Why the marketing funnel is not dead

The marketing funnel is not dead. It cannot be dead because it is not a thing.

People in social media especially like to pronounce the death of everything old. We have to make way for the new. But we have to be careful that we aren't throwing away what's important just because it's not shiny.

The marketing funnel has become the standard but it is just a representation of marketing's effect on the organization.

The actual thing is measurement. Getting rid of the funnel, as a model, is fine. It doesn't matter. However, if you are going to remove one model, then be sure you have a new one to put in place.

Considerations

Building a new measurement model is going to be unique to your company but some high-level concepts you should include are:
- Raw marketing reach. It is important to know how far your marketing reaches. Or how many people are responding to your outreach.
- Qualified marketing leads. You need to know out of your entire audience what subset of fall within your traget market and are, or could become, sales ready.
- Bottom line. Measure the ROI for your campaigns. It's difficult to track marketing from start to finish but when you can create that path, it helps to show the value of marketing.
- Proxy measurements. Following on the point above. Marketing isn't responsible for the revenue coming in - that's the role of sales. But it introduces some variability into measuring your effectiveness. Attaching revenue amounts to activities that marketing does control, allows you to rate how well your different efforts are doing.

Inbound Marketing Summit Wrap-up #IMS09

I took notes during the Inbound Marketing Summit (IMS) in Dallas so that I could post about each of the individual presentations. I also decided to do something that I've feel doesn't get enough emphasis coming out of conferences -- what are the immediate actions you can do to start taking advantage of what you've just learned. These aren't intended to be full plans but just the first thing to break the interia of doing something new.

So, here is my list of the presenters, their presentation, and my action take-away. You can click through to any of the individual posts to see more of my notes.

• Aaron Strout - I'm Your Customer and I Can't Hear You
  Take Away: Listen to your customers are talking (not just what they are saying).
• Panel: Innovative Marketing Programs Using New Media
  Take Away: Discover what niche communities your customers are already participating in.
• Chris Brogan - You Shall Know Us By Our Dialtone
  Take Away: Create a main, central location that you own to use as the call to action.
• Mike Volpe - SEO 101
  Take Away: List the terms you want to be found on in Google. Be realistic! (Remember the ninjas)
• Tim Marklein - Advocacy, Badvocacy, and Upsetting the Apple Cart
  Take Away: Inoculate your legal team against the shock of using social media.
• Chris Kieff - Best Practices for Listening and Engaging Consumers in Social Networks
  Take Away: Pick a community and find a way to engage with them.
• Bill Tolany - Q&A with Whole Foods
  Take Away: Give guidelines/direction in social media to the people closest to your customers.
• Panel: Listening and Monitoring – The new way to market
  Take Away: Find a conversation that is happening about your company in a space you haven't been monitoring before.
• Chris Bowzer - Art of Persuasion in the New Content Marketing World
  Take Away: Pick at least one landing page -- Does the page lead your users deeper into your site? How can you create a path to lead users into your site?
• Rick Frantz - Discover what really works in optimization
  Take Away: Write down your value proposition. Compare it to your compeition and evaluate if it's a real differentiator.
• Mike Walsh - Discovering the Power of your Community
  Take Away: Look at all your social networks and determine where you can focus your attention.
• Mike Moran - Internet Marketing by the Numbers
  Take Away: Determine what your conversions are and your current conversion rate for those.
• Greg Matthews - Social Media from the Inside: A Case Study
  Take Away: Start a personal blog so you get familiar with the tools for when your business is ready to jump in.
• Paula Berg - Nuts about Online Communication
  Take Away: Make a social media fire-drill plan. Practice it!
• Greg Cangialosi - Extending the Reach of email
  Take Away: If you haven't segmented, look for at least 2-3 segments you can create for your lists. If you haven't tested, pick one area you can start doing A/B testing on – subject lines are good to start with.
• Jake McKee - How LEGO Caught the Cluetrain
  Take Away: Determine if you have customers outside your normal demographic that are high-value.
• Giovanni Gallucci - From 0 to Social in 50 Minutes – Extreme Social Media for Business

If you attended IMS09, or have heard any of these presentations, or thoughts on social media, share what you would want someone to know as they try something new.

