Whoa: The "marketing funnel" is supply-side
Is this why we waste so much money on bad marketing?
Hi all -
Everything that’s wrong about marketing comes from the supply-side. Demand-driven startups and growth organizations focus on the demand-side. It’s the Copernican revolution; here we overthrow the religious supply-side zealots.
I realized something this week that made me rethink what I know about marketing.
Which is: The “marketing funnel” is a supply-side concept.
Here is an example of a marketing funnel:
The marketing funnel assesses the evolving relationship between a prospective customer and your company. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it is supply-side: It focuses on things that matter to your business, rather than things that matter to your customer.
Worse, the result of thinking in terms of funnels like this is that it encourages metrics and goals based on this funnel.
In B2B, this leads to the worst kind of persona-based marketing and sales. The kind I rail about every other week (here, here, here…)
What’s the demand-side “funnel”?
It’s the customer’s journey from “needing to change” to “no longer needing to change”. This journey happens independent of your product; your product may fit into this journey, but it is a mere supporting character and never at center stage.
My favorite visualization comes from Joe Norman’s Applied Complexity Science newsletter, and in its original context it has nothing to do with marketing or sales:
Your prospect doesn’t need to change; then one day something happens and they might need to change; their world temporarily goes out of whack and they need to solve a problem and find a new normal. Maybe you’re part of that new normal.
What does this mean for your marketing?
It means you sell when their world is changing. And you build awareness when their world isn’t.
Which segregates your marketing into two different pieces that should NOT be mixed:
The awareness layer: Marketing that’s based SOLELY on who people are, focused ENTIRELY on what matters to them and NEVER on your product
The conversion layer: Marketing/selling that happens based on what happens in their worlds, focused ENTIRELY on helping them successfully navigate from “normal” to “new normal” and ONLY IN THAT CONTEXT on your product
Rob