The traditional ‘Marketing / Sales / Adoption Funnel’ is one of the key models used by marketers to outline the progression of potential customers from initial awareness to purchase. The ‘Marketing Hourglass’ extends the customer journey beyond purchase as they adopt and then in-turn ‘market’ the product / service / brand, ultimately generating advocacy and evangelism. The Marketing Hourglass provides a model for marketers to progress potential and active customers through their levels of engagement by:
defining characteristics and behaviour at each level;
understanding the dynamics and motivations for customers to move between levels; identifying marketing strategies and tactics to ‘manage’ customers through their journeys to enhance customer experience and increase engagement and value; applying appropriate measurements at each level to determine progress and ROI.
The Marketing Funnel, Sales Funnel or Adoption Funnel, as the concept is commonly referred to, is one of the key marketing models used by companies and consultants to outline the progression of potential customers from first awareness of a product, service or brand through to purchase.It provides a picture of how customers can be segmented into different stages as they move along a journey, directed by marketing and/or in-product messaging, to create the desired action, i.e. making a purchase or subscribing to a service.However, product adoption can be extended further to a point where the customer actually ‘markets’ on the product or brands behalf; i.e. they become advocates or evangelists who proactively spread marketing’s most valuable asset of all: word-of-mouth.The traditional ‘funnel’ therefore doesn’t illustrate the complete journey of a customer. An ‘hourglass’ model would be more appropriate; where the action of purchase / sign-up is merely the central point, and the progression of the customer extends beyond the funnel through additional stages of engagement with the product to ultimately become advocates / evangelists.The model to follow defines this progression and provides a concept for how marketers can migrate potential and active customers through their levels of engagement.The benefits for the marketer are to firstly define the characteristics of customers at each level, and then to understand the processes involved in moving between each level. In this respect marketing strategies and tactics can be developed to ‘manage’ the customer through their journey in order to maximise their experience, value and engagement.