Underneath the Funnel
How social data flips and extends the purchase funnel.
How social data flips and extends the purchase funnel.
The traditional purchase funnel hasn’t changed much since its invention in 1898. Although there are many different versions of it, the basic “AIDA” model (awareness>interest>desire>action) remains the same:
Until recently, once the consumer entered the company’s CRM, she was marketed to in a more traditional way, via email, postal mail, and telemarketing. In the case of digital media tactics, the consumer could reasonably be expected to be bombarded with retargeting ads for the remainder of her life (or, until she cleared her cookies), but that was the extent of things. Fast-forward a few years, and all of a sudden Salesforce and Oracle are snatching up social media and measurement companies like they were going out of style. As I was writing my recent report on data management, I wondered: did they see this?
The perfect storm of advanced, extensible CRM platform technology, near ubiquitous availability and scale of social signals, and ability to activate first-party data has extended the purchase funnel. Once the consumer “drops through,” the real action starts.
To navigate the consumer from brand awareness, all the way through to actually selling on behalf of a brand takes an understanding of data and its application to each step in the journey. The most successful companies leveraging this new inverted funnel paradigm are aligning their first-party CRM data with social affinity data to get a 360-degree view of their typical consumer – and modeling against that view to produce repeatable marketing outcomes.
What does that mean? It’s not enough to understand your brand’s core demographic (e.g., male, aged 25-36, single family home, income >$125,000). That data is important, and you can certainly make somewhat efficient digital media decisions with it. Once that person expresses “desire” by visiting your website, you can certainly retarget her. And, once she finally purchases, you can pretend you “own” her, and deploy the various traditional CRM marketing tactics to create return purchases. All well and good.
The challenge is getting that person to like you back, and mutually engage with your brand. Once she is in your CRM, are you prepared to deliver new content to her via social media channels? Can you find the linkages between her and her Internet friends, and get downstream of her activity via social affinity signals? Ultimately, can you create enough incentive, through affiliate programs, social gaming, couponing, or other active programs, to enable her to actually sell on your behalf? That is today’s digital marketing challenge – and it resides inside an integrated social CRM.
That’s why Salesforce bought Radian6 and Buddy Media, and why Oracle bought Vitrue and Involver. It will take some time for these new social data tools to get properly embedded into the traditional CRM, and even longer for marketers to get adept at leveraging them at scale – but we’re now living in an inverted funnel world. Be prepared to turn your thinking about digital marketing upside down.