Monthly Archives: June 2012

Funnel Fun

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I don’t believe in sales funnels. It isn’t that they don’t exist or that customers no longer suffer requisite discovery steps before making a purchase. I don’t believe in sales funnels because one of marketing’s missions is to eliminate friction, to grease the path to purchase. Eliminating levels in the prototypical sales funnel speeds revenues and early retirement. It turns sales teams into order takers. It makes companies famous. But it ain’t easy. For green marketers reading this memo, typical B2B sales funnels have a number of stages where, according to ancient lore, potential buyers fall out. The funnel concept was born in the old days when mass communications were the most common promotional tool. Theory said that you had to cast your lead generation net wide, gathering anything that smelled like a prospect, then toss aside those that failed tests at each narrower neck in the sales funnel. This … Continue reading →

Social Shortcomings

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Social marketing isn’t it. With humans living on the net, and with obvious advantages to social media manipulations as a marketing tactic, many people have happily abandoned other forms of promotions in favor of social. Later they unhappily abandon their jobs to fill slots in unemployment lines. Humans, being the quirky bunch they are, need a number of things to occur before a purchase. Most of all they need to perceive value in a product and believe the value will actually be delivered. Good marketers can create a brand (the basic value proposition) and awareness of the brand, then discover this is not enough. Alone, knowing a brand and that it makes a promise is weak soup that omits essential ingredients in the marketer’s cookbook. No wonder social marketing often tastes bland. To believe in a brand requires some form of “proof.” This may be fanciful or it may be … Continue reading →

Driving on the RIM

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When was the last time you heard somebody use the word “crackberry”? I recall a Southwest Airlines flight attendant uttering that abstraction when comically ordering passengers to turn off electronic gizmos. It was a period in history with Research In Motion (RIM) was, well, flying high. Their email push technology was new, hot, addictive for road warriors and earned a share price that startled even Silicon Valley investors. RIM stock has fallen 94% since then. RIM was a one-trick technology. It certainly filled a need, but offered something that was cloanable, and eventually obsoleted by mass adoption of wireless data plans. Today a cheap feature phone can make IMAP connections to any email server and deliver the same degree of digital addiction that once made RIM famous. Some analysts claim RIM is now worth nothing except the value of their patent portfolio. Success often breeds failure. Incessant laurel sniffing leads … Continue reading →