The New-age Marketing Funnel
The technological innovation over the years has led to wide use of technology in every sphere of life. Business houses too have adopted the digital behaviors and depend a lot on the world wide web, e-commerce, mobile computing and social media networking. The enterprises today while moving on to become global entities, are shifting from the paradigm of individual customers to customer networks. This brings about the need for changes in the marketing strategies and models of the business enterprises.
Being one of the oldest and widely accepted models, the marketing funnel is based on the psychological state of mind of a customer and is related to awareness of the product, consideration, preference and actions leading to purchase of the product or service. The aggressive competitive environment with customer retention as the key factor has led to addition of loyalty as the fifth stage in the marketing funnel. However, in the days of frequent technological innovations and spread of knowledge through social media and online information, the enterprises now face challenges of marketing through the diversity of digital content.
The traditional marketing formats had TV broadcast messages and advertisements playing a dominating role in the decision-making process of the customers. However, today social media campaigns , network communications , blogs and search engine optimization tools hold the key to the decision making process of the customers. Further the diversity of digital content brings to fore the fact that only the most engaged and ardent customers are loyal and repeat purchases. Thus, adding advocacy as the sixth dimension to the marketing funnel.
By taking over the role as brand ambassadors these loyal customers advocate positive messages and provide online testimony of the business and the products and services. Such advocacy later on appears through various social media networks in the form of tweets, likes and product reviews. Further , the marketing automation tools pave way for these products to appear on the search engine results leading to newer market opportunities.
Rather than moving away from the old techniques enterprises today thus need to make use of the tradition marketing funnels along with the new age changes. By deploying, inspiring, measuring and nurturing every kind of communications systems and advocacy in social media and the World Wide Web, enterprises can face the challenges of building a valuable and strong customer relationship in the digital age.
Enterprises need to pave way for streamlining the marketing funnel and plug in the leaks. The marketing initiatives alone can only ensure the sales lead to stay engaged. With marketing automation tools forming the conduit in the marketing funnel, strategic management of lead scoring and lead nurturing processes will help enterprises win over prospects and challenging business situations.
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