Using Your Instagram ProfileTo Boost Every Stage Of Your Sales Funnel
Social media, including Instagram, has become an essential tool in digital marketing. Many brands take advantage of digital influencers’ authority to generate sales and build awareness.
But not many brands use their own Instagram profile as an effective channel for the customers’ journey. Building up a sales funnel can be time-consuming, so the faster option is to use influencers’ already existing authority for it.
However, utilizing your Instagram profile as an integral part of the sales funnel can be extremely profitable in long term, generating sales without the need for further investments in others’ authority.
So how you could use your Instagram as a channel to build an effective sales funnel?
First things, first!
Let’s understand a bit about the concept of the sales funnel.
What’s a Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel is one of the marketing models adopted by many marketing professionals. It’s a visual representation of customers’ purchase decisions and how they move towards them.
The Principle of a Sales Funnel
In short, the main idea of the sales funnel is understanding which stage of the funnel the customer is and provide relevant information with the goal to move them towards the conversion (bottom of the funnel).
The simplest sales funnel is formed by three main stages:
The Sales Funnel Stages
Awareness (top of the funnel — ToFu)
Customers are introduced to your product or service. They get to know your product or service exists.
Interest (middle of the funnel — MiFu)
Customers are “interested” in your product or service, they might be curious to look for more information.
Decision
This stage is related to the Interest Stage. If curious enough, your customers will start evaluating and comparing their options before actually making their decision.
Action (bottom of the funnel — BoFu)
This is the time where your customer actually decided to transact.
Beyond the Funnel
Another way of visualizing the funnel would be using the idea of an hourglass model, once the sales shouldn’t finish after they adding their credit card for payment.
Social media can definitely give you a big help at boosting each stage.
Using Instagram to Boost The Stages of Your Sales Funnel
Top of the Funnel: create Instagram stories that leverage relevant clicks
Tip: This stage is where most of your efforts should be concentrated.
Since Instagram permitted clickable links to be included within the Stories feature, Instagram Stories has become a more effective marketing channel.
The “swipe-up” links in your Instagram Stories can generate direct traffic to your website — and if done correctly, this traffic can be highly converting.
Not every brand profile has access to the “Swipe-up” feature as it requires:
- Being a verified account.
- Minimum of 10.000 followers
DO’s:
- Use your stories to build awareness.
- Use the “Swipe-up” feature if you have access to it.
- Highlight your Stories on your brand profile strategically.
- Use engaging and creative ideas to move your customer to the next stage.
DON’Ts
- Push your customers to buy your product, careful with being too “salesy” (the easiest way to lose followers).
At this stage, customers need to know that there’s a solution for their problem and you are the one who can solve it. Remember to talk about your product, but not pushing it.
If you’re looking for ideas for your content, take a look at tools like AnswerThePublic, to brainstorm ideas. Also, remember that sometimes your customers don’t know they have a problem (until you tell them).
Using this tool will allow you to visualize exactly what prospects are searching for about a certain topic. Take this chance to answer them in your Instagram Stories or other marketing channels.
Middle of the Funnel: use Instagram to build trust and credibility
Customers have been introduced to your service/product by now. At this stage, they have a great potential to conversion and want to know more about your product or service, but they are not fully motivated to make their decision yet.
It’s important to build trust among your audience so then they can move on toward the next stage.
Tip: You might convince people to buy what you sell if they desire what you sell.
Your customers will decide if they should give a chance to your product or service, or leave.
DO’s:
- Use social proof to build trust around your brand.
- Incentive product reviews, post comments and share them strategically on your stories highlights.
- Reply to users’ comments or reviews on your posts.
- Repost other users’ posts with your product or testimonial about services.
- Provide supportive information to motivate customers to move to the bottom of the funnel (guarantee, delivery time, FAQs, etc.)
- Have a sense of your competition and what’s your business differential.
DON’Ts
- Worry about slightly negative reviews on posts — a healthy ratio of reviews can bring authenticity to your product or service (people might not trust 5 out 5 stars reviews).
Make the most out of user-generated content:
- Ask questions.
- Repost users’ content about your product/service.
- Share reviews and testimonials, etc.
If you’re a service provider: Be human and authentic, don’t be another brand in the Instagram ocean by simply copying others. Be transparent with your clients and lose your fear of speaking to the camera!
If you’re a product-based business: If you sell makeup don’t go pitching about home furniture. Stay in your position. You want to be an authority in makeup so position your brand profile like it. Of course, you might touch cross-category strategically.
Bottom of the Funnel: motivate users to act and bring them back
This stage would be a natural result, once the previous stages were met.
Before clicking on “checkout”, your prospects might still need an extra push to make sure they’re making the right decision.
How many times you have added products but abandoned the shopping cart on the checkout? We don’t want that.
Remember: there will always be a certain number of users who you will simply not convince them to transact even though you have done everything right — mostly because they just can’t afford it. So don’t freak out!
DO’s:
- Reinforce the key features and differential points of your product or service.
- Understand what final information your visitor needs to make a decision.
- Use psychological biases to push your visitor — like scarcity.
DON’Ts
I will tell you the best way of losing the follower and customer for good:
- Shipping costs never mentioned before, form submission errors, payment options not existent, upselling in the cart, or any extra cost not mentioned before.
This is not the moment to “surprise” your prospect. Avoid at all costs.
It’s important to note a few differences between product-based businesses and service providers when it comes to this stage:
If you’re a product seller: people want practical information, customer reviews, size, features, etc. (tangible information)
If you’re a service provider: this is unique to the people selling, it moves towards psychological and emotional sales (skills, aesthetics, expertise, etc.)
Retargeting on Instagram — “Bring My Prospects Back”
If you’ve noticed, Instagram and Facebook will send you advertisements from pages or brands that you’ve recently interacted with. It’s retargeting!
Facebook (now Instagram owner) allows businesses to target people who have recently taken some action on their website.
In other words, you’ll specifically target customers who abandoned their shopping carts without completing their purchase. This is exactly how Instagram can boost your revenue and generate more action at the bottom of the sales funnel.
Retargeting on Your Website
Many business owners are unaware that retargeting can be used on their own websites — that is, you can send direct calls-to-action and sell to customers who have already visited your site (i.e. returning traffic) as well as provide tailored ads to users who are visiting you from Instagram.
For example: You might set up a campaign to offer customized offers to users coming from Instagram, even though they left their shopping cart and later they returned to your site (the extra push they needed to make their decision)
Facebook and Instagram can be powerful marketing tools when integrated into an overall digital marketing strategy.
It’s good to note that social media shouldn’t be the only channel to build an effective sales funnel, but it’s definitely a great complement to the funnel and marketing arsenal.
This article was originally posted on iStamm
