The funnel is a lie!

What moving across the globe with my family can teach you about modern marketing, backed up by data from 2,989 consumers.

Buying more things in the last 30 days than the previous 30 years, I realized that the idea of a traditional marketing funnel isn’t real. Turns out that the Research Team at Google came to the same conclusion.

It’s been a while since I published an article, but then the reason for finally sitting down to type up my thoughts was triggered by the very same thing that’s been stressing me out and keeping me busy for the last few weeks.

See, about a month ago me, my wife and our two kids fully relocated from Stockholm, Sweden to Venice, CA.

And… I’m not sure if this was a genius or stupid idea, but in the big move (which you’ll learn in a second really wasn’t that big of a move) we decided to leave all our stuff behind.

Now — having to buy everything from scratch is an incredibly interesting experience and holds several invaluable lessons for anyone who works with marketing.

(What this eventually will segway into… if you just hang in there for a minute 😉)

In fact, I’ve gone through more “customer journeys” and “marketing funnels” and made more buying decisions in the last 30 days than the previous 30 years.

From coffee beans to home insurance the list extends to cars, banking, kitchen equipment, furniture, schools, nanny and gardening.

And in the proccess, I’ve had this big revelation (which I’ll back up with less anecdotal data in a minute)…

Perhaps thought-provoking at first, but throughout the proccess, I started to think about how I went through the sales cycle for each “item”.

And I began to realize that both the idea of a ”marketing funnel” and ”customer journey”, actually aren’t real.

As marketers, we’re taught to build and plan campaigns that funnel potential consumers through a pre-determined sequence: The average ideal path for your unique product where each consumer goes through stages of awareness, interest, desire, consideration, and preference before ultimately making a purchase.

From an academical point of view, these things could probably be qualified as “real”, but the big revelation to me is that they really can’t be applied to modern marketing.

To build on the idea, I thought about four specific buying decisions I’ve made in the last 30 days:

PURCHASE #1: PEER PRESSURE

I spent two weeks searching for the perfect coffee maker. I figured I’d find the best one, and spent a lot of time reading reviews, browsing Amazon and talking with friends. But then, one morning — My wife had finally had enough of instant coffee (boiled over the stove) and snapped at what quickly turned into a “call to action”. No retargeting, brand preference, consideration, Facebook Ads, email marketing or in-store visit — I pulled out my phone and ordered the coffee maker that was in my Amazon shopping cart.

PURCHASE #2: SO MUCH FOR DESIRE

Secondly, I bought a car I’d never even seen in real life. The make/model is new and doesn’t even exist outside of North America (for the record — It’s not a Camero or Dodge Viper 😂).

The trigger that led me down the path to purchase? A random conversation I had with someone three months ago. I spent 4 hours on YouTube watching video reviews before buying the car over email without talking to anyone in-person. Stress, not desire, was the purchase driver.

PURCHASE #3: SCARCITY OVER FRIEND REFERRAL

Someone referred me to one of the best elementary schools in LA. I was sold. Hours of research, talking with friends and reading reviews. But — In a turn of events of no less than 24 hours we not only found another school but also went there for a tour, made a decision on the spot and enrolled my daughter to start the very next day (That I found with a quick online by pure luck the day before.). The “buying decision” was made on the spot and scarcity combined with the right gut feeling disrupted the entire “customer journey” I thought I was on.

PURCHASE #4: LAST IMPRESSIONS

After having seen a gazillion Geico commercials I drew a blank when it was time to get home insurance. Instead of reviewing my options (like I had done when buying a coffee maker), talking with any of my friends (which I had done when searching for a school) or spending even a split second on comparing options online I googled “state farm home insurance” and made a purchase in less than a minute. In hindsight, I realized that I had seen the State Farm logo on an envelope just 15 minutes earlier and that last impression had preference over years of brand building, unaided awareness and frequency.

Here’s what I’m getting at: There’s no clear pattern and there’s no consistency.

Some of these purchases had hundreds of touchpoints throughout the path to purchase. Others? Close to none. Correlation between price, importance, and consideration? Random.

It’s the kind of behavior that would drive any marketing scholar or academic completely nuts.

In concluding their research, they’d probably have me labeled an outlier. Or crazy person. Or… more likely that a sample size of one person isn’t enough but that patterns would emerge in a large enough data set.

But that’s where they’d be wrong.

See, right in the middle of this whole experience, my co-founder Peter shared this must-read article:

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/search-intent-marketing-funnel/#/

Turns out that the research team at Google have thought long and hard about this as well.

And rather than relying on anecdotes from a crazy person (or sample size of one), they enrolled 2,989 individuals in their study.

With the permission of each individual, Google tracked cross-device shopping behaviors over a period of 6 months to properly segment what their different consumer journeys looked like.

Their conclusion? No two journeys are exactly alike, and in fact, most journeys don’t resemble a funnel at all. They look more like pyramids, diamonds, hourglasses, or what my 5-year old would draw in her unicorn notebook.

So what does that mean for brands? Simply, as outlined by Google in their research and this great follow up article, that marketers no longer can build their campaigns around the idea of a linear journey.

Today, consumer choice heavily influences reach and frequency and they choose to engage with brands that are relevant, helpful, and personal.

You have to create touchpoints that engage, entertain and have meaning to consumers regardless of where they are in “the funnel”. I’d extend their reasoning and argue that there even isn’t such a thing as “brand marketing” or “performance marketing”. There’s only marketing with good or bad performance. (deserves a separate article though.)

The best brands in the world get this and that’s how they get to stick around, regardless of how big or small they are.

The influencer marketing campaigns we’ve built with our clients over the last three years have proven that you can create effective marketing that is both relevant, helpful and personal (to draw a parallel to the research from Google) — and I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to help you and your brand in Q4 and throughout 2019.

Regardless, I strongly recommend both articles and their insights — all highly actionable as you’re planning out your final quarter of 2018 and 2019 (and beyond).