End of the Sales Funnel

Consumer behaviour when considering a new purchase has often been likened to a funnel - with our initial considerations being broad ( the wide part of the funnel ) to then narrow as we discount brands and products until our final purchase. Marketing positions themselves at each of these decision points, hoping to influence our decisions and behaviours in favour of the brands they represent.

The assumption is once a brand has been discounted, it is no longer part of the evaluation phase - nor would brands who are not part of the evaluation be able to enter further along this funnel.


It's a journey

The funnel was based on the fact traditional marketing revolved around ' pushing ' messages to consumers ( through limited numbers of channels, TV, Print, Outdoor ) at each of these stages. Now consumers ' pull ' content to help assist with the decision making process, as they become more quantified in their need for data to compare and evaluate our options - the rise of price and feature comparison websites, user reviews and recommendation systems pays testimony to this.

Therefore the funnel is more likened to a journey, with brands and products being able to interrupt and join the consideration path at various points as consumers become better informed - in some instances entering at the last minute pushing other products which may have been ' contenders ' all along to the side (although brands in the initial consideration phase are three times more likely to be purchased than brands who are not).

Where to be

What is evident is it no longer acceptable for brands to focus on a limited number of touch points, the fragmentation of media and virtue in how we evaluate products has changed significantly over the recent years.

With these multiple touch points organisations must ensure that internally they are ' joined up '. Companies need ensure that both the product, marketing, sales and insight data are all leveraged to ensure consistency, quality and relevance of information and product - allowing consumers to 'take' relevant information to reach decisions for themselves.


source: mckinsey the consumer journey

Brand Flocking

Previously I touched on the effects our peers, trusted information sources and relationships effect decisions ( conscious or not ) when making a purchase ( link )

Word of mouth ( WOM ) growth can be seen all around us , with the increase in social based network sites and the increase in corporate blogs and tools making it easier for us , the customer / consumer to spread the word. These tools not only effect our nearest neighbours, but also effect those further on the periphery – much in the same way birds flock.

There are a set of rules by which they operate ( these could be translated to the rules of engagement set down from the brand owner ) which eventually dictate what we see in the behavior of the flock ( or in this case, us the customer ).

There is no one leader within the group ( translated to early adopters ) but each is following a general direction independently while maintaining distance and proximity to their nearest neighbours. This unconnected unrelated set of rules can influence a great number of people to behave in a way which although on the face of it seems to have direction and purpose, does not.

This influence of a few can and does affect the mass highlighting the need ‘ If we please you , tell others – if not , tell us . '

Tagging - Trust Networks

Tagging – extending WOMA

Walking down the street, I find an interesting point of interest or product I like the look of, or even better have a great lunch time meal at a roadside café which to be honest I was not considering ……. How can I share my experience with similar people before I reach the pub tonight ? Stand there like a nutter preaching to passers by - probably not.

Some ideas could be as simple as the restaurant owner having all the comment cards in a strategic place for my viewing , a simple indication of the number of cards left of display can give me an initial indication of what delights or disaster await inside.

Taking this one step further, lets make it more contextual. Those cards need to be split into groups, gender, age, live in the area , regular visitor the list could be endless and adds context and makes the recommendation relevant to me.

This concept has been around for a while with location based marketing still trying to find a place in the marketers hearts. Issues surrounding privacy, spamming users are just the beginning of what could be one of the greatest opportunities this decade. GPS car navigation has revolutionized not only the journey on which you punch in, but also allows you a freedom of showing you what you do not know, the nearest gas station or restaurant helps calm the nerves and allows us to concentrate on the job of playing eye spy and driving the car - while we know in the background our best interests are being taken care of.

Location Based marketing though has some interesting tangents which should be explored. Rather than the straight ‘ here is a coupon ‘ for a discount in the shop you are approaching , similar to the annoying flyers being handed out on Oxford street every day, context is being added through the use of profiles and personal recommendation from similar like minded people.

