The Traditional Marketing Funnel Is Dead
Published August 21st, 2007 in Experience Planning, BrandSo why do marketers cling to it? In a recent Forrester report, authored by Brian Haven, he suggests that it’s because they can still measure it and that is reassuring to marketers even if no longer reflects the real buying process.
Here’s a great visualization of the traditional marketing funnel followed by a messier, more accurate version of how customers really buy (click to enlarge).
So, if reach and frequency is no longer the most effective measurement, then what is? Brian suggests - and I totally agree - that engagement is new metric to measure. Here’s what he has to say about engagement:
Engagement goes beyond reach and frequency to measure people’s real feelings about brands. It starts with their own brand relationship and continues as they extend that relationship to other customers. As a customer’s participation with a brand deepens from site use and purchases (involvement and interaction) to affinity and championing (intimacy and influence), measuring and acting on engagement becomes more critical to understanding customers’ intentions. The four parts of engagement build on each other to make a holistic picture.
Here’s how you measure engagement across those four parts (click to enlarge):
What do you think? Have we truly moved into a new era of measurement where engagement has displaced reach and frequency as the most effective means for measurement? Or are we just re-packaging the old model and 2.0-ifying it?
Here’s a couple of posts from last year that relate to this topic, The Purchase Tumbler and Purchase Funnels Fizzling?
14 Responses to “The Traditional Marketing Funnel Is Dead”
- 1 Trackback on Aug 23rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
- 2 Pingback on Aug 25th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
- 3 Pingback on Aug 29th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
- 4 Pingback on Aug 31st, 2007 at 10:18 am
- 5 Pingback on Sep 27th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
- 6 Pingback on Dec 13th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
- 7 Pingback on Nov 9th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
- 8 Pingback on Feb 4th, 2009 at 10:59 am
- 9 Pingback on Feb 12th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Leave a Reply
Search
Subscribe to Experience Planner's RSS Feed
Subscribe to this blog's RSS feed
Yes, we have entered the engagement era — but there are a couple problems: 1) many don’t have the tools to capture or the time to measure and analyze 2) consumers are getting wary of being asked for their opinion. So where does that leave engagement long-term?
These are both right, simply measuring two things: process vs. depth. The traditional marketing funnel is of course alive (you have to consider something before you buy it). This is the process, A to B to C.
The “engagement” bit is also accurate, but evaluates the depth of the consumer ties at each stage, especially around awareness.
This debate isn’t an either or, it’s an “and.”
your very last sentence tells me you know what you wrote about is just the same pig in a new suit.
the model has completely flipped.
guess i had better write about it.
in short, it is no longer even the province of the marketer to measure anything. the customer is the measurer now. forget engaging me. the word is allowance. do i allow you to enter my attention field. and you cannot control that. you cannot even entice that. well, maybe in the lower classes …
enjoy, gregory
Not just the FUNNEL is dead.
The latest financial crisis is showing the rotten core of western financial system as we know it.
This is the flesh of the capitalism. However also the skin of it is well rotten too.
Traditional marketing concepts and its language has become grotesque.
At work (and I work for the biggest Advertising group in the world) I am still surrounded by people using terms like “Target”; still convinced that traditional online banner advertising works,
and quantitative measurement makes understanding reality. Ah. ah.
None of the concept and measurement tools used in the advertising and marketing industry make sense anymore. There is a huge gap that makes communication in these companies auto-referential, just a cliche. In the near future this gap between reality and professional language will get wider.
Basically the customer will not exist anymore.
The customer will not behave like is expected by the industry. The term CONSUMER does not make any sense when the crisis information sharing will make people to get away from consumerism and utilise things, sharing them, but not consume anymore.
100 years of Consumerism has consumed the system it self. And the original purpose of advertising and Marketing, make people to consume more, is gone.
Is advertising conceptually dead? Possibly, like the ‘roman bourgeois’ of the 1800 or the greek Tragedy.
As an online marketer I can appreciate the fresh perspective you’ve presented. I agree with Ben that it’s more about the “and” and not “either or.”
You’ve presented an alternative view of a process that still eludes most online marketers because the vast majority lack the training/skills of true business management and the entire online business process has a steep learning curve.
Unfortunately, typical marketing paints an unrealistic picture that all it takes is a website and a digital product.