So the marketing funnel is not a funnel anymore.

We need a new metaphor and I think a maze will do the trick. Wikipedia tells us that a maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route. Finding the right brand is a bit like that. Once you have found the route to your preferred brand you can get to where you want to be very quickly. If you are looking for something you have never bought before the journey is less predictable; trial and error. The word ‘sniffle’ still applies very well.

However, too make it interesting our maze is no ordinary maze; it is also a bit like snakes and ladders. A ladder offered by good point of sale material or a recommendation by a friend can get you out of the maze and going very smartly. There are also snakes! Sales people with only their own interest in mind. Advertising that is less than truthful. Over promising and under delivering.

So it could pretty much look like this;

‘Ah! But that is not a maze, it’s a QR code‘, I hear you say. A QR code is a modern maze and you need some technology to solve its puzzle; a mobile phone. That’s my point; to solve the modern marketing puzzle the keyword is MOBILE.

Did you know:

• Mobile wallets are already in use in South Africa.
• Google just launched one last week (not here though)
• For most South African consumers the PC/Laptop is Old School or not even an option. They have jumped right into Mobile.

 

 

 

Many marketers still trundle in and out of traditionalist adagencies armed with media push schedules based on media mix strategies that look back over how things used to be.

In the June 2009 issue of McKinsey Quarterly, David Court and three co-authors introduced a more updated view of how consumers engage with brands: the “consumer decision journey” (CDJ). This journey does not lead down a funnel of increasingly reduced choices and alternatives. It is iterative. Iterative is more like sniffle (snuffel) than sniff; it is more like explore and decide than heading for a predetermined destination. There are four aspects to “sniffeling”:

• Consider where to start and with what. This does not mean they start with all possible brands choices and lots of information. They are more open to trial and error; and it is ready, fire, aim rather than ready, aim, fire.
• Evaluate as they get more information the alternatives may increase and as they learn the idea is to get smarter. We don’t start smart, we get smarter.
• Buy – it all happens at the point of purchase, an ever more powerful touch point where packaging, pricing and sales interactions count. Consumers will phone friends or go online at the point of purchase. This is where QR codes will increasingly make a difference.
• Enjoy, tell others and bond. After purchase, a deeper connection begins as the consumer interacts with the product and with new online touch points. More than 60% of consumers of facial skin care products, the McKinsey researchers found, conduct online research about the products after purchase—a touch point entirely missing from the funnel.

 

Marketers have traditionally used the well-known funnel metaphor to think about touch points. Consumers would start at the wide end of the funnel with many brands in mind and narrow them down to a final choice. Companies have traditionally used media push marketing at a few well-defined points along the funnel to build awareness, drive consideration, and ultimately inspire purchase. The point-of-sale was something best left to the sales team and very little marketing budget was spent to engage with consumers that late in the funnel. But the metaphor fails to capture the changing nature of consumer engagement.

DID YOU KNOW

• That consumers consider and evaluate brands at the point of sale in real-time.
• That they can interact with a bottle of wine at the point of consumption.
• They can find out about the cellar/wine farm as much as they want to, right there.
• Read reviews and pairing suggestions where-ever they are and when-ever they want to.
• Book a wine tour or even order a case of the good stuff on the spot, and
• LIKE the experience to their fans and friends on Facebook.

Try it if you know how.

 

 

 

 

 

For decades, marketers assumed that consumers started with a large number of potential brands in mind and methodically narrowed (hence the funnel metaphor) their choices until they’d decided which one to buy. After purchase, their relationships with the brand typically focused on the use of the product or service. They were right enough to drive countless media plans. But now they may be spending their money in all the wrong places. 

DID YOU KNOW

•  The internet has and is still (as we write) changing the way consumers interact with brands (the marketing funnel) and the way customer interact with companies.
•  Consumers are promiscuous. That means they fall in and out of love with brands all the time. They are free to flirt and connect with countless brands; and there are more Brand-dating-agencies than you realise. Try me before we get into……………(err ….before you buy)
• …and then? They show and tell! They remain engaged (the pun is intended); not married.
• The touch points have changed.
• Awareness and differentiation is not everything and certainly not the only thing.

 

 

 

 

Building on the diagram let's say:

• A = general awareness of products in a category
• B = Buying your product or service
• C = buying a competitive offering (or nothing at all)

Funnel stage is the place your customer or consumer occupies at any given point in time. Behaviour over time represents changes in that position based on (partly) resources you spend to cause that change.

DID YOU KNOW that:

• Consumers today connect with brands in new ways.
• through media channels that are beyond our direct control
• that traditional marketing strategies must be redesigned to account for how brand relationships have changed.
• that there is a good chance that you may be investing your resources in the wrong places.

In a next post we will drill down into different Funnel Models.

At MyMarketingNerd we are concerned with consumer behaviour (what consumers do) and not attitudes so much (what they think or feel).

Behaviour is about the movement from A to B; of one or many consumers.

Let's call A Awareness - and B Buying.

Marketers are interested in what lies in the space between A and B; the bit that transforms someone that knows into someone that buys.

Type "Marketing Funnel" into Google and see what it comes up with.

DID YOU KNOW?

• That the traditional marketing funnel is no longer valid in its original form
• That social media has impacted consumer behaviour in the space between A and B
• That too many adagencies still labour under the assumption that it is still useful.
• That marketing has changed so much that part of what is taught is nonsense.

Let this not be said of you:

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