The Marketing Funnel

For me it’s the only proposed improvement to the funnel that has any real value.

Go read all about it here https://thetomroach.com/2021/09/01/the-sales-funnel-is-wrong...

That said, what I'm talking about is the classic marketing funnel and how we use it in order to understand where we need to focus as marketers to improve the bottom line.

So it's more about understanding proximity to purchase than where the consumer is in their buying journey, and it allows us to qualify where we need to focus in order to improve conversion.

Let’s start from the basics.

Before anyone is going to buy a brand, they need to know that the it exists, and then that it offers a potential solution for whatever it is driving their purchase.

I’m not going to buy Coca-Cola if I don’t know that it is a thing. And if I don’t know it’s a soft drink I’m not going to buy it when I’m thirsty.

So we start with awareness.

Then once someone's aware of a brand, we need to know if they're considering that brand as an option, because everyone has options.

I've talked about loyalty in the past, and the fact that even the most loyal brand buyers will have a repertoire of brands within a category that they'll buy from.

Even LEGO’s most loyal customers buy from Playmobil. Trust me, I worked on the loyalty programme at The LEGO Group.

So you want to be in that consideration set, and then further down you want to be the preference.

So yes, this is a linear approach, and we know that purchasing decisions aren't really linear. But in terms of proximity, we have a group that are aware of a brand. We have a group that are aware and considering that brand, and we have a group that are aware, considering and have a preference for that brand.

Where this is really useful is you can see against your competitive set where you might be struggling.

If your brand awareness is low compared to your competition, then what you need to do is increase brand awareness, because what you fix higher in the funnel will carry through to the bottom and of course increase purchases as a result.

Focus on improving the weak stages of your funnel.

If it's awareness, that's relatively straightforward. You just need to be out there more, increase your content and media budget.

If you're finding that your awareness is okay, but consideration is low, then for whatever reason you're just not being seen as a viable solution. There’s most likely something about your position or your proposition that isn't ringing true at that stage..

And then towards the bottom of the funnel, we've got preference.

They know you exist, they've considered you, and when they next make a purchase from whatever category you're in, you're going to be their first choice.

That doesn't always mean that they'll choose you. Maybe they can't find you on shelf, or maybe there's someone else involved in the purchase decision.

For me, the funnel is fundamental, because once we know where we need to focus and which job needs to be done, we can make sure that we're addressing that in our objective setting, our planning and our communications.

I’ve talked about a very standard funnel, but I’m with Mark Ritson that it's always better to have a custom funnel.

Not everything is awareness, consideration, preference. There might be research stages, there could be different steps based on the kind of business you are, in the category you're in.

But to be clear, the funnel should work for everyone else in your category, not just your brand.

If you've only got a funnel on your own brand's performance, you might conclude that you've got a problem in a particular area. But once you overlay with the rest of the competitive set, and with the category norm, you might see that actually you are outperforming in the area that looks poor, and you're underperforming in the area that standalone looks strong.