Is the funnel dead?

I was at Econsultancy’s Fun­nel event a few weeks ago. A good event with some inter­est­ing speak­ers, but one thing seemed clear – all atten­dees and ven­dors were totally bought into the con­cept of the tried and tested Fun­nel. For many agen­cies present, it actu­ally seemed to be the basis of their busi­ness mod­els and their pitch to the market.

Com­pare this with Forrester’s mar­ket­ing event at The Grove, where the ral­ly­ing cry seemed to be “The Fun­nel is dead”.  Appar­ently, it’s now all about cus­tomer engagement.

So, were the appar­ently mis­guided Fun­nel atten­dees bas­ing their busi­nesses on a flawed metaphor? Will the event be called “Fun­nel” next year? Is the Fun­nel really obsolescent?

Or, are these new ways of think­ing just a reflec­tion of the ongo­ing require­ment for ana­lyst firms to develop new mod­els where they can re-package exist­ing prin­ci­ples to sell more white papers and ana­lyst hours? After all, you have McK­in­sey push­ing the Con­sumer Deci­sion Jour­ney (a cir­cu­lar process) and For­rester pro­mot­ing their Cus­tomer Life-cycle model (another cir­cu­lar process). To my mind, as long as you under­stand the changes in the mar­ket­ing land­scape, you can eas­ily map the phases from these new mod­els on to good old Funnel.

The con­cept of the sales Fun­nel has been around for over 100 years, and as a metaphor it has worked well to illus­trate the need to deliver a large num­ber unqual­i­fied prospects into one end of the fun­nel to get a smaller num­ber of qual­i­fied sales-ready leads out of the other. When there were fewer mar­ket­ing chan­nels and touch-points, it served us mar­keters pretty well.

But there’s a prob­lem. One of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples behind the Fun­nel is that it is lin­ear, and until recently, it was a rea­son­ably good model for the sales process: you’d buy a TV or press ad (Aware­ness); you’d send an email or DM to those who might be likely to be inter­ested (Con­sid­er­a­tion); once you get a response you’d get on the phone and tele-market (Pref­er­ence). Finally, you’d get those qual­i­fied prospects in front of a sales­man (Pur­chase). So, as long as you had effec­tive con­tent for each phase, the flow of ever-more qual­i­fied prospects through the Fun­nel was straightforward.

These days things are dif­fer­ent. With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of mar­ket­ing chan­nels, mul­ti­ple screens and social media, our tar­get audi­ences are no longer mov­ing uni-directionally between our pre-prescribed phases or con­sum­ing our beau­ti­fully crafted mar­ket­ing mes­sages in the order that we intend. In real­ity, prospects are no longer pas­sively con­sum­ing paid media thrust at them by big brands. Instead they’re engag­ing with con­tent on their own terms — often on social net­works — far out­side the direct con­trol of us marketers.

In my hum­ble opin­ion, mar­keters need to change the way they pro­mote their prod­ucts to prospects and con­vert them to sales. And, maybe it’s just eas­ier to adopt a new cir­cu­lar sales model touted by an ana­lyst firm. What is most impor­tant, is that mar­keters have to under­stand that the land­scape has fun­da­men­tally changed and that they need to:

1. Become more involved in the con­ver­sa­tion beyond the con­fines of the cor­po­rate web­site. Don’t have social media and mobile strate­gies. Instead, have a mar­ket­ing strat­egy, of which social and mobile are part.
2. Man­age con­tent effec­tively and cater for the fact that it needs to be used across mul­ti­ple phases of the sales cycle (what­ever model you use) and dis­trib­uted in an array of for­mats to cater for the ever-growing demand for con­tent on the customer’s terms.
3. Focus on mar­ket­ing intel­li­gence by inte­grat­ing mul­ti­ple sources of data to build a con­sol­i­dated view of what’s work­ing and ensure the most effec­tive use of scarce mar­ket­ing budgets.

The gamification of B2B

Image cour­tesy of http://www.adpulp.com/gamification_se/

There is a grow­ing opin­ion in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­mu­nity that the con­struc­tion of the social layer of the web is now com­plete, espe­cially with the dom­i­nance of Face­book. The next phase will move from estab­lish­ing social con­nec­tions to the devel­op­ment of game dynam­ics that encour­age long-term brand engage­ment and loyalty.

It’s cer­tainly easy to see how game the­ory has already been applied in con­sumer mar­ket­ing e.g. building-up points on FourSquare to get a free cof­fee at Star­bucks. But, the big ques­tion is how will it work for B2B?

