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

ANOTHER SOLUTION: FLIPPING IT COMPLETELY

Why not turn the funnel on its head? Instead of ending with your customers, why not begin with your lifeblood, the single biggest—if not the only—reason you’re in business today?

Figure 6.2 The Funnel Becomes the Megaphone

Source: Seth Godin. Reprinted by permission.

We need not abandon the customer acquisition process or minimize the role that awareness and/or action play in terms of moving prospective customers from unawareness to paying customers. The same could be said for my championing of new media over old, or conversation over communication—one does not necessarily replace its predecessor or counterpart. However, it does bring with it new and differentiating thinking. From the standpoint of investing in both human and financial resources, it also reprioritizes strategic thinking and mind-share from an otherwise saturated space to one that essentially represents virgin territory in terms of upside, potential, and impact. It’s also an acknowledgment that the proposed space in question is significantly evolved:

• The sharp and clinical scalpel of digital trumps the blunt hatchet of advertising.

• The fluid and pervasive conversation washes away the unidirectional current of communication.

• The meaningful and long-lasting commitment of retention deeply resonates over the superficial and materialistic attraction of acquisition. ...