In my role as Chairman of the Asia Digital Marketing Association, I recently participated in the keynote panel at the AdWorld 2012 Conference in Beijing, stage by DCCI (Data Center of China Internet). It was a thought-provoking and interesting event, if for no other reason than that I was the only non-Chinese, native English speaker out of the 1,800 attendees! The topic of my panel was connecting with consumers online and opening “Blue Ocean” opportunities in the changing world of digital marketing. The panel included representatives from Sohu, Netease, Tencent and other leading Chinese online players.
A central part of the discussion was about whether the traditional sales funnel is still a valid concept in the digital age. Marketers have longed believed there is a clear customer journey from brand awareness, to interest, to preference, to action (e.g. making a sale) to an ongoing customer relationship (CRM).
With thanks to Kevin Chen and Gordon Li in Bite’s Shanghai office for their input, I was able to address the question as to whether the funnel is still relevant online, and in China.
The key is to realize that the digital world is real – consumers live, search and buy here. I said (through a translator) that the funnel is still useful, although the whole process is much faster, more dynamic, and less linear in the digital age. Marketers must choose the right channel for the their goal; there is no all-in-one approach suitable for every level of the funnel. For example, web portals are the right channel for building brand awareness, with banners and rich media. Lower down in the funnel, to convert interest into sales, marketers need to use analytics to generate qualified clicks, with a lower CPC, that lead the target audience directly to the brand’s ecommerce website. A branding campaign’s approach might be totally different from a lead generation / sales driven campaign, but throughout simplicity is essential. The event organizer came up with the far-from-simple theme “SICAS,” which stands for Sense/Interest & Interactive/Connect & Communicate/Action/Share. As you can see from the diagram, this looks more like an atomic engineering chart than a marketing plan, but it’s an interesting way of looking at the funnel from a new angle.
Today, whether you are an entrepreneur just starting out, or a giant multinational, everyone has access to the same powerful tools to influence every level of the funnel. And although the market is changing faster than ever, marketers now have the capability to capture changes in consumer behavior faster and the tools to adjust campaign execution in real time for maximum effectiveness.
We know the “real world” life cycle of a customer relationship (recruit, segment, convert, retain, and win back). So too in the digital world we can record and monitor every web user’s touch points and make sure that we have the right business model for the one-one-one personalized online marketing environment. Our Bite Shanghai and Hong Kong offices have done some very interesting work in this area, including using e-couponing and sampling to help sell consumer products, as well as driving web traffic to clients’ e-commerce sites. One learning has been that web users are much more likely to share content if there is an incentive attached, such as a coupon, a small gift or chance to win a competition.
As for the rest of the panelists, I have to be honest and say that because I don’t speak Chinese I am not really sure what they said, but I am sure they would agree with me!
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