Your business is expected to maintain a smooth, cohesive presence across multiple digital platforms.
Most brands can’t meet that expectation. They try, but end up with a disjointed experience. One where each channel has its own goal and doesn’t feed into the next logical step or channel.
If you want to sell more products, you have to create a seamless experience that leads users through your sales funnel.
The smoother and more relevant the funnel, the better the sales.
Here’s the rub, though.
Maintaining a streamlined journey across multiple channels and devices is difficult.
Each action that leads a user from one platform to the next or has them switch channels increases friction which causes interested users to exit your funnel.
For a long time that was a known and accepted part of online business. But as social commerce has grown more brands are able to sell directly to their users through their social accounts.
No redirects. No extra steps. No friction.
Selling directly through social can be a huge boost to your business.
In this article, we’ll break down the steps to create a seamless social commerce experience for your business thanks to automated checkout bots.
What’s a funnel?
Let’s start with a few important definitions.
What exactly is a sales funnel?
It’s a term that means slightly different things to different people.
Most marketing authorities refer to anywhere between three to seven stages, or steps, of the funnel.
Also, it’s important to keep in mind that your sales funnels will differ depending on your product.
What works for a $20 product is completely different to a $20,000 product.
Buying a $20 t-shirt is a quick process. You see the shirt, ask yourself if you want it and, if you do, you pay. It’s only $20, right? All you need is a little desire to part with that $20.
But for a $20,000 car you’re going to spend months mulling over the purchase. Visiting numerous dealers, reading reviews, taking cars for test drives etc.
You have to understand the thoughts and needs of the customer and what they’re going to need to be persuaded your product is right for them.
Many brands over-complicate their sales funnels.
If you’re selling that $20,000 car, you absolutely do need to build a sophisticated, multidimensional sales funnel.
But if you’re selling retail products, you need to focus on keeping it simple. The more efficient you can make your funnel, the better the buyer experience will be.
Step 1. Choose a social media platform + link your chatbot to your account
First things first – you’ve got to choose a social media platform to focus on.
Find the social platform your audience is most engaged on, and start there.
Once you choose a social media platform, it’s time to connect your brand’s page with a chatbot.
In order to build an automated sales funnel, you’ll need a bot that can engage with your fans, collect their contact information, and quickly move them through a checkout process.
jumper is a chatbot that does all of that.
Connecting jumper to your brand’s social media pages is a simple process.
Create an account through jumper’s homepage. Click in the top right and then choose how you want to log in (Facebook, Google, Email).
On your jumper dashboard, select the integrations tab. There, you’ll be able to connect the chatbot to any (or all) of your social media and sales platforms.
Once you’ve linked jumper with your brand’s social media page, you’re pretty much ready to go!
Jumper’s default chat sequence will handle a basic engagement-to-sales sequence, and you can customize it as much as you like.
Step 2. Choose your product
Now you’ve connected jumper to your brand’s social media page, it’s time to choose a prodcut to build your funnel around.
Traditionally you’d pick a product, set up some ads which offer some freebie, and then follow up with a nurture sequence.
We’re not building a traditional funnel, though.
Armed with the chatbot, you can transform the process completely.
Instead of a multi-step, cross-channel sequence of events leading to a sale, you can simply offer and sell directly on your audience’s news feeds.
jumper will be right there to take interested people through a quick sale, automatically.
Once you understand the context and goal, you’ve got to create an offer that will perform well on a social media news feed.
You’ll have to overcome two things:
- A distracted audience. A crowded news feed is a difficult place to stand out, especially when your readers are in “scroll” mode.
- Purchase barriers. High prices, unfamiliar products, and irrelevant offers will not convert.
There’s no hard and fast rules here, but generally speaking, you’re going to have to find a product that’s:
- Attention-grabbing in design or use to break the user’s scroll mode
- One which is highly desired so your audience won’t think twice about buying
- A reasonable price (<$100) to maximize on their impulse purchase needs
Once you’ve got a product that hits all those criteria, you’re on the home straight.
Step 3. Create a great product post
Grabbing your audience’s attention isn’t just about the product or offer you’re promoting.
Remember, it’s going to appear as a post in audience’s news feeds.
That means it’s going to have to compete for attention with a barrage of unrelated posts from friends, family members, and other brands.
This makes your presentation especially important.
Keep in mind at this stage your audience isn’t even thinking about buying your product. They’re browsing their feeds, scrolling past post after post.
How are you going to grab their attention? Why should they stop on your product post?
Part of the answer is in the product choice, which we’ve covered in Step 2.
The rest of it is in your visual presentation and copywriting.
