One thing that a lot of businesses forget about social media marketing, is that it’s SOCIAL.

Yes, that’s right. People actually go on there to be social. Not to see ads or buy something, but rather to chat with their family and friends.

So if you just go on their to vomit on them about what a great service or product you have, they’re most likely going to simply ignore you.

The average consumer is exposed to around 5000 ads per day.

Let’s say that you’re a Buddhist monk, with a superhuman level of mental control and were able to block out 50% of that messaging.

That means yesterday you saw about 2500 ads.

Name 5.

That’s right, just 5 and don’t cheat.

Don’t just name ads you remember seeing at some point. Name 5 ads you saw yesterday.

(I’ve asked this question to a few hundred business owners and I’ve only had a handful that could do it and I’m convinced that most of them were because they simply refused to not be able to answer.)

One of the ways to overcome the noise you’re competing with, is to make sure that you respond to everyone that engages with your brand online.

Don’t treat your online profile like a billboard. Provide value, engage, help educate your customers and you will be well rewarded with lower marketing cost and increased conversion rates.

Pro Tip: The key is to be top of mind when the person is ready to make their purchase.

The anatomy of effective digital marketing.

Effective digital marketing will lower the cost of customer acquisition while simultaneously increasing both the immediate and lifetime value of your customers.

This isn’t achieved by one ad.

Effective digital marketing understands that the customer journey is broken into pieces and moves customers seamlessly from one phase of that journey to the other.

This journey starts with awareness, then into analysis, conversion, and then through the retention and ascension phases.

The first part of this funnel is the awareness stage.

This is when you are first reaching out and making people aware of you, your brand, and what you offer. This is also the time when it’s easiest to segment your audience into their specific interests.

I don’t care what your business is, not all your customers are going to be interested in all your products or services.

By segmenting your new prospects immediately, it allows you to speak to each of them regarding what they are most interested in.

Pro Tip: Segmenting also allows you to easily discern which services or funnels convert best and troubleshoot the ones that don’t.

After the awareness phase comes the engagement phase.

This is the phase where your new prospect is aware of you, aware of what you have to offer, and is deciding on whether they want to purchase now and whether they want to purchase from you.

This is the juncture where you are attempting to provide enough of the right type of value to initially acquire the customer.

Conversion rates at the end of the funnel tend to be significantly higher when you start by offering the potential client, some type of specific value in exchange for their contact information. 

In the subscription phase the client is usually given this “Lead Magnet” in exchange for their email address which then allows you to market to them for free via email for as long as the remain on your list. This can also be achieved through subscription to social channels.

Pro Tip: The key to a well converting lead magnet is that it must offer a specific solution to a unique problem or challenge. It must be easily consumable 5 -15 minutes and be congruent with the offers in the funnel, especially your core offer!

After the lead has made it through the awareness stage and has taken the lead magnet, the next phase is the conversion phase.

There are several ways this can be done but I strongly recommend that the initial conversion be an offer with the lowest possible barrier to entry. 

What we refer to as a “Quick Conversion”  product.

This can be combined with the lead magnet offer as an up sell or delivered later in the follow-up email series. Either way this product should be under $50 (depending on the industry) and it should be an over sized value for the potential client.

In other words the quick conversion offer, should really be a great deal!

The other thing to consider with your quick conversion offer, is that it must really lead in to your core offer. It should basically usher the customer right into a purchase of your core offer. 

Once the customer has purchased the your quick conversion offer, take advantage of the opportunity to excite them about your brand. Communicate with them the best ways to utilize their recent purchase and share with them previous testimonials.

This type of follow up will leads nicely into your core offer and will dramatically improve your conversion rates. 

Pro Tip: By combining the quick conversion offer with an up sell to the core offer and even potentially another high margin product can significantly increase both your conversions to the core and value maximizer products, but can also significantly increase the immediate and lifetime value of each customer.

Now if there is a phase in the process that I have seen business owners neglect the most, it would be the retention and ascension phase.

Your core offer purchases should have the same follow up leading into the value maximizer offer which increases the overall profit margin of your entire funnel. 

In Closing

Digital marketing offers an amazing opportunity for local businesses that has never been seen before. The ability to really reach your customers and compete with big box stores without having millions of dollars into advertising but there is a catch.

YOU HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT!

You can’t just vomit all over the audience and expect to make sales. At least not many.

Today’s audience is over saturated with marketing messages and has become also blind to it. But if you know how to properly structure and execute your digital marketing strategy, there’s never been a more cost effective or higher producing form of marketing ever before in history.