Well, it’s already hap­pen­ing on sites like LinkedIn, where users feel a sense of achieve­ment if they have more con­nec­tions than their peers, are rec­om­mended more and have a more com­plete pro­file. Users are dri­ven by their need for sta­tus and influ­ence and the fact that pro­gress­ing to a new level is rel­a­tively straight­for­ward e.g. adding spe­cial­i­ties gives you and addi­tional 5% on your pro­file com­plete­ness. The same applies to Twit­ter updates and followers.

I believe that we’ll see a num­ber of game-based expe­ri­ences on web­sites and mobile appli­ca­tions devel­oped specif­i­cally to engage the busi­ness audi­ence. Whilst they will ini­tially be focused on train­ing and edu­ca­tion, over time they will moti­vate prospects and cus­tomers to pro­vide lev­els of cus­tomer insight that would be impos­si­ble to obtain through tra­di­tional meth­ods – it’s eas­ier to get infor­ma­tion from peo­ple if they get an imme­di­ate reward for doing it.

But, by cre­at­ing game-based con­nec­tions with our cus­tomers, we need to ensure we align their moti­va­tions with deliv­er­ing real busi­ness value to your organ­i­sa­tion. In this way, we’ll iden­tify indi­vid­u­als and groups who are gen­uinely inter­ested in our prod­ucts and ser­vices and who will be long-term advocates.

Image cour­tesy of The Pow­er­Point Alchemist

Here’s a good exam­ple from Microsoft Office Labs. Rib­bon Hero 2 teaches peo­ple to use the fea­tures of Microsoft Office (Excel, Pow­er­Point and Word) by play­ing a series of themed games. They can then com­pete against friends and col­leagues while becom­ing pro­fi­cient with the soft­ware and emerg­ing as loyal users. Try it out here.

Image cour­tesy of IBM

And finally, IBM City­One innov8 is a long-term play to pro­mote Big Blue’s sus­tain­abil­ity and con­sult­ing cre­den­tials around smart city plan­ning. The core mes­sage is that IBM wants users to dis­cover how busi­ness process man­age­ment, col­lab­o­ra­tive tech­nolo­gies, and ser­vice ori­ented archi­tec­ture enable com­pa­nies and indus­tries to adapt to new demands and build a sus­tain­able advan­tage. Nancy Pear­son, IBM vice pres­i­dent of SOA, BPM and Web­Sphere says “Seri­ous games allow pro­fes­sion­als to inher­ently com­pre­hend sys­tem inter­ac­tions, and accu­rately model the poten­tial busi­ness out­comes that can result, in a way that no other medium can do.” You can find out more here.

So watch out for the gam­i­fi­ca­tion of your next B2B mar­ket­ing cam­paign. If done right, your prospects may not even notice how their behav­iour is being influ­enced. They’ll be too busy build­ing their online sta­tus and scor­ing points.

Never pay for an exhibition stand again

I was at a WPP Dig­i­tal Day last month and one of the pre­sen­ters was King Yiu Chu from Layar. He took us through some great exam­ples of Aug­mented Real­ity and how it can be applied to our mar­ket­ing efforts.

One case study was the Unin­vited DIY Exhi­bi­tion at MoMA New York, where vis­i­tors to the art gallery were able to see a num­ber of addi­tional “unof­fi­cial” exhibits through their iPhone and Android hand­sets. A nice way of blur­ring the lines between phys­i­cal and vir­tual environments.



Well, this got me think­ing. The price of a stand at CeBIT or Mobile World Con­gress will cost many thou­sands of pounds. So, why not geo-tag an area in the event e.g. meet­ing zones, and set-up a vir­tual exhi­bi­tion stand. Just have some com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tive man­ning the area, hand out some fly­ers with the loca­tion of the stand and a QR code to down­load your Layar plug-in. And, you’re good to go. A nice guer­rilla way to get some stand-out and save lots of money.

Image cour­tesy of Layar

Making mobile work for B2B

I was speak­ing at a B2B mar­ket­ing event the other day about mobile. For many of us it’s a very hot topic. What amazed me at the event, how­ever, was how few peo­ple in the room are actively con­sid­er­ing mobile mar­ket­ing for their organ­i­sa­tions. And, more impor­tantly, how mobile could form an inte­gral part of their cus­tomer engage­ment strat­egy. For me the biggest prob­lem seems to be a per­cep­tion gap between what mar­keters think and the actual mobile usage amongst their B2B tar­get audiences.

