I’ve got a confession for you, dear reader…
And because it’s coming from the Creative Director of a Creative and Marketing Agency…
This might surprise you.
Take a seat.
Our socials suck.
There. I said it. At least half of our client work is social content. I spend the majority of my week helping brands and businesses of all shapes and sizes entertain, engage and sell on social – but as ourselves?
We’ve barely posted anything for months.
There are two reasons for this:
Firstly – in all honesty – we’ve been so busy going to bat for our clients, that we just haven’t had the internal capacity to give ourselves the five star service we give them.
But secondly – as we’ll often tell prospective clients:
Social content will only deliver genuine ROI when it’s part of a well-oiled machine.
And that well oiled machine often looks a bit like this.
Now I’m not here to teach you to suck eggs – so i’ll assume anyone reading this has seen a funnel or two in their day – but here are the stages as we use them.
Right at the top of the funnel we Entertain – with relatable content that’s inspired by the pain points that we’ll later be offering to solve.
We then Capture the people who our content resonates with – either with an Irresistible Lead Magnet that gets them on your email list, or with custom Ad audiences built from people who’ve engaged with specific posts, or visited specific web pages.
Then we engage those people – with emails and Ads designed to drive them towards our sales pages.
And finally – of course – if the sales page is doing its job, we sell.
Your prospects generally start at the top of the funnel and work their way down, but when we’re building (or fixing) a funnel we always start at the bottom – nearest the money – and work up.
And there are two reasons for that, too:
Firstly – there’s always a huge list of things you know you *should* tackle in your marketing, but no matter how big or small the business, you’re always going to have limited capacity – so you need a way to decide which to tackle *next*. And for me, the answer has always been “start nearest the money, and then work up” – because the gains you can make at the bottom of the funnel will be multiplied by the gains you make at every stage further up.
Secondly though – and this one’s huge – the work you put into truly understanding your audience as you’re building out your sales pages – what matters to them, what motivates them, what you need to tell them in order to drive them to action – all of that feeds into your content at every other stage, too.
And that’s the key to crafting social content that doesn’t just entertain and engage – it helps make the sale, too.
For the past 6 months, our main focus has been on building out the lower stages of our own sales funnel – and it’s only now that those pieces of the puzzle are running like clockwork that we’re finally turning our attention back to our own social content.
And why am I telling you this?
Well firstly – we haven’t posted anything (or even written a blog) in months, and I needed a good excuse.
But secondly – because I want you to understand:
If you’re struggling to find the time to be active on social media, and giving yourself a hard time about that, don’t.
Invest heavily in social content before you’ve got the other pieces of the puzzle nailed on? It’ll absorb your time, your energy, your capacity and your money – and give you very little in return.
Start giving it serious attention AFTER those other pieces are in place – and your social posts won’t just entertain and engage – they’ll SELL, too.
And it goes without saying that if you want help building out your own well-oiled machine, and like the idea of having TV’s best comedy writers crafting your content – there’s only one thing you need to do.
Click here and book a virtual coffee with one of the team.
