Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

ONE SOLUTION: EXTEND THE FUNNEL

In this day and age of the Long Tail, we’d almost expect a rather long trickle of a tail to stem from the end of the funnel. But even if this were the case, it wouldn’t substantially address any of the shortcomings mentioned in Chapter 1, at least not in the kind of way that could have the potential theoretical impact of halving your budget, while simultaneously doubling your revenue. With this theory, the funnel would just get narrower and narrower and represent one or both of two extremely undesirable scenarios: less investment against fewer and fewer customers, with no guarantee of positive (versus negative) outcome. Granted, there’s value in acknowledging that something should happen after the moment of truth—that is, the purchase—but what? Is it customer relationship management (CRM). Loyalty marketing? One-to-one marketing? All three? Or something completely different?

The goal is not simply to extend the goodness; it’s to enhance the value, impact, meaning, and purposes associated with customer loyalty and experience. As the doodle in Figure 6.1 illustrates, perpetuating a purchase without necessarily improving on it is just as likely to lead to a negative result as to a positive one.

Figure 6.1 The Long Tail of A.I.D.A.

Source: © Joseph Jaffe.