Welcome to The Social Smarty Show, your weekly podcast for social media marketing tips, tactics, and practical digital marketing advice. Let's get you taking real action to grow your online audience, build connections and your business. I'm your host, Jodine McIntyre. Think of me as your digital marketing coach, cheerleader and winwomen all rolled into one. Grab some of my social media marketing know-how for free at www.socialsmarty.co/freebies
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Welcome to episode number 15 of The Social smarty Show. In this episode, I will be continuing on with my thoughts around social media content. So last week I spoke about the differences between posts, Reels and Stories. Now, if you missed it, it was episode number 14. So hit pause now, jump back, have a listen. But this week, I want to have a chat about what type of content you can share for your business based on your client or your customers journey. So this episode is a little bit less technical and probably a little bit more strategic.
As always, we need to take a step back before we can move forward. So I want to have a brief chat about the idea of a marketing funnel. Now, chances are you probably already know what a basic marketing funnel is. It has a wide space at the top, which is our brand awareness. So this is all of the people that know that our business exists, and we use all kinds of marketing tactics to help as many people as possible become aware of our business.
Then the funnel narrows. Now, in the middle there is the consideration phase. So this is about getting those people who know about our business to start to think about buying from us or doing business with us. What do they need to know to make that decision? So again, we have different ways of helping their decision-making process or their consideration. We might have testimonials or reviews on our website. We might have a YouTube channel that's full of videos on how to use our products. We might have frequently asked questions on our Facebook page. But the goal in this phase is to convince people, the right people, to do business with us.
And then the funnel gets even narrower. So that little spouty looking bit at the bottom, that is our conversion phase. This is where people are actually purchasing our products or booking our services. So that funnel shape makes sense, right? So there's always going to be more people who know about our business than we have paying customers.
But here's my problem with the funnel. I don't know about you, but when I use a funnel, like, say, I'm filling the hand soap in the bathroom, everything I put in my funnel comes out the bottom. I don't put liquid hands soap in the top, a whole lot of it, and on your little bit comes out the bottom. So I don't agree that the marketing funnel is a funnel because not everyone who learns about your business is going to buy from you. So it's as simple as that. But I can't actually think of a better analogy or a better visual representation.
So it kind of reminds me of that game, I think it's called Tipping Point where you might even be on these games at the pub. I remember when I was a kid, but you put the coins in and they all feed onto this ledge and at some point some of them spill over and spill out the bottom. That's what I think of more when it comes to marketing, but I don't really think that's going to catch on. Anyway, that's not the point. Let's get back to social media content.
So when we create content for our social media channels, we need to remember that we are reaching people at each of these three different points: awareness, consideration and conversion. So some people will be seeing our posts and they will be learning about us for the very first time. Some may have been following us for a while, but they're still trying to decide if we're right for them. And then there's others we'll be reaching literally who are ready to buy. They are looking for their wallets, they're clicking through to our website, looking for our booking form, ready to do business with us.
So this means that when we create our content, we're creating three different types of content for those three phases. Now, I'm not talking about video versus images or even Reels versus Stories versus posts like last week's episode. I'm talking about the actual content of the content, what it is we're sharing, the visual and the message.
So let's start at the top of the funnel with awareness. Now, when we're creating content for people who have never heard of us before, this is all about attention grabbing. We need to hook them in so they want to know more. This is not the place to go into lots and lots of details. It's a bit of a tease. It's a tease for our target audience. What would make our target audience stop scrolling and go, "oh, what is this? This looks like it's something for me."
So video works really well for brand awareness. But think short, snappy, dynamic video like an intro to your business. And those first couple of seconds are key. Imagine your target audience is on their phone, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Oh, what's this? That's the sort of thing we need.
For some businesses that's going to be really easy. If you're in the wedding industry, for example, you're going to start the video with something obviously wedding related. You better believe when I was newly engaged, anything with a wedding dream or a wedding cake in my social media feed would have my attention. Now let's think of some other examples. If you're a coach for parents, you might have kids in the start of your video. If you, I don't know, sell outdoor equipment, you might have a video in a really cool outdoor location that your target audience would just love to explore. So you need to get a little bit creative, have a little bit of fun, but it's all about quickly grabbing that attention.
Now, on a little side note here, don't forget that social media platforms work like search engines. So when you are sharing your content, remember when you write your captions or the words that go along with that video or the image, make sure you include all types of search terms that your target audience could be searching. So, for example, if you're a wedding venue, you might want to include your location. So break it down by suburb, region and country. Then you might include words like wedding venue, reception, ceremony. For Instagram, and TikTok these can just be hashtags. So if it doesn't make sense to include all those words in your caption, just make sure you include them as hashtags. Cool.
Let's move on to the consideration phase. So these are people who know that your business exists, but they're still weighing up whether or not to do business with you. So we need to help them with that decision making process. So we have two goals here with our content. Number one is to break down any barriers to purchase. And number two is to help your potential client or customer kind of see what their life would be like when they have purchased your product or service.
So to break down those barriers, we're going to do things like sharing, testimonials and reviews. We want to build up that trust these people. They want to see examples of when you have done business with others, when others have purchased from your book your services and want to see how well it went for them. So if it went well for them, it could go well for these people as well. Hopefully I'm making sense. We call that social proof, but it's just about showing that people do business with you and that you're trustworthy and you can be trusted.
Now, we can also go into much more detail when we're in that consideration phase. So we can do things like breaking down all the features of your products. We can demonstrate exactly how your products work, what it's like to work with you if you're a service based business, how seamlessly one of your products can fit into someone's life, all these sorts of things.
Now, for service based businesses, we want to see a transformation. So maybe one of your clients has achieved some really great outcomes from working with you. That's what you want to demonstrate in your content. Now think of that classic infomercial with the really over the top like before and after photos. "You could have rock hard abs of steel too". Maybe not quite as aggressive. But our goal is to build trust and reduce the barriers to purchasing from you or doing business with you.
So now we move into the conversion phase. Now, this is the content we're creating for those who are ready to go. They know you, they trust you, they just need you to lead them onto that last step, that very last step of the journey to purchasing with you. Now, there's a bit of a crossover here between our content in the consideration phase and the conversion phase. Now, especially if what you're offering is really low cost or really unique or innovative, sometimes people can make that jump really quickly. But the easiest conversion content we can create is like a little sweetener, that special, irresistible offer. So it could be a discount. It could be an offer of a free trial. It could be the offer of a bonus: book a session with me this month and you'll get access to my group coaching call, for example. It could be free shipping. Don't underestimate the power of free shipping to move someone from consideration to purchase. It could be the offer of a 30 minutes obligation free chat with you to see if you are the right coach or consultant or service provider for them.
Now, another way to move people from consideration to conversion is to use User Generated Content or UGC. Now, this is content that your existing customers or clients have created, that you share. So this really shows your audience, like an unbiased experience of your product or your service. Well, it's almost unbiased because you're not exactly going to share content unless it's positive, right? But it can be really powerful seeing someone else with that product or service that you're keen on and you think, oh yes, I want it too - that could be me.
Now, of course, my job is to help you simplify your social media marketing. So if you do need a simple guide for planning out your content, I have created an easy to follow framework with a free planner that you can grab from www.socialsmarty.co/planner go and grab a copy. And as always, come and find me on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook if you have any questions or comments, you'll find me at @socialsmarty.co and if you do have a minute to leave me a review on whatever podcast app you are listening to this episode on right now. That would be amazing.
Until next week, stay social.
