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The Full Funnel Social Checklist
In 2024, your brand's gotta be very social searchable.
Jack Appleby
May 01, 2024
I wish I was writing this newsletter outside. It’s finally beautiful in New York, but screen glare. Is there a product for that? Is there a cheaper version on Temu? Can you tell I write my top blurbs stream of conscious?
Seasonal Cheerfulness aside, let’s chat about
The real value of UGC content
Why your need content for every funnel moment
New Instagram algorithm updates
You’ve probably heard that more and more consumers are digging around social media to inform their purchase decisions. YouTube’s long been heralded as the second-largest search engine, but now their Google parents are worried TikTok’s coming for their lunch.
But let’s be honest, your company probably isn’t making enough content for that mid-funnel consumer consideration. Social and brand marketers love crafting the fun, top of funnel content, while growth & paid teams ache for buy button clicks at the funnel’s bottom.
It’s a bit of a lightbulb realization for me. Blame Bazaarvoice—they came to me with their Shopper Experience Index report that highlighted a glaring weakness in most of our content strategies. After I dug into the data, I knew we had to partner up—there’s some thinking here that social strategists need to see.
We’re gonna look at some numbers, contextualize them, then fill your content gaps with brand and/or UGC content.
I love data—I always try to throw a few colossal percentages on slides to help me drive home a point when pitching to clients.
Take a look at this string of numbers from that Bazaarvoice report. Pretty much every part of the purchase funnel is influenced by social these days.
Discovery: 58% of shoppers say they discover products through social
Consideration: 50% research a product through social channels
Even More Consideration: 42% say social impacts their purchasing decisions
Purchase: 50% have bought products via social in the last year
Loyalty: 46% of shoppers follow their favorite brands
If you ever need to convince an executive or client that your brand needs to be quite active on social, go ahead and copy-paste the above until those beautiful budgets open up.
Shoppers want to see specific types of social
Most of us social marketers build our content around a couple of product pillars or messaging priorities—three or so differentiators established by the brand that are hopefully compelling enough to get buyers buying.
But take a look at this chart from the Shopper Experience Index on what shoppers want to see from user-generated content.
Shoppers aren’t browsing around social searching for our ~fun~ content. They’re looking for practical knowledge to inform their purchases. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t thinking about hitting those shopper needs in content as a young strapping social strategist (okay, I wasn’t strapping, you couldn’t just let me have that?)
The question becomes if brands should start tackling these consumer content requests in their owned content or delegate the need to amateur and professional creators with user-generated content. The answer is D. All Of The Above
How to check your full funnelness
Lucky for you, there’s a wonderfully easy way to make sure your brand’s hitting every consumer’s question—you just search your brand the way shoppers search social.
Hop on TikTok and Instagram with keyword queries like:
product name + review
product name + price
product name + materials
product name + style
product name + worth it
product name vs competitor product name
Does content come up that helps your brand? Does content come up at all? I hope it’s a yes and yes. If not, it’s pretty essential you plug those holes.
If you’re filling gaps with owned content, start handling those shopper content requests the same way you’d tackle brand pillars—work them in evenly to your content, then make sure you’re posting with keyword-rich captions.
If you want UGC to cover your bases, but aren’t finding enough customer content to make you comfortable, you’ll need to trigger your fans to start making things. The easiest way: strong customer service and community management
Community managing your way to more UGC
Convincing your everyday customers to create content is rarely the way to go—they’re probablyyy not gonna make compelling content. That’s why I like re-engaging your fans who’ve already talked about your brand. Give ‘em a little love and they’ll likely make even more.
There’s a growing expectation from both amateur and professional content creators that the brands engage with their content (I certainly ask brands to get involved when I do brand deals). That’s especially true of any deinfluencing content—54% of of customers say if they write a negative review, they expect a response from the company.
Think about the psychology of content creators. They’re out there looking for their own community. If they’re making videos about your product, you’re the person they want to talk to, and the cost of one kind comment or clarification reply could build you a lifelong fan.
All of this handy information came from my pals at Bazaarvoice. I’m sure you can agree, they’ve made some compelling points about UGC—because that’s what they do! Beautiful, full-funnel, check-every-box UGC campaigns. Which as you can see are kinda important.
There’s a laundry list of reasons to work with their platform for UGC:
12,000+ of the world’s best brands + retailers use ‘em.
Strong day one review strategies through UGC
Launching shoppable social content strategies
and a whole lot more!
Go hire them to build your scaled UGC campaigns, yeah? That whole sentence is one big link, which should make it double easy for you.
I loveee to hear that Instagram’s going to deprioritize aggregators. Let the artists and creatives and singers and dancers win… oh, the brands, too. This video’s worth a watch.
I teach LinkedIn personal branding myself, but I love seeing how other people suggest using the platform. It’s all about finding what works for you, personally.
I don’t watch reality TV—why would I when I can just read history after history about how Elon ruined my favorite social network?!
Social Cues