Great product photography is essential here. Your audience is used to seeing professional-grade product imagery everywhere they shop online. With that in mind, you have to meet that standard.
You don’t need to stop at traditional product photography, though. A creative image that shows off your item in a fun and memorable light may be a great option.
Instead of still photographs, you might want to experiment with video.
Facebook, for example, awards great video content with greater distribution.
Remember, the key is to stand out. What can you do to make your product post deliver a visual experience that’s strong enough to make your audience stop scrolling and start engaging?
Take the below from Amazon as an example.
It’s a great ad because;
- It’s highly visual and catches the eye
- If targeted to cat owners it’s also highly relevant so will grab double the attention
- Everyone loves a deal and they mention one very clearly
- A nice, clear CTA of what to do next
I’m not saying you should copy/paste from successful ads like the above, but there’s no harm in using them as inspiration.
The next step is to craft compelling copy. Unfortunately, there’s no set formula when it comes to writing product descriptions that sell – each product and audience will respond to different things.
Keeping the news feed context in mind, you’ll probably be better off keeping things short and sweet, and relevant to both product and buyer.
Many ecommerce platforms offer advice for optimizing product posts on social media. Here’s one from Teespring, for example.
If your visual component is funny, its description should be too. Whatever feeling you’re trying to elicit from your readers should be reflected in both visual and written elements of your post.
Jumper’s chatbot is triggered by a customizable hashtag comment. Ideally, that hashtag should be something both fun and relevant.
It’s an important detail, because you need to do everything you can to prompt your audience into action. Put yourself in their shoes – would you rather enter a random coupon code or play along with a funny phrase?
Since Jumper also gives you the ability to customize your chatbot’s messages, you can even reflect your brand’s tone in your bot. The more cohesive everything is, the better your buyers’ experience will be.
Step 4. Leverage paid traffic
Quick recap – we’ve set up jumper, chosen a product that sells easily, and created a social media-appropriate product post.
Once you publish the post, it will show up on your Facebook fan page. The same post will reach a percentage of your fans on their news feeds, but only for a brief window of time.
That’s not enough.
To see real results, we’ve got to drive traffic to the post, or simply build an ad around it.
Like the other steps, you’ll need to do as much testing at this stage as possible.
Does your ad copy tie in with the product description? Does your audience respond better to short or long descriptions? What time of day works best?
Once you’re running the ad consistently and gathering data, Facebook Insights will help you test the answers to these questions.
If you’ve chosen a winning product, you’ll quickly uncover sub-audiences you can optimize around. Test, test, test!
Step 5. Retention
Once the sale is completed, your relationship with the buyer is only just starting.
Your chatbot’s sales sequence should include email capture (jumper does this by default). By collecting this information from a buyer, you’ll automatically build both an email list and a Messenger list.
These are powerful tools for your future marketing efforts.
A good email marketing campaign will nurture your buyers, turning them into loyal fans and repeat buyers.
Messenger is similar, and arguably more effective. Used the right way, you can consistently communicate value to your Facebook fans and occasionally send a promotional message to drive more sales.
Many brands don’t realize the power of retention. A 5% improvement in customer retention rates can bump up profits by 25-95%.
Where’s your best opportunity?
Let’s take a step back from all the marketing strategies you’re undoubtedly hammered with all day.
Are you overcomplicating things?
Are there opportunities for you to simplify your sales funnel and make the buying process more efficient for both you and your customers?
Social media ecommerce is a remarkably underutilized tool for most brands. Communication, engagement, and customer service are powerful ways to serve your audience.
So why not sell to them right then and there?
If you have products with relatively low purchase barriers, offering a simple sale to a customer directly on their social media feed is a far better option than asking them to click through to another website and then dig through a traditional online store.
jumper enables the buyer to show interest and buy a product with a few clicks.
At the same time, the chatbot allows you to build a fully automated sales funnel directly on your social media platform of choice.
No need to spend time and effort aligning different marketing tools, lists, and data.
What we’re doing here is redefining the sales funnel, taking customers from consideration to decision in a much quicker, smoother step.
Take a look at your products. Which ones need a lot of nurturing and convincing? Which ones are easy decisions for your buyers?
The five-step process outlined above can be applied to all kinds of products, but they work best with lower price points and targeted, attention-grabbing products or offers.
Instead of dealing with a complex funnel across different sites, a chatbot like jumper can run a simple sequence that takes buyers from consideration to decision in a few clicks.
By combining this simple process with paid traffic and good email marketing, you’ll create a powerful, cohesive sales funnel that can be scaled and tested as much as you like.
What are you waiting for? Get to it now with a free jumper account!
start exploring jumper and it excite me! Thumbs up guys 🙂