammy).
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Understanding the Social Marketing Funnel in Direct Sales
The goal: build your marketing plan in an authentic way that draws people towards you with an attraction-based model and instead of burning out your warm network, burning out your friends and family so they are like “oh my god stop posting about your business,” we do it in a much more authentic way that they say “I want to see what you're gonna post next because it's funny and entertaining and engaging.”
So here's what we're talking about we get started with understanding funnels. When you are attracting someone toward you, okay? I want you to really envision that you are creating a little breadcrumb trail. You're trying to attract the squirrel and not scare the squirrel away, okay? So we're gonna create a little breadcrumb trail and that breadcrumb trail is your value offering. If we came out heavy and started yelling at the squirrel started trying to sell stuff to the squirrel, the squirrel would be running away, right?
On social media, what that looks like is we have our friends unfollow us and eyeroll and block and…we do all these things that are spammy and people hate it because fundamentally, fundamentally you guys, people come to social media for three reasons and three reasons only: entertainment — funny, interesting, entertainment value — relationships — we want to see what our best friends are doing, maybe a little light stalking (we've all done it, don't be lying, you know you've done it) — and then utility — we have a question, we're asking our friends for an answer.
We have to put content out there that is continually serving those values: entertainment, relationships, and utility. And then when people are like, “yeah you're actually providing me value, you're helping me in some way,” we draw them into our funnel. We start to create that breadcrumb trail and they say, “well what are you gonna post next?“
Eighty percent of our content should be non-promotional content. That means we have to earn the right to sell something to our audience. We have to earn their trust and their loyalty. We have to earn the right to sell to our audience.
Now this is sort of upside down to what a lot of direct sellers do where they post all business, all product, all spam “join my team – buy my stuff – host a party,” and then they wonder why they have no market left to sell to.
It's because they're not thinking about the funnel. Think of, literally, guiding people in to the big end on value. Think of a kitchen funnel, a plastic funnel. And you guide people in, and then some of those people are going to draw forward based on the continued value of what you're offering. So we have to attract them to get their attention, to pull them into our funnel, to pull them forward to where we can ultimately have the relationship.
But they have to come to us on their own — that's attraction-based value.
So, when we think about marketing in this method, it applies on every single level. It applies to how you sell, how you solicit for bookings and hostesses, how you sponsor, how you draw people into your Facebook group, how you get people from Instagram to follow you to Facebook, it works everywhere. It's fundamentally built on the idea of leading with value.
So what you need to think about is well what value am I providing? Is it information? Is it entertainment? Is it relationships? Is it social? Is a community? Is it samples? Is it financial benefit? Is it discounts for my product, for example? What's the value that I'm offering to someone? What's the first breadcrumb that's gonna get that squirrel to walk forward to me.
And where people end up making the very, very first mistake is they don't lead with value, and then they have people going “oh my god she's so spammy…” They're not trying to be spammy. It's because they lead with promotion instead of value.
So our goal is we start with a value offering, and we pull people forward because then we've built the relationship of doing business with our friends that we know, like, and trust. And the bigger your community, the bigger your friends circle, the bigger your value circle, the more people you have potentially to do business with, and then become referable.
So, what that — we're going to talk about this whole month here on the page in these little sound bites and tips, little video tips with me, we're gonna be talking about value and how we apply this in a direct sales business model. What does this look like in your marketing plan?
Because when you're building a marketing plan, marketing is truly offering value, getting people's attention, and building your funnel before you offer the promotional outcome. Before you offer this sale.
That's sort of upside down to what a lot of brands teach and how people think about this process.
#EmpowerSocial
