Know how to get more likes on facebook with HiSocial. You can create all kinds of promotions such as contests, sweepstakes, coupons and more on the social media.

1. The Social Media
Conversion Funnel
By HiSocial.com

2. 1. The Concept
When approaching social media marketing, we should be aware of the processes that are used to
generate new leads and sales from the available traffic sources. To this end we will use the concept of a
conversion funnel. The conversion funnel is the process from the point at which a user first makes contact
with us, to the point at which they become a customer. This process is represented graphically below:
Let’s take a closer look at the first three stages of
the funnel:
• Discovery: This is the point at which a user first
discovers the existence of our company through a
social network. This is also where our first
challenges appear; let’s take a look at some of
them:
Image source: Seomoz.

3. 1. The Concept
o It is obvious that reaching our potential audience is vital to spreading our message. If we have no
followers on Twitter or any fans on Facebook, our message is simply not being heard.
o Even with a significant base of followers on a range of social networks, our message will have to
compete with many thousands of others. We should not be surprised then, to obtain click through
rates well below 1% for any links contained in our messages (click through rates refer to the number
of times a user clicks on a link for every 100 times it is seen). Put another way, if we have a base, for
example, of 1000 followers, and send each of them a tweet containing a link, a click through rate of
0.3%, would result in only three people following that link and reaching our site.

4. 1. The Concept
• Realization of need. This is the phase where the users that have reached our site (which, as we saw earlier,
resulted from clicks on a link contained in our messages) can find any services or products that interest
them. The problem here lies in the word “can”. If our fan base does not have the “quality” required, the
chances of sparking their interest are really very low. To do this more effectively we must tailor our
marketing strategy in the social networks towards reaching a target audience that is potentially interested
in the products we offer. We will return to this in more detail later as it is a vital aspect in our marketing
strategy.
• Consideration. To ignite the interest of our potential customer does not necessarily mean getting a
conversion. Before making a decision, the visitor will often consider other offers and proposals from our
competition. Our goal therefore, is to maximize our loyal social base so that, as far as possible, this does not
happen.

5. 2. Comparison with other traffic sources
It is beyond the scope of this article to draw comparison with every type of funnel that results from the
myriad of different traffic sources on the internet. We will instead concentrate on the traffic that comes
directly from search engines (both organic traffic, which we can enhance with SEO, and traffic resulting
from advertising, typically via the AdWords program). How does this funnel differ from the previous one?
The main difference lies in the way the traffic skips
the first two phases and instead enters the funnel
directly in the “consideration” phase. Here’s why:
when a user goes to a search engine, it is
generally for a specific reason (logically they are
there to search for something) and they already
have a need they wish to fulfill – therefore we
shouldn’t try to further convince them of this need.
If we are well positioned in the search engines, our
visitors will already have a strong predisposition to
be interested in our products – far more so than
those visitors coming from social networks.

6. 3. Shortening the funnel
The objective we must set ourselves when looking to fully maximize the success of our social media strategy,
is to cut the length of the funnel by shortening the steps leading up to the conversion phase. By doing so,
we will significantly increase our sales and/or conversion rates. In the following chapters we will see the
different methods to achieve this aim, but for now we will set out what some of our objectives here should
be:
• To reduce the discovery step by making sure our message stands out from the others and offers more
value to our followers.
• To reduce/eliminate the realization of need step by ensuring that our followers are interested in us
precisely because we offer them a solution to a need that already exists.
• To reduce/eliminate the consideration phase by ensuring that our followers find real value in our brand,
and don’t feel the need to compare us with our competition.
How to get more fans on Facebook