Flip the Funnel

The Funnel Is Flawed

Think of the traditional marketing process as a funnel through which information flows in four stages: “awareness, interest, desire and action” (AIDA). The wide end of the funnel is the awareness stage, where companies spend most of their marketing budgets on advertising to gain notice from a broad group of consumers. As the funnel narrows, it filters the pool of perspective buyers and the interest stage becomes important. However, creating and maintaining an appeal to cynical or apathetic consumers amid today’s frenzied media climate is a challenge. The next phase of the funnel metaphor is desire, where some consumers make a conscious decision to purchase your offering. Making this breakthrough is tough in a world where thousands of secret sauces hotly contend with each other, but creating “intent to purchase is 95% of the battle won.” After desire comes action. In this phase, consumers will buy your product, as long as they aren’t distracted by the garish displays for thousands of other products on the shelves or by some Twitter post in the online world. The funnel is flawed. The main reasons are:

• It’s obsolete – The funnel depicts...