The real­ity is that mobile is fast becom­ing the pri­mary screen and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool for busi­ness peo­ple. But many mar­keters are under the false impres­sion that their prospects won’t be recep­tive to busi­ness mes­sages when they’re in a mobile frame of mind. They think they’re more inter­ested in catch­ing up with the news, con­sum­ing enter­tain­ment and updat­ing their sta­tus on mul­ti­ple social net­works. This means there’s no oppor­tu­nity for com­mer­cial mes­sages and that nobody wants a rela­tion­ship with a com­pany through their most per­sonal of devices. Or, do they?

Well the answer is a resound­ing “YES”. Mobile is all-pervasive and the de facto way peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate, do tasks, socialise and con­duct busi­ness. So it is the obvi­ous chan­nel to reach the peo­ple that mat­ter. But before you run head­long into devel­op­ing a shiny new mobile app, here are are few point­ers to ensure you don’t fall at the first hurdle:

1. Don’t treat mobile like tra­di­tional online com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Dri­ving your prospects to down­load­ing a whitepa­per just isn’t going to work. So, con­sider the screen real estate that you have to work with and the way peo­ple con­sume con­tent. Atten­tion spans aren’t what they used to be, so a series of 5 minute pod­casts will prob­a­bly work bet­ter than a 50 page For­rester report.
2. If you thought pri­vacy was impor­tant on the desk­top, with mobile you ain’t seen noth­ing yet. It’s as per­sonal as the com­puter is ever going to get. So push­ing out unin­vited mar­ket­ing mes­sages and SMS just won’t work. Ensure you use a phased approach to engage with the prospects at an intrin­sic level – appeal to their intel­lec­tual side, their need for rela­tion­ship and pro­vide enter­tain­ment. Only once you’ve estab­lished this can you mix in a layer of com­mer­cial promotion.
3. Think about how you’re going to get them engag­ing via their mobiles. So con­sider how you’ll con­vert from email to mobile, off the printed page with QR codes and through social net­works. After all, you can build a clever app but it doesn’t mean that peo­ple will use it (most apps are only used once).
4. If you can’t make doing busi­ness with your com­pany over mobile devices bet­ter, faster and eas­ier, don’t even bother. Don’t try to squeeze your com­pany web­site onto a mobile device. Instead think what peo­ple need from you when they’re on the move and pri­ori­tise that con­tent and func­tion­al­ity. So, stuff that’s loca­tion spe­cific, sup­port ori­ented and socially share­able should come to the fore.

The above are just a few point­ers. If you’d like to dis­cuss how mobile can be used to enhance your media strate­gies or extend your mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions, drop me a line at wrigley@gmail.com

The death of cookies or just some overdure regulation

We’ve been using behav­ioural tar­get­ing for a num­ber of years. It opti­mises media spend and ampli­fies cam­paigns to the peo­ple who count. And, if done well, your prospects won’t realise it’s hap­pen­ing. But the EU believes con­sumers need to be pro­tected and made aware of the meth­ods used to tar­get them. That’s why there’s new leg­is­la­tion com­ing into effect on 25th May.

So, what to do? Well, the gen­eral con­sen­sus out there is the fol­low­ing: If you’re adver­tis­ing through pub­lish­ers and affil­i­ate net­works you need to make users aware that you’re track­ing their behav­iour to serve tai­lored adver­tis­ing. But what’s the best solu­tion? It could get messy with mul­ti­ple alerts, pop-ups and overlays.

Well, there’s an indus­try ini­tia­tive led by the IAB seek­ing to pro­vide an ele­ment of self-regulation, with a sym­bol like this appear­ing on behav­iourally tar­geted ads.



When clicked the user will be advised on the data being cap­tured, how it is used to serve adver­tis­ing and asked for their explicit con­sent. They’re hop­ing to have this in place by the end of 2011. It seems like a sim­ple solu­tion that could work for the whole industry.

Mat­ters get a bit more com­pli­cated when you’re using cook­ies on sites that you own and admin­is­ter. The direc­tive seems to imply that you still need to makes users aware of what you’re doing. But there’s a view out there that if you’re using cook­ies to improve the user’s expe­ri­ence e.g. shop­ping cart, remem­ber­ing log-ins, pre­ferred con­tent, etc, then you don’t need to get explicit consent.

