Digital Marketing in 2015: The Death of the Funnel

It’s no wonder that the traditional purchase funnel (aka marketing funnel) is no longer relevant to today’s average consumer; things have changed since the 1800’s when it was first introduced. Originally designed to represent the buyer’s journey, the funnel focused on the buyer’s linear migration in designated stages that started with awareness and ended with the purchase or loyalty stage. It assumed that all customers started at the top of the funnel and moved organically through the different stages. The problem is that the buyer’s journey is no longer linear (was it ever?) and the funnel is no longer pertinent, yet marketers are still referring to it when developing their marketing strategies.

What Changed?

The advancement of technological innovations has permeated the consumer’s realm by providing them with nonstop access to information and a giant increase in the available number of touchpoints. Consumers have welcomed this change and along with it, have altered the way they research, decide, and buy products, moving away from the fundamental concept of the traditional funnel.

The Shift

In the past, it was copacetic to inundate consumers with generic advertising messages that may or may not have had any relevance to the consumer. As far as the brands were concerned, the battle for the consumer was based on who had the most media spend and creative messaging. And most times, these campaigns weren’t customer-centric, they were focused on the brand and didn’t deliver any valuable information or content to the viewer.

As times changed and consumers evolved into data-informed consumers, the power began to shift from the brand to the consumer. Consumers now had the ability to share their opinion and experiences with a plethora of people via social media outlets and self-educate themselves in any stage of the decision-making process. So now, the traditional ad that would once send a consumer straight from the ad to your website no longer accomplished its main task. Rather, now consumers would view the ad and research your company, contemplate reviews, and begin a discourse through social media with other consumers who have experienced your product or service.

And if we were to force the concept of the funnel to today’s buyer journey, we would see that the consumer jumps back and forth through the different stages as they delve deeper and deeper into their research process, thus making the funnel inconsequential.

In addition to the abundance of information available for consumers, consumers can now access all of this information and more through a multitude of channels, such as mobile, desktop, in-store, etc. This creates an even bigger obstacle for the modern marketer who is trying to send their potential consumer the right message at the right time regardless of which channel they are using. The consumer is now able to skip through different stages in the decision-making process via different channels, requiring marketing teams to figure out how they can create and maintain a single view of their consumer in order to provide them with a seamless shopping experience no matter where they are.

The Impact

This shift in power from the CMO to the consumer caused a disruption in the marketing world. Marketers were no longer only focused on the brand; rather, they began to understand that the consumer and the customer experience was the key to an increase in sales and ROI.

In 2014, HBR quantified the customer experience and came to the following conclusions:

• Customers who had good past experiences spent 140% more than those who had poor past experiences
• In regards to subscription-based businesses, customers who had had poor customer experience would most likely remain a member for a little over a year whereas customers who received a high level of customer experience would most likely remain members for an additional six years

And because of this, businesses began to change the way they did marketing in order to appease their customers.

They began to give their prospects and consumers valuable content through their blogs, websites, and social media. Enhanced segmentation began to be considered, as it linked to delivering a hyper-personalized experience to their consumer. Businesses began to be available through every medium at every hour, dissipating the borders between in-store and online. And developing the right messages at the right time became more critical than ever.

Conclusion

It is easy to see why the funnel became irrelevant and why companies began to focus on the customer experience more than ever. But understanding this change is still not enough. Marketers must know exactly who their customers and prospects are, what they need, and where they’re looking to get their information. The difficulty to do all of this without the involvement of multiple touchpoints is immense, and with the touchpoints even more. Providing value to consumers has become a career within and of itself and in the next chapter we will discuss one of the most important aspects in bringing value to the customer which is through content and native advertising.

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