The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, 3rd Edition

What You Need to Know

To understand how and why a web page is effective, it is important to first discuss a few basic marketing and psychological concepts. Although The Social Media Bible is not intended to replace a book such as Marketing For Dummies, some fundamental understanding of the psychology of a sale is necessary to fully understand how to develop an effective web page. The first concept to discuss is called the sales, or buying, funnel (see Figure 4.3).

FIGURE 4.3 Sales Funnel

The sales funnel is a metaphor that marketers use to imagine what prospects and customers are thinking as they move through their sales cycle—from the moment they realize they need your product or service to the time that they actually purchase it. This cycle is especially critical with web pages, because it doesn’t simply dictate the design of your home page. It requires that you have a web page designed specifically to accept and address the types of questions that your prospects have at any given moment during the buying cycle.

The stages that your prospects move through in their sales funnel are awareness, search, research, and buy. Let’s take a look at these steps, using the example of an auto insurance salesperson in Phoenix, Arizona.

Awareness

Your (potential) client realizes that she is in need of car insurance. She begins to consider how she might get more information about auto insurance ...