[An uber.la quickie is a streamlined takeaway from today’s best marketing sources]

Consulting is always about the sales funnel. If you need a jolt of perspective, an outside opinion and handful of ideas, that’s where a consultant can help. As a business catalyst, I am not familiar with your business model, yet. And this momentary lack of understanding can give me some insight into what’s working and what’s not working, even before I hear your request and requirements. Bringing a new/fresh perspective to your business model is my job. For me personally, it’s about digital marketing (online) rather than advertising or offline marketing.

Let’s take a good look at your sales funnel together and look at how social marketing can build momentum towards the sale.

The 4 Inflection Points of Social Marketing

Before any program is launched we will answer the question, "What is the goal?" And all efforts will be focused on moving potential customers down the purchase funnel. How can a social campaign, strategy, tactic, keep the flow heading towards the close while preventing loss at the critical inflection points.

The first three inflection points are known as the purchase path. What can we do to make that path easier? Sometimes we talk about reducing the friction along the path. How can we make the buying decision and process "frictionless?"

And finally, after the sale, can we build an advocate from our satisfied customer?

Looking at the funnel is part of the 30,000 foot view: STRATEGY. And all of the programs and activities we can look at are TACTICS.

As a consultant my job is to come in and evaluate your inflection points and improve the performance of your funnel. And then I help set up the programs (strategy – supported by tactics) so that you can run them yourselves. I start every consulting engagement planning to eliminate my role as we set up your team to take over.

Start with the end in mind, and make sure your inflection points are as frictionless as possible. That’s what I do as a social media consultant.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)

permalink: https://uber.la/2014/04/the-sales-funnel/

Check out the Digital Strategist’s Notebook page and these other posts about learning social media:

• Social Business Lead Generation in 75-seconds (VIDEO)
• Hunting the CFO Online with Social Marketing (infographic)
• What is Strategic Content in Social Media?
• The 10th Discipline of Social Media; Socializing Your Content Effectively 
• Introduction to Social Media Marketing in 90-seconds (VIDEO)

Let me help you jumpstart your social marketing:

• FluentSocial (Social Media Marketing)
• FluentSearch (SEO, Google Adwords)