Social Media Funnel | Buying Funnel | Online Sales Funnel

According to Google, “social media funnel” may be a new term that I am contributing to the social media lexicon.

I coined the term, social media funnel, to describe how social media can be incorporated into the buying funnel. Note that I am deliberately pairing social media with the buying funnel because both social media and the buying funnel concepts are pull models.

As a creative consultant, my interest lies in determining which tactics are best suited to moving a prospect from Awareness of the Problem, to Identifying Alternatives, to the Decision to Purchase to what is perhaps the most important stage to influence, Post-Purchase Evaluation and Recommendation.

Just to be clear – which may or may not make you nod your head – I do not harbor any illusions that social media is the solution to every problem.

Nor do I subscribe to the popular notion that mass media is no longer relevant.

While the enthusiasm is understandable, we’ve seen it all before – at least enough to know that social media is not a one-size-fits-all panacea anymore then television advertising is.

As used here, social media is an umbrella for a range of techniques not a religion. Some of the techniques are well suited to marketing, or to selling goods and services which is why it is important to match the right technique to the right step in the funnel.

Other techniques are not; one reason that people struggle to demonstrate ROI where in some cases there is none.

I believe that in both B2B and B2C we will see more and more exciting examples of how social media pull, integrated with one or more traditional push tools such as advertising, public relations, trade press, tradeshows and sponsorship; will be used to create a richer, more compelling buying experience.

I will be discussing what I learn and see here on a regular basis. I hope that you will participate in the discussion.

How are you using social media to convert awareness to loyalty?