Hourglass Marketing

The marketing process is often depicted as a funnel.  The funnel guides the consumer from the widest part, his awareness of a product, down to the thinnest part, the actual purchase of a product.  The funnel image is a great tool for describing the marketing process. However, for as long as I’ve been exposed to the funnel, I’ve had an issue with it: The sale of a product is not the end of the marketing process.  In fact, it’s a point at which a whole other process kicks off that culminates in either repeat business or referrals.

I struggled with how best to articulate this concept for a while until I stumbled upon Duct Tape Marketing’s blog post, “The Easiest Way to Describe the Marketing Process.”  In that post, John Jantsch explains the process, not as a funnel, but as an hourglass.  This was a “duh” moment for me, and I immediately decided that I needed to start using this imagery (thanks, John!).

The Two Halves of the Hourglass

The reason the hourglass works so well is because it’s basically two funnels, one stacked inverted upon the other.  The top half is the marketing funnel that we all have come to know and love/hate.  It deals with the customer acquisition part of the marketing process.  In the top half of the hourglass, we’re going out to a wide pool of consumers, and slowly guiding them towards the purchase of the product that we’re selling.  The tools to do this are the well-known marketing tools of advertising, PR, demoing, sampling, etc.

The second half of the hourglass is where this whole concept gets interesting.  The traditional funnel model, essentially says that once you’ve made the sale, your marketing job is over.  If you want to make more sales, go back to the top of the funnel.  The hourglass, however, acknowledges that there are better and more efficient ways to make additional sales.  As the consumer (or the grain of sand) passes through the middle of the hourglass he comes out on the other side in a process that aims to keep that customer coming back as a repeat customer and/or or to have that customer refer another customer to your product.

The second half of the hourglass is so important because the repeat customer, or the customer that will evangelize your product is the holy grail of any business.  Having every single sale come through the top half of the hourglass means lots of new customer acquisition, which is expensive, and time consuming.  Every grain of sand going through the top half of the hourglass is a single sale.  If you want another sale, you need another grain of sand.  When you get repeat business and referrals, it means that the first process yields multiple sales.  Every grain of sand through the top half of the hourglass can yield an exponentially larger number of sales. Some businesses do the second half of this process so well, that they can eventually forego the entire first half.  Isn’t that the dream?  When you no longer have to worry about finding new customers, and your customers instead find you, or just keep returning to you?

Expressing the Halves of the Hourglass

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing expressed the different steps involved in the hourglass process of marketing in his own way, but what follows are the steps as I see them.  In some places, they’re simpler, in others more elaborate.  In the end, we’re expressing the same thing, but using different methods.

Awareness:  The consumer becomes aware of your product or service. At this point, all that’s happened is that he now knows it exists. If you sell purple widgets, this is the point where you need to make people aware the purple widgets exist and are for sale.

Interest:  The customer knows the product exists, and now he’s interested in learning more about it.  This is where you get to educate the consumer as to why he needs a purple widget.

Intent:  The consumer has now done his homework and knows he wants to buy.  At this point, he’s just looking for where to buy it.  The idea here is to make it as painless as possible for the consumer to buy your purple widget.

Purchase/Sale:  The consumer has purchased your purple widget.

Experience:  Now that the consumer has purchased your purple widget, you better be sure the experience he has with it is positive.  This comes down to making sure you can deliver on what was promised.  If you can’t, forget about getting return business.  Bonus points if you can overdeliver on what was promised.

Trust/Identify:  Assuming that the consumer is happy with his purple widget, you now have an opportunity to create a link with him.  You can forge a relationship with this consumer.  Some companies are doing this through loyalty programs, others are experimenting with social media to find new ways to connect with their customers, and the best companies realize that no matter what they do, this is all about delivering top-notch customer service and showing the customer just how much he means to them.

Repeat/Refer:  If you do the above steps correctly, the customer will gladly purchase from you again, and he’ll probably even tell his friends that they should purchase from you as well.  All of a sudden, all of the people he knows are getting their purple widgets from you.

Use Hourglass Marketing

So much emphasis is put on the top funnel in marketing because it’s the hard part.  You have to take non-believers, and get them to buy from you.  The bottom half of the hourglass is easy.  It’s just a matter of delivering on your promises, treating your customers like the valued people they are, and making it easy for them to come back, and to tell their friends how great you are.  Unfortunately, because we’re often so busy focusing on the tough first half, we forget about the second half.  The hourglass as a whole is important, and truly successful businesses know this.

If you want your business to succeed, use the hourglass.

Image courtesy of secubie.