What your social media is doing for your sales cycle

There's a common misunderstanding about posting on social media for your business - and it's a trap I fell into as well. I'm going to take a wild guess that not many of your leads come via a DM or comment on your social media. Yet, you get good engagement with thoughtful comments.

That doesn't mean your content isn't working, it means that social media is doing a completely different job to the one you might be assuming it's doing.

SOCIAL MEDIA SHOULDN'T BE YOUR MAIN SALES CHANNEL. IT'S WHERE YOU BUILD CREDIBILITY

When you first meet or are referred to someone, you can bet the first thing they do is to check you out on your socials. They want to get a feel for whether you're the real deal, whether you can solve the problem they have. That's the moment your content is working - not to generate the lead in the first place, but to confirm the decision someone is already halfway towards making.

I'm not saying you will never get leads from social media, and a good lead generation expert can definitely help you to optimise your platforms to do just that, but it usually isn't from posting alone.

Think of your social media like a shop window on the high street with a really great window display. Most people won't wander into the shop based on the window display alone, but a good one makes them trust what's inside is worth walking in for.

Don't set yourself up to fail

If you're measuring your social content against whether or not it made you a sale, you're probably going to think it's not working, maybe talk yourself into posting less or changing your content... but in reality it's doing exactly the job it's meant to.

I know (because I've been there too) that it can feel frustrating when you spend ages creating your posts, expecting it to provide you with your main source of leads, only for your DM's to feel annoyingly quiet.

But if you post consistently, with a well thought through structure and themes relevant to your business, you will never know just how many people have seen you and filed you away in their mind as "the person who does X".If you've been following my socials, you will have heard me refer to these people as Stealth Leads. They sit in the background, out of site, but they're interested.

Months, or sometimes even years later, that same person needs your services, or is talking to a contact that does - and taa daa, your name is the one they think of.

So by the time they arrange a call with you, they are already fairly convinced your the business they want to work with. All because your posts have done the hard work for you.

How can you optimise those Stealth Leads?

If you want to go one step further in using your socials to capture and nurture those Stealth Leads, the best way to do this is by sharing a good lead magnet that is enticing and makes them want to know more. As the entry point for your sales funnel that includes a follow up email nurture sequence, all of a sudden those stealth leads are in your email list and you're talking directly to them.

Final Thought

The businesses growing sustainably right now aren't the ones relying on their social media as their whole lead generation strategy. They know that posting consistently is building their credibility, and direct the traffic to their sales funnel, so that by the time they have a conversation, a lot of the hard work is already done.