Your Marketing Funnel

a great guest post tonight from Patricia Plourde, owner of Honey Bee Marketing (www.beethebuzz.com)

I recommend Honey Bee Marketing for your needs!

enjoy, marketmpb

 

Help! I’m stuck in the funnel.
Do you ever feel stuck in the funnel? Overwhelmed at everything that is coming at you? Well it’s clear with social media, websites that track what customers buy and their opinions; life is no longer a simple funnel. It’s chaos of pipes. Example 1-1 shows the basic funnel, Example 1-2 shows the complexity of the marketing process today. There is so much additional input before a consumer makes a purchase. It really doesn’t matter if it’s a college or a small business - the funnel has changed.
When asked to speak with marketing classes, this is the first thing I show them, how the funnel has changed. This is what you are up against. Marketing Strategies are no longer creating a marketing mix to move them through the funnel. We are moving them through pipes with lots of different turns along the way and it’s a maze that can take many different routes. You as a marketer have to keep them on route to make a purchase.

I work for a college that is technically orientated. Our students expect us to be what we say is “on the cutting edge without bleeding” meaning that we are one step ahead of everyone else not twelve and they have no idea what we are doing. So, each year as the Marketing Director I think about our students, the way they communicate and one thing that no one else is doing. That is what is going to make us stand out and we usually can do this pretty cost effectively.

A year ago due to the declining demographic in New England it was my mission to not only find new areas for us to expand in but to find a way to engage with them. At the New England School of Communications we require that all students have an interview as part of the admission process, during this time, which is normally two to three hours we give them a tour of our facility. We are located in Bangor, Maine, which people just don’t realize that we have an amazing facility. They leave wowed and we know that the tour is our biggest selling feature.

As I sat in my office I thought-

1. I need a new area to market in outside of New England

2. How am I going to show them our biggest selling feature? To get a student from away to commit to visiting is a much harder sell. I want to convert as many students as possible.

My idea was to create an online open house, with interactive chats, videos, and with all departments on board to chat with a prospective student, having many of the features that we wanted the event to be about we repurposed all of them, which made for a low cost event.

The results- we had students from all over the country attend and a 50% conversion rate for them to submit paperwork, application, interview, or become a student.

What we did in the funnel was allow them to get opinions from peers, we showed them everything so they could compare alternatives to us, and they were able to generate their own content by asking anything they wanted. What we did was make a change in the funnel where when they were done with the event they were recommending us to friends based on their experience.

As a Marketing Director in Higher Education and Owner of Honey Bee Marketing, I spend my days thinking about this very funnel. Thinking about how I can either provide the school or the client with a route in the pipe work that is going to equal a consumer. The key is to know who your consumer really is. What is the one thing in the funnel that you can do different then your competitor that your consumer is going to notice and make a move?

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