Traditionally, the sales funnel starts with “awareness” or outbound marketing to drive unqualified leads into the top of funnel, then, after a series of qualifying steps, ends with fewer “customers” exiting through the bottom.

Social media has affected traditional funnel in a number of ways. First, the traditional funnel starts with “awareness” then moves straight into qualifying, then ends with either customers or retention. In this new funnel, businesses identify “qualified” prospects sooner by first understanding user personas and then by joining or building community around the industry in which it wishes to converse, engage and educate prospects. Once community is established either by building or joining, awareness then happens through more traditional means such as marketing, direct marketing, events, trade shows, social media, blogging, white papers, eBook and other campaigns.

Second, the traditional funnel starts with Marketing and ends with Sales. In the social affected funnel, marketing follows customers deeper into the funnel (through to qualified lead, sometime more) and Sales may engage prospects sooner (like prospecting via LinkedIn), plus, social media facilitates greater engagement with a brand, and calls for multi-dimensional contact (meaning it’s not just Sales and Marketing talking to customers at the top of the funnel, it’s also Executives, Customer Success and Support). This means that more organizations may be involved in engagement, nurturing or qualifying leads.

Anther way social has affected the funnel, is at the bottom. The traditional funnel ends shortly after the prospect becomes a customer, but as you will see in this version, the bottom half of the funnel is as important as the top. Social media is a way for businesses to continuously grow relationships with customers, provide additional value, and support. With this new funnel there is additional emphasis put on nurturing customers into evangelists, much like we nurtured prospects into customers at the top end.

Read More @ Cloud 9 Analytics