You may have heard of the “marketing funnel.” It’s been around for more than 100 years, and guided businesses as they tried to guide potential customers through a series of narrowing channels, from awareness to consideration, to decision, then loyalty – which marks the moment of victory.
Well, forget all that. As Forbes magazine noted not long ago, the funnel is “a concept laughably out of sync with the multifaceted, unpredictable nature of today’s consumer…. Today’s consumers, armed with information and options, don’t just passively drift down a funnel. They’re active players, often sidestepping our best-laid marketing strategies.”
So what’s a business executive to do? Well, you can start by taking a course offered this fall by Executive Education at the Darla Moore School of Business: Marketing Navigator: Insight for Executives.
The course will be taught by the Darla Moore School’s senior director of marketing and communications, Adam Brown, over three half-day sessions on October 3, 10 and 24. Brown says the course is “Designed for upper-level managers who aren’t directly engaged in marketing, but need a familiarity with how to establish a narrative for selling.” A narrative that works, that is – not the funnel.
Brown says we should forget the funnel and think in terms of a journey, one that has four stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Purchase
- Service
Brown urges participants to imagine compelling stories that they’ve learned about from popular culture. It tends to have certain elements.
There’s a hero, of course. Think Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars” or Frodo (or Bilbo) in The Lord of the Rings.
Then you have a trusted guide that the hero can rely upon. That’s Obi-Wan Kenobi or Gandalf.
The story follows several predictable stages. Luke or Frodo faces a problem that the trusted guide explains to him. Then he relies on the guide to teach him how to overcome the problem. The guide calls the hero to action, and the hero must make a decision – will he become a Jedi, or take the ring to Mount Doom?
“The journey in marketing is like that,” says Brown. And there are more stages involved, through and beyond the initial purchase. How did the purchase go? The service provided by the “hero” – the business – determines whether a loyal customer develops.
The ExecEd course is about emerging successfully at the end in the real world, rather than a galaxy far, far away. Participants will be taught to understand the core principals of digital marketing tactics strategically, including the ways these increase your brand value and impact.
Topics covered include:
- Inbound and outbound marketing
- Brand positioning
- The customer journey
- Adding value with digital marketing
Adam Brown wants you to know something about him: While he has been involved with academia for eight years, before that he worked in the corporate world. He knows what it’s like out there. You’ll want to consider him as your “trusted guide” for those three days in November.
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