Just for kicks, I typed “make money social media” into Google to see what would happen. Here are the top four articles that came up:
1) 15 Easy Ways For Everyone To Make Money With Social Media
2) 10 Easy Ways To Make Money Using Social Media at Home
3) 4 Social Media Sites That Will Make You Money
4) Can You Actually Make Money With Social Media?
If you’re trying to do online research on social media’s marketing viability, you’ll be greeted with a tsunami of articles telling you that you’re ten steps away from (in the words of the late Alan Rickman) “…sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent.”
Most of the world understands by now that the authors of these articles are constructing their headlines in such a way as to say, “click me, click me!” But taken collectively, it’s easy to see why people view social media as a magic bullet for sales. This kind of junk writing keeps alive the false expectation among entrepreneurs and small business owners that there’s something magical about social.
Ever since Facebook opened it’s doors to the non-collegiate world, business owners have started believing themselves to be one clever post away from a billion-dollar IPO. Every so often, a viral video marketing sensation like the Squatty Potty comes along and reinforces the notion. And to be sure, there are a few geniuses and high-end agencies out there who have consistently created viral concepts. But that’s not how you and I are going to make money on social media.
The secret to making money on social media is that there is no secret. For brands, social is a marketing channel like other marketing channels, albeit with different attributes. Your goal is still the same: build a loyal following of people who know like and trust your offering. This takes an investment of time and money, a commitment to a long-term strategy, and a willingness to be realistic about short-term returns.
At the risk of sounding like one of these godawful articles mentioned above, here are the two “easy” steps to making money on social media.
1) Define Your Sales Funnel
In order to get people to know about you, then like you, then trust you, you need to set up a sales funnel with messaging that’s appropriate to each step. The stages of this funnel will vary depending on your product. Here are some examples:
Whole world -> Social Follower -> Customer
Whole world -> Site Visitor -> Social Follower -> Email Subscriber -> Customer
In general, the bigger investment you require, the more complex your funnel. Enterprise software is going to require more links in the chain than simple commodities.
Also, these diagrams make funnels look more linear than they really are. There should be a considerable overlap between social followers and email subscribers, because you want these people to see your messaging on multiple platforms simultaneously. People may have been too busy to read your email, but still might take action later from your Facebook post.
2) Be Specific About How You Use Advertising To Create Your Funnel
Social media platforms not only want you to pay for the acquisition of new followers, they also want you to pay for communicating to followers once you have them. This infuriates most in-house marketers, and makes them want to emphasize email capture over social audiences. That’s a mistake for three reasons:
1) No one’s going to share your emails the way they will share your posts
2) Email is a one-way conversation only
3) As we talked about in an earlier article, email capture is not necessarily more economical, even when you factor in all the social spend.
The bottom line is that social media advertising investment can be cost effective for your business, especially when used in conjunction with engaging content. Here are some models I’ve seen work:
Interest/Lookalike Targeting to the World -> Site Visitors
Then
Retargeting Site Visitors -> Customers
This is the simplest model I’ve seen that really works. In search advertising it’s not uncommon to see ads that go directly for the sale. But social advertising is different. People were not searching for your offering; they were interrupted with you ad. So people’s starting interest in you will be much more casual.
In this model, we’re asking for the sale on the second visit and not the first. In most cases, this is still rushing in too quickly. But for niche specialties or well-known brands, this model can work.
Interest/Lookalike Targeting to the World -> Site Visitors
Then
Retargeting Site Visitors -> Social Media Fans and Email Subscribers
Then
Emailing and Sponsored-posting Exclusive Offers and Useful Content -> Customers
I would consider this a more typical social media sales funnel. You might ask why one would want to split out steps 1 and 2. Why not simply grow your fan base directly with interest, behavior and lookalike targeting? This way you can save a step.
The reason is because we want to gather an audience of highly engaged fans, and not just people who clicked “like” before they knew who we were. By sending them to the site first and then coming back and asking them to follow us, it raises the likelihood that this new follower will be truly interested in our conversation.
These are both relatively simple strategies, and there are more complexities to be considered. What about retargeting people who come back to your site more than once? Should I only retarget people who stay on the site for a certain amount of time?
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