Using The Marketing Funnel for Social Media

all potential customers work through a process that starts with becoming aware of a need and ends with making a decision to purchase or not to purchase at any moment in time you have potential customers considering your company within the various stages of the decision process they may be learning about you for the very first time or comparing your products to another company's or telling their bassir wife why they should or shouldn't buy from you it's important to build content that communicates with these prospective customers no matter where they are in their decision journey with your company today we're going to discuss the universal marketing final understanding this will help you create purposeful content that will satisfy your customers and each day regardless of what he repeated beer b two c company or whether he sells something complex or something come out of time sd at some point your customers will work through these universal stages of the marketing final the first ages awareness this is the stage in which your potential customer becomes aware that your company exists you need to create content your target audience will find interesting before they're in market for what he saw for example if your car dealer you might want to create blog articles or videos around how to win arise a vehicle this type of content would only be of interest to car owners would make the tential customers are aware that your company exists pest control companies could create content about things homeowners can do on their own to fight off pesky insects accounting software companies to do a video series on ways to cut costs in the office by creating this type of content you're exposing your business to potential customers while leading with value thirty to forty percent of the content you create should be in the awareness stage the next ages the evaluation stage this is a stage when your potential customer is in the market for what you're selling in the stage they're formulating a buying criteria and learning about and evaluating all the features available to them from you and your competitors if i'm planning to take my family on a beach vacation in florida i would love to read and watch content about things to do in the various beach towns or the best beaches to watch the sunset or what locations are best to see dolphins swimming offshore for a car dealer an evaluation peace might be to discuss the pros and cons of hybrid verses gas-powered engines for an accounting software company evaluation piece could be the pros and cons of cloud base verses desktop software at this stage we are beginning to train our customers to buy from us by educating them on the value that they will receive from the features that you offer like the awareness stage thirty to forty percent of your content should be about helping customers evaluate your offering the final stages the decisions date now that your potential customers know what they want they have to make a decision about where to buy it they're asking themselves why should i buy from you this is the stage when your new in unique selling proposition really come into play creating content around them will advocate your potential customers a why they should buy from you and nobody else decision based content should represent only about twenty percent and no more than thirty percent of your content too much bragging will turn off customers who are in the wariness or a valuation stage the decision stages where you have the opportunity to structure stuff and tell stories about how much of value you delivered to others who've already enjoyed your product or service most business owners want to create mainly decision stage content however providing content within all three stages is extremely valuable by doing this you are exposing your business to a much bigger audience as you can see in this final graphic the decision stage is smaller than all the others a company could be missing out on sixty to eighty percent of their potential customers if they only focus on the stage additionally customers who find you once again into the decision stage are pretty set in what they want you won't have much opportunity to sway them towards your features and benefits unless you are not perfectly with their buying criteria that you won't make the sale however if they find you earlier in the process you have the opportunity to educate them on why the features and benefits and you offer are a perfect fit for them you can never predict where your customers are in the buying process they may be starting the research or they could be ready to buy therefore it's important to write content that fits in each area of the universal marketing final this way he'll be speaking to all customers at all levels this will ensure you maximize your exposure and social media