Giovanni Gallucci - From 0 to Social in 50 Minutes

Presenters: Giovanni Gallucci of Giovanni Gallucci

Title: From 0 to Social in 50 Minutes – Extreme Social Media for Business

Notes:

• Zappos didn't get huge because of Twitter. They got huge because they changed their culture to trust their employees and providing more customer service than anyone else.

• Search Engines – especially Google – still love social networks because amount of traffic is still important to them; context is important and soc nets have groups for everything; and search engines link out to other sites.

Jake McKee - How LEGO Caught the Cluetrain

Presenter: Jake McKee of Ant's Eye View

Title: How LEGO Caught the Cluetrain

Main Point: Embrace what your community is doing without your help. Also look at highly-engaged but small segments of your market – they might provide a new way for you to do business.

Take-away Action: Determine if you have customers outside your normal demographic that are high-value.

Notes:

• Lego didn't accept “unsolicited” product ideas. This turned into a culture that Lego couldn't talk with their customers at all.

• Lego noticed that Adult Consumers had created a large secondary market for trading/purchasing pieces. And that community had already created tools that the community wanted/needed.

• When you have community members committed and they come to you for acknowledgment, you should ask what you can do for them.

• Talking with the highly engaged minority can provide a lot of good information.

• Changes to social media engagement starts with a change to culture inside the company.

• Core of Lego community effort focused around their shift from selling boxes to creating a creative medium (i.e. what you can build)

• Lego has a tool that you can design an object, submit it, and have just the pieces you need to build that model sent to you.

• Take advantage of consumer evangelists can be more effective than your own PR.

Greg Cangialosi - Extending the Reach of Email

Presenter: Greg Cangialosi of Blue Sky Factory

Title: Extending the Reach of email

Main Point: Look for the low-hanging fruit of email marketing to make it better.

Take-away Action: If you haven't segmented, look for at least 2-3 segments you can create for your lists. If you haven't tested, pick one area you can start doing A/B testing on – subject lines are good to start with.

Notes:

• 3 Types of Email: Social, Marketing, Transactional

• Make it easy for people to subscribe. Don't put up barriers or ask for too much information

• Segment your audience data (demographics). Segment what content your users get. Allow users to manage their own content preferences. Segment on behaviors (especially good for follow-up segments)

• Email provides an unbelievable opportunity for A/B testing to optimize your marketing

  • Subject Lines

  • Copy & Creative

  • Call to Action

  • Time of Day

• When people stop responding to your emails, find a way to re-engage them. Or, if they won't engage, start putting them into a drip campaign that is different than your master list. Maybe quarterly, or a specific request to confirm their interest.

• Email is the common currency of Web2.0; All social networks require using email to sign up.

• Email can be a key driver of social content. Convert your email lists into your community on social networks. It is a good way to jumpstart those efforts.

Paula Berg - Nuts about Online Communication

Presenter: Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines

Title: Nuts about Online Communication

Main Point: Establish yourself in social media channels before the crisis hits

Take-away Action: Make a social media fire-drill plan. Practice it!

Notes:

• Picked 30 employees from all over the company who oozed pride about working at Southwest

• The blog has continued to increase in readership over the last 3 years

• We can't control the conversation but we can lead with our POV and facts about what we are doing. Try to make sure we are staying ahead of current news trends so we can talk about what is relevant to people.

• Being a human being during blogger relations really got a positive response from bloggers

• Blogs allow the public to share positive views of your company, something that media usually isn't looking for.

• Southwest posted a video of their rapping flight attendant. They didn't wait for a consumer to put it up, they took the opportunity to show their commitment to flight attendants personalizing the experience.

• Social media presence has started to boil down to the people who really want to engage with us.

• You have all the talent you need already in your company.

Greg Matthews - Social Business from the Inside

Presenter: Greg Matthews of Humana

Title: Social Business from the Inside: A Case Study

Main Point: Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

Take-away Action: Start a personal blog so you get familiar with the tools for when your business is ready to jump in.

Notes:

• We are changing from an information economy to a collaboration economy.

• Business is like a small town. They are building pieces that help them work better as a corporate community.

• Use social media (like Twitter) for taking meeting notes. Something that is immediately posted and public for people to check afterwards. (And contribute?)

• Take what's fun and then make it healthy. That's how Humana approaches making games.

• “We don't know what the long-term benefits of our projects will be, but we are working to find out.”