By : Will Kenny
It is easy to see why “the marketing funnel” is such a popular concept. Marketing is a process we use to extract a small stream of prospects and clients from a vast sea of strangers. So many writers and speakers use the funnel model to describe the process: that large crowd of potential customers at the wide end, and those select few, our actual customers, at the narrow end.
Visual images can be powerful tools to help us understand complex ideas, or to simplify sequences and processes so they are easier to work with. But they also can mislead, if the chosen image does not accurately reflect the concept in question. That’s what happens with “the marketing funnel.”
Marketing Is Not a Funnel
Marketing and sales are not funneling processes, no matter how visually appealing that image may be. As alluded to above, the process of marketing is one of narrowing the field, of sifting out the undesirable or unpromising candidates, of eliminating the chaff. It is rather like panning for gold, where you wash away a lot of worthless stuff to come up with a few precious nuggets — nuggets you can live off of.
This sifting process starts when you narrow the world at large down to a target market, whether you define that by need, company characteristics, product line, geography, industry, or other factors. It should happen again when you come in contact with interested prospects, so you will devote your attention to qualified prospects: the ones who have the budget, the support, the decision-making power to complete a profitable project with you.
In short, marketing is a series of culling steps, eliminating some players so that we can focus on the best opportunities.
A funnel does not work that way at all. Everything you pour into the top of a funnel comes out the bottom. Everything. There is no selection, no elimination of any kind.
And since every single candidate for your business — the very promising and highly qualified, and the absolutely hopeless and the high-maintenance-low-margin possibilities — would emerge from the narrow end of the funnel, what’s the point?
Truly Narrow the Stream
When you realize that you have to extract a small subset of valuable prospects and clients from a larger mass of widely varying quality, it helps you focus on a couple of key marketing activities.
One is defining your niche and focusing on those “nuggets.” It takes a lot of discipline to focus on your target market. But you generate more revenue from less work when you can develop expertise, reputation, contacts, and reusable techniques and tools, and all that happens when you have a client base that is sufficiently homogeneous to allow you to do that. After all, when you prospect for gold, you don’t just go anywhere. You go where conditions suggest that there might be gold in “them thar hills.” And you don’t search for gold the same way you do for oil, nor do you extract them and turn them into profits the same way. It is hard to be a successful prospector for “any precious stone or mineral.” Specialization leads to better results.
Another important activity that comes out of this understanding is expanding your penetration of your target market. In other words, if you were panning for gold, you would identify a promising region (your target), and then you would try to sift through as much of the material in the most promising areas as possible. The more material you handle, the more likely you are to find nuggets.
In the same vein, once you understand the series of narrowing steps that your marketing and sales process involves, you become more determined to make sure that you are visible to the widest possible audience within your target market. Depending on your business, your preferences, and your market, that could mean anything from blogging to advertising to speaking engagements to other marketing ploys. But you know that the larger the field you start with (still within a clearly defined niche, mind) the more clients, and the more profitable clients, you will eventually acquire.
Toss Your Funnel
Shotgunning your marketing messages to the widest possible audiences wastes resources, compared to the returns it generates. Marketing based on an “everything in, everything out” model – which describes a funnel – is a lot of work, and often incurs a lot of expense, given the results.
Recognize the ways in which you will filter that stream, diverting the low-value portion so that you can greatly increase the “density” of opportunities among your prospects. Define your niche, qualify your prospects, penetrate your target market, and apply your resources where they will do the most good.
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It is easy to see why “the marketing funnel” is such a popular concept. Marketing is a process we use to extract a small stream of prospects and clients from a vast sea of strangers. So many writers and speakers use the funnel model to describe the process: that large crowd of potential customers at the wide end, and those select few, our actual customers, at the narrow end.
Visual images can be powerful tools to help us understand complex ideas, or to simplify sequences and processes so they are easier to work with. But they also can mislead, if the chosen image does not accurately reflect the concept in question. That’s what happens with “the marketing funnel.”
Marketing Is Not a Funnel
Marketing and sales are not funneling processes, no matter how visually appealing that image may be. As alluded to above, the process of marketing is one of narrowing the field, of sifting out the undesirable or unpromising candidates, of eliminating the chaff. It is rather like panning for gold, where you wash away a lot of worthless stuff to come up with a few precious nuggets — nuggets you can live off of.
This sifting process starts when you narrow the world at large down to a target market, whether you define that by need, company characteristics, product line, geography, industry, or other factors. It should happen again when you come in contact with interested prospects, so you will devote your attention to qualified prospects: the ones who have the budget, the support, the decision-making power to complete a profitable project with you.
In short, marketing is a series of culling steps, eliminating some players so that we can focus on the best opportunities.
A funnel does not work that way at all. Everything you pour into the top of a funnel comes out the bottom. Everything. There is no selection, no elimination of any kind.
And since every single candidate for your business — the very promising and highly qualified, and the absolutely hopeless and the high-maintenance-low-margin possibilities — would emerge from the narrow end of the funnel, what’s the point?
Truly Narrow the Stream
When you realize that you have to extract a small subset of valuable prospects and clients from a larger mass of widely varying quality, it helps you focus on a couple of key marketing activities.
One is defining your niche and focusing on those “nuggets.” It takes a lot of discipline to focus on your target market. But you generate more revenue from less work when you can develop expertise, reputation, contacts, and reusable techniques and tools, and all that happens when you have a client base that is sufficiently homogeneous to allow you to do that. After all, when you prospect for gold, you don’t just go anywhere. You go where conditions suggest that there might be gold in “them thar hills.” And you don’t search for gold the same way you do for oil, nor do you extract them and turn them into profits the same way. It is hard to be a successful prospector for “any precious stone or mineral.” Specialization leads to better results.
Another important activity that comes out of this understanding is expanding your penetration of your target market. In other words, if you were panning for gold, you would identify a promising region (your target), and then you would try to sift through as much of the material in the most promising areas as possible. The more material you handle, the more likely you are to find nuggets.
In the same vein, once you understand the series of narrowing steps that your marketing and sales process involves, you become more determined to make sure that you are visible to the widest possible audience within your target market. Depending on your business, your preferences, and your market, that could mean anything from blogging to advertising to speaking engagements to other marketing ploys. But you know that the larger the field you start with (still within a clearly defined niche, mind) the more clients, and the more profitable clients, you will eventually acquire.
Toss Your Funnel
Shotgunning your marketing messages to the widest possible audiences wastes resources, compared to the returns it generates. Marketing based on an “everything in, everything out” model – which describes a funnel – is a lot of work, and often incurs a lot of expense, given the results.
Recognize the ways in which you will filter that stream, diverting the low-value portion so that you can greatly increase the “density” of opportunities among your prospects. Define your niche, qualify your prospects, penetrate your target market, and apply your resources where they will do the most good.
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