The marketing funnel as we know it is fast becoming obsolete. Especially when it comes to winning the love of conscious, sustainable audiences.
We are now clearly in a ‘values-first’ era of business. Which means this entire global shift towards sustainability, equality, openness, privacy, earth-friendliness, body-positivity etc. is not driven by brands but audiences.
And it’s not just a small segment of niche audiences. It is very much the mainstream. Global majors like Nestle have clearly admitted this and responding to this.
The Funnel’s fundamental assumption is this…if a brand drives awareness (through paid media mostly - as brilliantly illustrated by the ever funny Tom Fishburne here) then it can generate enough interest for the audiences to jump in ‘their’ funnel. It is a ‘Brand-out’ proposition that expects audiences to toe their line.
Contrast this with what is actually happening on the ground.
Audiences are DEMANDING values-alignment from the brands and increasingly choosing the ones that respond and prove that they are indeed in values-aligned.
It would be wise to pivot towards a more audience-first approach to driving marketing.
So instead of still holding on to an 1898 - level thinking of Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (yeah…the funnel is older than the modern internal combustion engine…thank you Elmo Lewis) and building multi-million dollar marketing funnels, the smartest, frontier brands are better served to think something along the lines of Respond-Prove-Engage-Delight.
Brands need to start thinking ‘Audience-in’ to win the new marketplace. It’s time brands learn how to dance the new ‘values-first’ tango.
