Page 68 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

media marketing. We explain how you need to think about the big idea a little dif-
ferently as you deploy social media marketing to meet your marketing and busi-
ness objectives.

Putting SMM in the Context of the

Marketing Funnel

The marketing funnel is one of the most important metaphors in marketing today.
It differentiates between prospects and customers, and maps out the journey from
the point where a prospect learns about a product to when he becomes a loyal,
repeat customer. Because practically every marketer uses some form of the mar-
keting funnel, it serves an important framework through which to understand
social media marketing.

The traditional marketing funnel typically has five stages, as defined by Forrester.
These five stages are awareness, consideration, preference, action, and loyalty (as
shown in Figure 3-1). The last stage (loyalty) has the fewest people. Those cus-
tomers are the most loyal and, therefore, among the most valuable. For many
marketers, marketing is fundamentally the act of moving people from having an
awareness of a product, considering it along with other products, and establishing
a preference for the product over the others, to eventually taking action such as
purchasing it and developing loyalty toward it.

FIGURE 3-1:
A marketing
funnel.

52 PART 1 Getting Started with Social Media Marketing