The Social Marketing & Sales Funnel

Social marketing does some interesting things to what we traditionally think of as the marketing funnel. You know - the one where we generate a lot of content and events, then keep pushing more content in front of people until we finally sic sales people on the lead.  It has led to some fairly dysfunctional behavior - both inside organizations and with leads.  A game of cat and mouse ensues until someone gives up. Exhausting. And expensive.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Content and social marketing has given us another option - one which, frankly, I'm pretty relieved to see. In this scenario we also produce a lot of content but in more formats, often in smaller pieces (although not exclusively), and we do it much more frequently. The majority of that content gets openly published for all to see.  Prospective customers can lurk and lurk without being noticed - and engage in the way and amount they want, when they are ready. It doesn't mean we abandon email marketing and other things but the focus is on pushing content out that provides some value vs. banging on the 'buy now' drum.

This creates a pretty dramatic change to the width and the length of the marketing and sales funnel:

1. All the world's a stage. Leads are everywhere but they may be close to impossible to track.
2. Not tracking unqualified leads is a good thing: It is expensive and there is such a high percentage of them that are not interested or ready to become customers that companies typically waste a lot of time, energy, and money trying to convert them. 
3. Without tracking early leads, the marketing organization has to wait for leads to emerge and declare themselves. This will drive them crazy... but reduce overall costs. It requires a very different mindset and over time the amount of content vs. leads will be relatively consistent but... it requires giving up control of knowing exactly who will emerge and when.
4. Because you are giving leads more control over when and how they engage, the effectiveness of each conversation is higher because they are ready and interested - i.e. the holy grail - they are engaged.
5. Because in many cases (this is not true of all products) prospects can get the majority of what they need to make a purchasing decision without a conversation, when they do reveal themselves time to close can happen extremely quickly.
6. A much higher percentage of leads that contact you proactively are ready to buy. This clarity is refreshing and efficient. And wonderfully cost effective.
7. You don't end up convincing someone they need your product only to find out after the sale that it doesn't really work for them or they aren't ready for it and therefore they don't use it - both of which cause them to be unhappy and difficult, which is expensive for the company and potentially damaging in the long run if they choose to share their feelings publicly.

By letting your content be free you can increase the width of your lead funnel but you may not be able to know by how much and you can dramatically shorten the funnel.  And, yes, it may take leads a little longer in the beginning but when they are ready, they are ready and you'll end up with much more constructive work to do - with customers that really appreciate what you have to offer.

Ahh - feels like a cold glass of spring water.

Comments

[Emanuele Quintarelli]

Rachel, very interesting post as always.

Only a couple of days ago, I was thinking more or less about the same topic: how social sales (reactive or proactive) in a social CRM scenario change the sales funnel and too which extent social support (and maybe other sCRM business cases) is getting mixed up with sales along this change.

Does it still make sense to think in terms of a funnel?

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Emanuele -

Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

You have a fair point - I'm not sure it's a funnel exactly either and I've seen other visualizations but I used the funnel as a default because it's what most people are familiar with and once engaged in the sales process, there is still a stage/phase flow (at least in more complex contexts) to ensuring the solution fits the customer need.

[Christine Sierra]

Nice post Rachel. It's something we're exploring with a new free service and trials - completely foreign to a business that has relied on enterprise software sales as a revenue model.

Now the fun part is the conversion tracking and measurement of success for such efforts - or perhaps absence of "effort" as we let prospects help themselves while we observe for a bit?

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Christine -

Thanks for stopping by - very interesting to watch and yes, I think the key in knowing when to start tracking/following. Measurement can be expensive and lead to intrusiveness so... figuring out when to start the counter is very important. You may want to chat with Bobbie Carlton about this (we were just talking about it over lunch)

[Iamreff]

Agreed. Great post. It led me to think of Joe Jaffe's concept of flipping the funnel. Social Media allows us to stay engaged after the sale and perhaps turn customers into cheerleaders. At least we can stay engaged and support them post sale.