For every customer, there is a journey that leads a purchasing decision. A customer recognizes wants and needs, becomes aware of brands, seeks out recommendations, and compares features and so forth. You’ve seen this model before; if not, visualize a funnel with a sequence of stages that describe how a buyer advances through the process of evaluating competing offerings until a single surviving brand is rewarded by a satisfying purchase, “cha-ching.”
If you’re visualizing a way of looking at the buying process for the first time, the funnel is a good place to start. It provides a framework that helps link marketing strategies to customer objectives and helps advance the user from one stage to the next. If you’re syncing marketing objectives to customer experiences, you’re already avoiding the first obsolete convention, distributing dollars to different kinds of media.
