- Where Brand Awareness Fits
- Hands-On Exercise: Aligning the Funnel with Communications
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Hands-On Exercise: Aligning the Funnel with Communications
The communication that prospects and customers receive through the funnel is important. If the communications you are using today will not facilitate a deeper relationship with social media contacts, adjust them so they don’t kill the relationship. This exercise evaluates your communications campaigns at each stage of the funnel (see Figure 2.2).
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Figure 2.2. Sales funnel communications worksheet
Activity 1: Chart Existing Communications
Next to each stage in the funnel, write the existing communications that a social media contact could receive. This should include any form of communication that goes directly to the social media contact, including emails, phone calls, direct mail, and any other product your team uses. You want to understand every potential touch to see whether it is relationship-building or relationship-killing for those who came through social media.
Activity 2: Identify Communications Pieces That Don’t Work With Contacts Who Touched the Social Media Channel
Do any communications make you cringe when you think about a social media contact receiving it? Are any communications designed for people who might not be interested in your products or service yet? Are some communications designed to keep your company top of mind without being overly pushy toward a sale? If there is anything you see on this list that makes you uncomfortable, think about how it could be adjusted to solve the problem. You might need to create new communications pieces, or you might need to apply a few simple tweaks to make something more appropriate.
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Activity 3: Determine Metrics to Evaluate Where People Fall Out of the Funnel
Now that you have an idea of how existing communication channels align with social media, you need to understand how to evaluate whether the existing communications are helping or hurting the relationship. Use the following table to think about the metrics you could monitor to determine where people are falling out of the funnel. Here are some ideas to help get you started.
- Email Campaigns: # of Unsubscribes, # of Opens, # of Clicks
If you notice that social media contacts are unsubscribing at a higher rate, stop opening the emails at a certain point, or even stop clicking on links, it is a good sign that they are falling out of the funnel. Communication needs to be adjusted.
- Sales Phone Calls: # of Follow-Ups Created, # of Sales
If calls from the sales team aren’t resulting in follow-up opportunities or generating sales, it is likely that these calls are not helping to deepen the relationship. These calls might be happening too early in the buying process for the social media lead.
Do you have a mechanism to collect these metrics easily? Can you isolate the social media group from the rest of the population? If not, it’s okay. This book reviews how to overcome the barriers later, but it’s important to recognize early the areas where the gaps exist.