Beyond Marketing Funnels

Traditional marketers tend to think about marketing in terms of funnels. The assumed predictable stages include awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. But most seasoned marketers will also tell you that that journey isn’t a predictable one.

It’s time to rethink the marketing funnel and home in on the seductive nature of “awareness, consideration and purchase” stages and think of it as: attraction.

Because we live in a relational world, the human need for connection, social ties, belonging, comfort, and safety always plays a conscious or subconscious role in our attraction to brands.

Decisions about brands or products that we’re called to or repelled by tend to happen quickly, sometimes emotionally, and often subconsciously.

Our innate capacity for experiencing attraction is just one side of the equation; brands have to be attractive in order to attract the right customers.

Here are three steps to attract more of the right kind of customers.

ONE: Create Fascination with Sensory Allure
“Fascination” is a brand flirtation that taps into the senses of prospects. Here the prospect is wooed when the right mixture of sensory elements stops them in their tracks.

Think about the beautiful curves of the Coca-Cola bottle; the clean lines of Apple product design; the chromed thunder of a Harley-Davidson. All these carefully orchestrated attributes create sensory fascination that attracts just the right prospect.

The thoughtful tone of your message, the special touch of your product design, the joyous feel of your stores, and the kindness of your customer service team all could play a role in creating customer allure and fascination.

TWO: Seduce with Emotion
Once we have a prospect sensually fascinated, it’s time to seduce them with emotion.

Unless it’s a commodity purchase like bread or a need-purchase like electric utilities, we use reason to assess a big product purchase. But we only act when our emotions are engaged.

Think about the last car you bought. You had a list of needs like price, size, miles, and fuel efficiency. But you likely only purchased the car that felt right. When your brand feel taps into the emotions of your customer a relationship ensues.

When we build emotional bridges between us and our prospects through empathy, flexibility, generosity, and warmth we tend to have a much easier time attracting and winning the right ones.

THREE: Engage with Trust.
Once we engage our prospect’s emotions, it’s time to earn their trust. Trust earning happens by demonstrating integrity, generosity, and reliability — before, during and after the sale.

When we clearly state and keep our customer promise, we start earning trust.

When our company is generous by offering product samples or a free trial period, we earn trust.

When our company ships a reliable product or provides a predictably good service, we deepen trust.

When our company earns customer trust, our customers are more likely to commit to a lasting relationship with our brand so long as we continue to deliver on our promises.

By changing from the traditional “funnel thinking” and shifting to customer attraction with allure, emotion, and trust-building, we can get out of the game of chasing customers and, instead, attract them.

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