I Don't Sell to Strangers: The Four-Step Social Media Funnel

Step One: Post. The Step Nobody Actually Takes

How do you take a person from interested in your content to purchasing your product or service? That's the whole game. A social media funnel for generation of revenue. And it starts with the simplest step there is, the one that, believe it or not, most people never actually do. Posting.

Everybody knows social media has potential. Everybody believes it has the audience that can actually buy products and services. But they just don't get started with the simple step of posting. And there's no excuse anymore. There are tools today, ChatGPT, AI tools, many of them, where if you simply talk to them about what you know very well, what your superpower is, what your skill is, what you're good at, they will give you a ton of ideas about what to talk about to help people handle their problems. And by doing so, you get attention.

Post consistently and eventually you will find the right people. For my company NaturalSlim in the USA, a nine-figure brand internationally, we post 3,000 times a month. And I don't pay a single penny to post that. I just post it. That volume matters, because I get a lot of data back on what's working and what's not working precisely because I post in large quantities.

Step Two: Boost. But Only the Winners

Boosting has been around a long time in the social media game. Facebook came up with it. You post something, and there's this beautiful, cute little blue button at the bottom right of every post that says Boost. Press it, answer a few questions about your audience and demographic, give them a budget, and you put that post in front of more people.

Now, is it valuable to boost everything you post? Absolutely not. Here's the reality: a lot of the content you post, nobody cares about it. But the ones that actually create an impact, that's where the magic really is. The platform is going to tell you what's working and what's not, and you should listen to what the algorithm tells you.

Do I advertise 3,000 pieces of content a month? Absolutely not. I only advertise a few of those pieces to get even more attention and more distribution. The organic performance already told me which ones deserve it.

The Survey Technology: Let the Platform Tell You What to Boost

Let me show you exactly how this works. We have a brand with 40-some million followers and we distribute content across all platforms. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, podcast, you name it. And even though I'm showing you Meta here, the same rules are applicable on every other social media platform.

I go into the business manager almost every day. I look at post type, reels for example, and here's something very important: I filter by marketing channel and select organic. Why? Because organic is where the survey is happening. Paid isn't really fair, you're putting money to play. Organic means you didn't give it any money, you just posted it, and based on that, Facebook and Instagram either give it more reach or keep it small.

So I survey the numbers. This one got 600 views. This one got 2,000. This one got 900. Oh, wait a second, this one got 5,000. This one got 4,000. There must be something special about that video, because organically it did eight times, ten times what the other pieces were doing. That's my number one criterion for what to boost. Why would I boost something almost nobody saw when Facebook is telling me, listen, this content wasn't good, go back to the drawing board? They're giving you data. They're being your partner.

Step Three: Build Buckets of Audiences

From the content you're posting and boosting, you audience build. You start accumulating what I call buckets of audiences, and every one of these buckets is a different person.

If somebody watches 3 seconds of one of your videos and that's it, the platforms call that a view. Is that person qualified? Maybe not as qualified as somebody who watched two minutes of your video. That's a different bucket. How about somebody who watched five minutes of a whole video? Different bucket. Somebody who commented on your post and engaged? That is a different bucket.

The more those people consume, the more valuable the bucket, because you're actually building an audience that is going to potentially buy your products and services. And you can do this in the same business manager, same thing on TikTok, same thing on Google and YouTube. You select the videos, you build the audience of people consuming your content, and that audience becomes the people you put an offer in front of.

Step Four: Make the Offer. Cash Is the Oxygen

One thing I have had as a policy in my brands for many, many years: I don't sell to strangers. I sell to people that I have had the privilege and the honor of giving them value. By doing so, I get them to feel that they should give back to me. But I don't do that unless I give them an enormous amount of value first. This funnel is the path for doing exactly that.

And last but not least, most importantly: if there's one thing we know all businesses need to survive, it's cash. It is the oxygen. If I don't make an offer, they're not going to give me their wallets. They're not going to open up their most important and private information or give me access to their bank account so I can deliver the exchange I know I can deliver with my products or services. The offer has to be made.

But that offer is enormously more powerful when you put people through this exact funnel first. Post. Boost. Audience build. Offer. Do this right, and you'll start building an incredible business.