So, with the end of May loom­ing, here are a few things to start planning:

• When adver­tis­ing after May, con­sider using the enhanced notice (icon) to gather con­sent or opt-out.
• Appor­tion respon­si­bil­ity for data pri­vacy within the con­text of behav­ioural adver­tis­ing with pub­lish­ers and ad networks.
• Ensure your pri­vacy pol­icy on your web­site suf­fi­ciently dis­closes the use of cook­ies and how they will be used.
• Pro­vide a sim­ple means for users to pro­vide explicit con­sent or opt-out.
• Con­sider mak­ing “do not track” func­tion­al­ity com­pat­i­ble with the lat­est incar­na­tions of browsers from Microsoft, Google and Mozilla.

Whilst it’s highly unlikely that the leg­is­la­tion is going to be enforced any­time soon, as respon­si­ble mar­keters, we all need to have a posi­tion on the direc­tive and a plan to ensure we don’t fall foul of the law. So, if you need a bit of advice, get in touch and we’ll point you in the right direction.

The death of creativity

I came across this quote from George Lois and it got me think­ing…”Cre­ativ­ity can solve almost any prob­lem. The cre­ative act, the defeat of habit by orig­i­nal­ity, over­comes every­thing.”

I’ve got a nag­ging feel­ing that mar­ket­ing automa­tion is giv­ing today’s mar­keters a num­ber of bad habits. Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly bought into the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits of auto­mated plat­forms — com­mu­ni­cat­ing at the right time based on expressed and behav­ioural data, iden­ti­fy­ing qual­ity leads and rout­ing them appro­pri­ately to sales. And once the mar­keters have got to grips with the plat­form, they deliver greater effi­cien­cies, speed­ier exe­cu­tion, more con­trol and in-depth measurement.

But, at what cost?

When talk­ing to mar­keters, their approach to cre­at­ing a new cam­paign is often to repli­cate a pro­gram, swap out the header graph­ics and change the calls to action.  Really, is that what’s going to engage their tar­get audi­ence? Surely one lead gen­er­a­tion pro­gram can’t sim­ply be re-purposed. What about audi­ence insight and under­stand­ing? Who are they, where are they in the buy­ing cycle, what are their needs from your con­tent and what’s your unique propo­si­tion that’s going to excite them?

We need to get back to the fun­da­men­tals of defin­ing the cre­ative and busi­ness require­ments of a cam­paign. Only then do we develop cre­ative con­cepts that will sup­port these require­ments and deliver the best piece of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion pos­si­ble, whilst at the same time defin­ing the opti­mal con­tact strat­egy for imple­men­ta­tion through mar­ket­ing automa­tion. It’s my belief that effec­tive cam­paign exe­cu­tion can only be realised through a com­bi­na­tion of left– and right-brain thinking.

So, if you find your auto­mated cam­paigns are deliv­er­ing less value for you over time, maybe it’s time to take a step back and breath some cre­ativ­ity back into your cam­paigns. You never know, it might just work…

Guaranteed leads. Publishers should try harder...

So here’s me think­ing that pub­lish­ers have really missed an oppor­tu­nity when it comes to pro­vid­ing guar­an­teed leads from their web properties.

Admit­tedly, whitepa­per pro­grammes work well when you’re try­ing to gen­er­ate a list of names. But, some­times that’s all they are – a list of names who are often unre­cep­tive when followed-up by tele­mar­ket­ing. Surely all of these “names” are active on the publisher’s web­site – they’ve been vis­it­ing, review­ing con­tent, con­tribut­ing in forums, etc. But all of this infor­ma­tion isn’t cap­tured when they fill-in a form and the data is passed on to the client.

Surely pub­lish­ers should be able to pro­vide some­thing that looks more like a lead than a name. Yes, they’ve reg­is­tered for a piece of high value con­tent, but there’s also so much more infor­ma­tion that can be appended to their pro­file e.g. how many times they’ve been on the web­site, areas of inter­est, lev­els of inter­ac­tion and con­tri­bu­tion, etc.

So, give me a score for each per­son that shows a com­bi­na­tion of “Pro­file Fit” and “Interest/Activity Fit”. And, as time is of the essence when hand­ing over leads (think of it as an atomic half-life of oppor­tu­nity), don’t give me a list of names once a week. Find out how to auto­mat­i­cally pass leads to our CRM sys­tem in near real-time. That’s why open APIs were invented.

In my hum­ble opin­ion, if pub­lish­ers can’t pro­vide this speed of ser­vice and level of infor­ma­tion, then guar­an­teed lead pro­grammes will become obsolete.