Converting at the Speed of Your Customers

There are no quick sales in social media

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

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That Sales Funnel Ain’t Gonna Fill Itself

One of the struggles that companies have always had with social media marketing is balancing the functions and sometimes even limitations of the tools, with the company’s need to drive sales and increase revenue. As I have said before, social media really doesn’t function well as a direct-sales tool. Social media definitely plays a role in the sales funnel, but it’s closer to the top than the bottom.

In our Marketing 101 class we learned about the AIDA model of consumer behavior.

A = Awareness

I = Interest

D = Desire

A = Action

We could change that a bit for the modern consumer’s purchase journey, especially with an online context:

1 – Awareness, a potential customer becomes aware of your brand

2 – Comparison and evaluation, the customer evaluates your brand, if it is a fit for their needs, and compares it to other brands to determine which is best for them

3 – Action, the customer decides to buy your product

4 – Post-purchase evaluation and service. The customer evaluates your product and if they are satisfied with the product as well as the company’s support and service for the product. This greatly influences the word of mouth that the customer will generate about the product moving forward.

So there are two key points to realize here:

1 – There is an actual customer journey prior to and even after each purchase. Every customer has different content needs based on where they are in their unique purchase journey. You need to determine how to reach the customer at each point, and create the appropriate content for them.

2 – Customers will require multiple content touch points prior to a purchase, and that takes time and effort.

A big reason why many companies start and abandon social media marketing is because they don’t fully understand the role that social media plays in the customer’s purchase journey. Since interaction with social media content happens at the top of the sales funnel for most customers (during the Awareness stage), then it’s often difficult to tie the sale back to the content that moved the customer closer to the sale. At the same time, it’s imperative for companies to continue to create that content because if not then it won’t rank as well in search engine results, which makes it more difficult for a customer to find your content to begin with.

Photo by billow926 on Unsplash

The Online Shopping Mall

From a shopping and ecommerce perspective, think of the internet as an online shopping mall. Social media is best at getting shoppers inside the mall. But you will still need a strategy to get those shoppers into YOUR store and then to buy YOUR products.

Let’s go through a hypothetical. Let’s say I have a laptop that runs hot as a firecracker after 15 mins. So hot that it’s uncomfortable, and I am doing research on what I can do to make my laptop run cooler. I google the term “Why does my laptop run so hot?”, and I come across a post on your company blog titled “Why does your laptop run so hot? Because it needs a cooling pad!”

A cooling pad? I had no idea such a device existed! But apparently it does, and your company sells it. It’s a pad that has two fans that you put under your laptop while it is running that cools the laptop down. So now that I know such a device exists, I move from the Awareness stage to the Comparison and Evaluation stage. This is where I ask my friends if they have ever used a cooling pad, and I research them online on sites like Amazon, etc.

This is where it’s very important for your company to stay connected to its customers. If your company that sells the best little cooling pad in the world has been actively engaging its happy customers, then those happy customers will now happily sell me on why I should buy a cooling pad from your company. They will be writing blog posts praising your cooling pad, and 5-star reviews on Amazon, as well as posts on Reddit. See how we are already dealing with multiple content touch points?

So I found out about your cooling pad by reading a post on your company blog. I then researched several cooling pads and your company’s happy customers told me that your company’s cooling pad was the best. So I went to Amazon and bought your cooling pad.

See the multiple touch points? I had a laptop that’s running hot, so I run to google for answers. Top result is a Reddit post that mentions your company’s cooling pad. Second result, right under it, is your blog post.

I read both. I then go to Amazon and read reviews. I like what I read, and order the product.

Here’s the thing that drives companies crazy. Even though I bought your cooling pad, and even though my purchase journey began with reading a post on your company blog about your cooling pad, it is incredibly difficult if not impossible to tie that post to the sale of a cooling pad. Which is why many companies will abandon social media marketing efforts that may actually be working, they just can’t easily track the results.

Multiple content touch points will be required to generate a sale. Typically you won’t have one blog post or Substack article that directly generates all the sales you need. You need to not only create a steady flow of customer-centric content, you also have to keep engaging the customer at every step of the purchase journey.

Also notice the role that positive feedback from OTHER CUSTOMERS played in my purchase decision. Your blog post didn’t clinch the sale on its own. It was your blog post AND the Reddit post AND the Amazon reviews.

The blog post said ‘our product is awesome, you should buy it’. The Reddit post and Amazon reviews said the same thing.

Multiple touch points. Also, this is why I stress the need to constantly engage your customers. If your company was smart, it would be pointing new customers to your Amazon reviews, maybe even wade into the waters on Reddit if you are daring.

Social Media is a Long Game

Social media has always been a long game and building awareness is the name of that game. Want an OLD skool social media case study? In 2007, Graco analyzed all online mentions of the brand and found that 68% were positive.

To increase that percentage, Graco decided to launch a blog. One year later in 2008, Graco’s online mentions were 81% positive.

Here’s the kicker: Graco found that almost 100% of the additional company mentions that happened in 2008 were positive! It worked in 2007, it still works in 2025.

That’s where social media can shine for your company: In giving your company a seat at the online conversation happening around and about your brand. It can amplify your voice, and change the tenor of that conversation into a more positive tone for your brand.

That’s it for this post. Guess who will be here on Thursday? My lovely sister

Neela 🌶️

!!! See you then!

Mack

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Backstage Pass teaches you how to better connect with your customers, readers, clients, or donors. The lessons shared here draw on my experience over the last 20 years building customer engagement strategies for companies like Adobe, Dell, Club Med, Ingersoll-Rand, and countless others. I give you real-world research, examples and tactics that show you how to create customer engagement efforts that drive real business growth.