We all know the power of Instagram marketing. It’s a fun and interactive way to generate leads, increase Instagram sales, and generate buzz for your business. However, many people don’t know that there’s a new way to create Instagram sales funnels entirely inside of your Instagram page!
But firstly let us clarify what is a Sales Funnel……
What is Instagram sales funnel?
A Instagram sales funnel describes the steps Instagram followers take on the way to becoming your customers. It consists of five phases:
- Awareness – Attracting new people who are currently unaware of your brand.
- Consideration – Standing out among your competition so that new audience members remember you.
- Action – Compelling your audience to take action and make a purchase.
- Engagement – Using social media to stay top-of-mind and keep your audience engaged after they’ve purchased.
- Advocacy – Building enough trust with your audience that they want to recommend you to others.
What is the Importance of Instagram Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel shows the path your customers will take on the way to purchasing your product or service. Analyzing your sales funnel will help you understand how it works and where it does not. It will also help you identify the holes in the different stages of your sales funnel
Understanding your Instagram sales funnel will help you influence how prospects move through it and whether they convert into buying customers. It will also provide insight into what customers are thinking and doing at each stage of the sales funnel so you can invest in marketing activities that attract more prospects, develop more relevant messaging at each stage of the sales funnel, and convert more prospects into paying customers.
The 4 Main Stages of an Instagram Sales Funnel
Top of the Funnel
At the very top of your Instagram sales funnel are your Instagram followers. You want to fill your funnel with as many people within your target audience as possible. The more people you put into your funnel, the more people you can get to convert (take a desired action) on your website
A conversion rate is the percent of people who visit your site and then go on to take some additional action such as making a purchase or filling out a lead generation form.
The more people that you have following you on Instagram, the more people you can entice to click-over to your site. That’s precisely why it’s important to grow your Instagram followers.
This can be achieved by:
- Keeping up with a consistent posting strategy
- Making sure to use popular hashtags for your industry
- Partnering with other complementary brands to cross-promote each other.
- Making people aware of your products i.e., provide value and awareness.
Middle of the Funnel
As you’re growing your Instagram follower count you’ll also want to have your eye on your engagement rate. This is the percentage of people who actively like and comment on your posts out of your total following. While having a large following is great, it’s only the first step in your Instagram sales funnel process. Keeping your audience engaged is easier, in theory, than growing your follower count. You don’t need to find new people to add to your funnel, but you do have to develop content that really resonates with them. You only know that content resonates when the post has a good engagement rate. Engagement rates vary across industries, but should be above 4% in most cases.
This can be achieved by:
- Making them think why they should buy from you. How your product is the answer to their problems.
- You can make this clear by posting high quality photos of your products.
- Replying to comments (especially questions), asking questions in your posts and including a strong call-to-action in each post caption.
Bottom of the Funnel
The Bottom of Funnel stage of the sales funnel is action. The prospect becomes a customer by purchasing your product or service (or they decide to leave without making a purchase). If the customer makes a purchase, they are now part of your company’s ecosystem.
This can be achieved by:
- Focusing on customer retention so the customer makes ongoing or future purchases.
- Your content should help to build customer loyalty. For example, thank the customer for the purchase
- Asking them to provide feedback, offering after-purchase support, inviting them to sign up for your newsletter, or enrolling them in a rewards program.
- At this point you content need ask for sale!!
After the Funnel
This stage usually involves Engagement, Loyalty, Referrals, Advocacy.
Do not forget your customers after they purchase from you. Focus on retaining and rewarding customers after they convert and turning them into brand advocates who can’t wait to tell everyone they know how awesome you are!!!
This can be achieved by:
- Staying connected with your customers and making them feel like they are a part of your brand community. Do this by creating social media content that supports them based on the purchase they made.
- Hashtag campaigns can make users feel like they are a part of a community and encourage continued brand loyalty. For less visual brands, you can also use a similar strategy on Twitter by creating a hashtag or organizing a Twitter chat.
- Encourage referrals and repeat business
- Make your customers feel good about buying from you.
- Reward your customers’ loyalty
Conclusion
Traditional sales funnels have their time and place. But Instagram sales funnel can engage your audience, build trust and create an authentic base of fans for your brand.
A common mistake marketers make is to invest in only a few of these stages rather than all of them. Your audience and potential customers can sense overly sales-focused content or pitches without first building brand awareness or trust. This kind of marketing can be off putting to people who are unfamiliar with your brand. If you’re worried about having limited resources to build the funnel, then pick one or two tactics to focus on for each phase and rock those.
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