This is where tagging comes in, the chance for people via their devices to share there views, tag favourite products and stores gives an exciting opportunity to extend the WOMA concept to people ( a rating scheme could be used to help rate the reviewers ) it gives back the spontaneity to the whole consuming experience ( planning which restaurant before a shopping trip may not be viable, however upon arrival viewing other peoples tags would allow for a choice to be made. ) The ability to create personal bookmarks which would be placed on a web server, it would give the location which is useful, a link into shopping services could then direct offers to the user when they login, or alternatively relevant shop offers could be delivered to the device while the prospective is in the vicinity ( or offers from competitors )

Quiet simply it works by tagging through your mobile phone a location, then adding some form of comment ‘ Excellent pasta ‘ to the tag. This is then appended to your location details and stored on a central website. Images and audio can also be added.
Shortly after your tag, another like minded person or friend ( you could save the tag as either public or to your buddies list ) will receive an alert that a tag exists, upon viewing they see your comments, picture and any voice recordings you may have made , along with your profile and rating ( a similar system to e-bay could be used to help regulate the users of the system ) and encourage genuine positive WOM experiences. They can then take up the referral , or possible voucher which could be distributed by the place in question, leaving there own feedback to compliment the tags already there.


The great thing with the system can be integration into formal recommendation portals such as Timeout, FHM and the like – with the social network playing the part of advocate or with the alert being as descriptive or succinct as you need ( a simple staring system could be displayed for speed )
marketing technology
Demonstrated through http://socialight.com

New channel - old business rules

With a whole raft of offerings out there in the DVD rental space ( which will show significant growth until broadband delivery gains the two R's of reliability and reach ) you would think that providers of the service would look for more than just price to differentiate themselves, especially for long term customer loyality and the ability to use the vehicle to enter in dialouge of futher products and services...... Not Tesco and their partnership with Video Island.

Recently the Royal mail took it upon themselves to loose a returned DVD - having to wait 4 days before I could report the problem ( which begs the argument with the rental model and costs associted to them in terms of turn around ) I was informed that I needed to complete a paper form ( which could take upto 10 days to be delivered ) to report the loss. In the mean time my account is effectivly frozen and a charge of £20 applied to this while we resolve this matter.

Services like this are built on trust - one strike and your out rules should not apply. Why also use old methods for resolving customer issues, my choice to go online already indicates how I wish to conduct business.

When your friends become spammers

Spam – Unqualified , Intrusive , Irrelevant, To frequent and normally incorrectly timed. These are some of the identifiers we associate with spam, an all too often topic in the press for the past 5 years.

More and more we are seeing word of mouth playing an important role with social networks such as MySpace connecting like minded communities together, reviews and recommendations being part of most web buying experiences adding value and a genuine non marketing voice which evidently people value.

The question is though, when do these helpful reviews, comments and feedback start becoming spam.

In the Dynamics of Viral Marketing this and the investigation of propagation of recommendations is reviewed. Using a sample size of over 4 million people with over half a million recommendations for products in the popular DVD / Music arena being tracked, it provides insight into the fascinating world of word of mouth.

Within their studies they find recommendation chains do not grow very large ( we have a greater impact with our friends than others within the same community ) highlighting the long tail of products outside the top positions making up significant percentage of sales ( Amazon having between 20 – 40 % of sales falling outside of it’s top 100,000 books ).

Interestingly as more recommendations between two similar individuals the likely hood of these being actioned upon actually decreases, therefore exhibiting the characteristics of Spam.

Some figures from the report –

• DVD’s reach a recommendation saturation point at 10 incoming referrals , with this figure changing as these two people start exchanging more recommendations the numbers drops to 5.
  This reinforcing the findings of people can become a spammer if they send too many recommendations within the community group.
• Figures differ for the ticket value and type of item ( fiction books VS technical manuals ) in terms of influence the recommendation has, therefore a person who recommends only a few products in the correct categories will be a respected peer within the community.
• 100 products amount for only 11.4% of all sales, top 1000 products amount for 27% of total sales through recommendation system.
• Some products such as fiction books only require one recommendation, further recommendations have no influence and therefore become spam.
• Providing excessive incentives for people to recommend products can weaken the credibility of community they are trying to strengthen.

The thin slice

You say fragmented and divided, I say organised and concentrated.

Marketers’ can no longer thin slice, they need to enter into a meaningful dialogue in order to capture both peoples attention and imagination.

Take a look at http://www.pandora.com for the future of how our personal media consumption can deliver both specific relevant content, while interjecting ‘ something new and surprising ‘ through a little thought and technology.