For years, marketers strictly followed the traditional marketing funnel model, blissfully disregarding the evolving consumer buying journey. But the stalwart tool is now falling short, unable to effectively capture the intricate, non-linear route of the modern consumer from awareness to purchase. Present day consumers, armed with myriad options, are active players in their buying journey, often bypassing marketer’s carefully devised strategies. Given the continuous rise of digital platforms, adopting a nuanced, consumer-centric marketing approach is becoming increasingly crucial.
Based on this shift in consumer behavior, marketers are being urged to overhaul their strategies and shed the tightly held tactics that dominated their earlier approaches. Chief marketing officers (CMOs) wanting to place their brands at industry vanguards must discard archaic strategies, instead concentrating their efforts on converting their superfans – the best of the best.
Source: Why The Marketing Funnel Is Dead (And How To Evolve).
The advancement of paid social media channels has considerably expanded its influence beyond the funnel’s top, significantly impacting the key marketing metric – Cost per Acquisition (CPA). However, overall reliance on these platforms can become a double-edged sword with soaring costs leading to financial losses.
The phasing out of third-party cookies heralds a significant shift in data collection strategies. Today’s main challenge for marketers is to identify the truth from vast amounts of approximations provided by modeled data. To overcome this, they must complement this data with other organic insights to base their understanding of consumer behavior on solid grounds.
Faced with a media inflation rate exceeding 5%, corporations demand efficiency, often affecting campaign quality and consumer engagement. Thus, marketers must innovate to optimize budgets without compromising their long-term vision and brand growth strategies.
Superfan marketing provides a strategic shift that values a deep understanding of a brand’s real VIPs – the superfans. In the era post third-party cookies, marketers must return to the basics and profoundly understand their consumers. This means understanding specific customer needs, preferences and behaviours, and crafting personalized journeys that cater to these.
Such superfans form the core of this approach. Targeting prospective superfans refers to investing resources to delve deep into understanding what drives them. This involves crafting personalized journeys that directly cater to the needs and preferences of your superfan segment.
Data, media and technology teams need to collaborate within organizations to allow data insights to guide media planning and technology deployment, constantly analyzing and refining your approach using data and real-time feedback.
Under traditional marketing, every prospect has value. However, this is no longer the truth. To make a real difference, concentrate your marketing efforts only on your superfans. By stepping away from the outdated marketing funnel, savvy CMOs can trailblaze the future.
Source: Why The Marketing Funnel Is Dead (And How To Evolve).
