The Path to Product Excellence: Avoiding Common Pitfalls and Enhancing Commun...
SME Topeka - Turning Leads into Advocates
1. The Marketing HourglassTurning Leads Into Advocates Sales & Marketing Executives of Topeka September 13, 2011 Prepared by Bill Brelsford
2. The Duct Tape Marketing Brand Leading small business web site Forbes favorite for small business and marketing Featured Intuit, AMEX, HP, AT&T, Sage Software, Dell, Business Week, New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, AdAge Duct Tape Marketing Book Referral Engine Book
20. Action Steps Understand your customers timing triggers Conduct surveys and customer interviews Identify gaps in your marketing hourglass What do you need to fill the gaps? Think about the shape of your hourglass Free Signature Brand Audit www.RebarBusinessBuilders.com
21. For More Information Bill Brelsford Rebar Business Builders bill@rebarbusinessbuilders.com 913.962.9261 www.RebarBusinessBuilders.com Subscribe to The Business Builder newsletter Download free eBooks Subscribe to my blog Links to connect on social media
Editor's Notes
I’d like to thank Marsha for inviting me to speak today. I’d also like to thank Kathy for helping me get prepared and set upIt good to be back here in Topeka. I went to school at Washburn and lived here for a number of years after that, but it’s been a while since I have visited so it’s nice to see some of the changes that have taken place and it’s also nice to see several familiar faces here as well.Tonight I would like to share with you the concept of the Marketing Hourglass, which is something we use in Duct Tape Marketing to create a process for intentionally moving prospective customers along the logical path from initial awareness to advocate.
And we do this so that people will BuyBuy more than onceTell their friends to buyThere is another step in there labeled Try, I’ll talk about that more in a minute
When you overlay our definition of marketing with the intentional act of turning know, like and trust into try, buy, repeat, and refer you get the entire logical path for moving someone from initial awareness to advocate. Now that we know the path, we need to create a logical, step-by-step program to move people through each of these steps.
So here is a scenario that I often see in companies that have not been exposed to this idea of the hourglass.Companies spend a lot of money on awareness, getting people to know them.Then they expect people to buy from them because they know them. They tend to skip the like, trust, and try stepsOnce they make a sale, they typically try to stay on top of repeat sales, but it is usually handled by the sales role and not the marketing role. So if the sales person isn’t asking the right questions at the right time, they often miss out on sales. This is where marketing can help out by continuing to educate about offerings so sales can cross-sell and up-sell more easily.Then we expect people to refer us to others, but they don’t have a system in place for generating and managing the referral process
So here is a sample hourglass that shows the different steps of the hourglass along with the different tools and tactics you can use in each phase. I realize this is difficult to read and I should have included a full page version of this. I’ll tell you what, you each should have a feedback form. If you would like a full page copy of this slide just write “hourglass” on the bottom of page, make sure you include your email address, and I’ll send you a copy. I will also send you a full page, blank hourglass that you can fill in for yourselfIf you don’t have a feedback form, write hourglass on your business card and give that to me and I’ll see you get one.
I want to wrap up with a final thought about the shape of your marketing hourglass.Most of us instinctively think we want more leads - more people into the top of our hourglass.But what if we focused on changing the shape of our hourglass?
This is just a reminder of something that we all know, but is easy to forget in practice, that it is generally cheaper to market to our existing customers, than it is to spend money marketing to strangers.When we focus primarily on getting more people into the top of the funnel or hourglass, we are using more expensive marketing tactics, trying to reach prospects who we haven’t had a chance to qualify. At the same time, we are ignoring the bottom half of the hourglass where the highly qualified prospects are (they have already bought from us once) and we can reach them much more inexpensively.
I’m not much of an artist, but what I was trying to show here is an hourglass with less of a taper to it. The idea being - What if we focused on getting fewer, but more qualified prospects ? So that a greater percentage of people who came to know us, also made it through the like, trust, and try steps.How would business be different then? What would you have to do to make that happen?
What if we focused on expanding the bottom of our hourglass, so we sold more to our existing customers and the people they refer to us?Again, How would business be different then? What would you have to do to make that happen?
If you would like to put some of these ideas into practice, here are a few action steps for you to considerFirst, I would suggest trying to learn all you can about your customers timing triggers and their motivations for buyingSecond, I would make a sketch of the marketing hourglass and fill in the tools and tactics that you use in each step. This will help you identify and gaps you may need to address.Next, give some thought to the shape of your hourglass and ask yourself if what you need is more leads or is there a better way to use your marketing resources?Last, if you would like to review your hourglass with me, you can take advantage of out complimentary Signature Brand Audit. You can start that process by visiting my website and look for the big orange button, or you can check that box on your Feedback Form.