My understanding of a funnel is a chart that looks like a funnel and has stages and each stage has different people in it. That’s all cool.
My problem is the word being thrown around everywhere in every context ‘sales funnel’ ‘conversion funnel’ ‘lead gen funnel’ ‘nurture funnel’ and then in my mind i try to makes sense of things with that diagram in my head.
Even click funnels has nothing that looks, feels and talks abt tha funnel i know on their site
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The word funnel is used because, with the rise and spread of the internet & technology, the whole thrust of marketing and advertising has dramatically shifted in the last 35-40 years.
It used to be, newspaper, radio, and television were the only ways to get sales messages across to the buying public. Those methods of communication had limited specificity in the audiences they reached. There simply weren’t sophisticated tools to hone demographic data (gender, age range, HH income, education level, etc).
Marketers and advertisers use demo data to identify and craft profiles of their target market(s). The more precise that data, the more likely it is that marketing and advertising dollars will yield desired outcomes (sales, votes, changes in attitude, etc). That’s the whole idea – to get messages and advertising as close as possible to the desired audience.
The top of the funnel – the widest part – is the general population. The bottom of the funnel – the narrowest part – is the desired audience. Messaging is aimed at the narrowest part.
The internet and technology now allows for the very fine (as in detailed, granular) segmentation of audiences to enable sellers/influencers to speak directly to the people they want to speak to. It’s why I get served up online ads consistent with my interests instead of ads that are for goods, services, and lifestyles irrelevant to me.
The entity creating those ads relevant to me are more likely to have a successful interaction with me than with someone who is not interested in, say, cars or cats or coffee.
Anyone with a message, a product to sell, a service to promote knows the demo profile of the audience most likely to accept their message and buy their widget or widget service. It’s called market segmentation. BF Goodrich tires has sophisticated data about the buyers of its products across its product line. They insert their messaging in places their buyers engage – car enthusiast magazines, car events, OE fitment on vehicles that their buyers are most likely to purchase (big money in replacement tires). But not every car event is a good match for BFG. Grand Prix racing neither matches up tightly with their buying pool nor their product image (hi Michelin!). However, rally does. So BFG sponsors rally events.
Hope that helps. It’s early and I’m still on my first cuppa coffee.
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