Читать книгу Social Media Marketing For Dummies - Shiv Singh - Страница 51

The marketing funnel is one of the most important metaphors in marketing today. It differentiates between prospects and customers, and maps out the journey from the point where a prospect learns about a product to when he becomes a loyal, repeat customer. Because practically every marketer uses some form of the marketing funnel, it serves an important framework through which to understand social media marketing.

The traditional marketing funnel typically has five stages, as defined by Forrester. These five stages are awareness, consideration, preference, action, and loyalty (as shown in Figure 3-1). The last stage (loyalty) has the fewest people. Those customers are the most loyal and, therefore, among the most valuable. For many marketers, marketing is fundamentally the act of moving people from having an awareness of a product, considering it along with other products, and establishing a preference for the product over the others, to eventually taking action such as purchasing it and developing loyalty toward it.

FIGURE 3-1: A marketing funnel.

You employ different marketing strategies and tactics at every stage of the marketing funnel to move the prospects along. The movement of prospects and customers is measured precisely (especially when you do this online), and if there isn’t enough movement, you need to devote more marketing dollars to pushing people through the funnel. How you spend these dollars and which investments do the most to move people through the marketing funnel is always a subject of much debate and varies by product category. Regardless, social media marketing and tapping into the social influencers with differing tactics can help with this journey.

The stages of the marketing funnel may vary from company to company. In some cases, it has changed significantly with the advent of everything digital; for others the fundamental marketing funnel is the same. Some link online funnel tracking with offline efforts, whereas others don’t. You don’t have to rigorously use the stages as we define them. It’s more important that you look at SMM in the context of how your company builds its brand, drives awareness for its products, tracks leads, enables sales, and manages loyalty. In some cases, you need to consider how you can apply SMM at the different points in an advertising campaign. Regardless, the same principles apply whether you’re looking at SMM in the context of the funnel for your entire marketing efforts or for just an online advertising campaign.