Page 76 - Duct Tape Marketing

Create Products and Services for Every Stage of Client Development

The Marketing Funnel

You may have heard of the notion of a marketing or sales funnel. In
this model you attempt to generate leads on a broad scale and then
“funnel” them toward becoming a client with increased contact and
content. This funnel concept is incomplete when it comes to the small
business, as it leaves out the entire notion of what you might do with
your clients once you get them to make a purchase.

The Marketing Funnel Turned
Upside Down—The Marketing HourglassTM

The greatest opportunity for real growth in most businesses comes
from selling your existing clients more products and more expen-
sive services and from the referrals generated from those clients. The
marketing hourglass takes the idea of funneling suspects into your
marketing machine and adds the intention of expanded product and
service opportunities—thus the hourglass. This approach asks you to
develop a very deliberate series of marketing, product, or service offer-
ings with a specific intent, such as:

 automatically qualifying your prospects
 gaining their permission to allow you to market to them
 offering a low barrier or trial product/service
 focusing on overdelivering on the purchase
 moving the client to other opportunities or levels of service
 generating word of mouth or referrals

When you overlay my definition of marketing—“getting some-
one who has a need to know, like, and trust you” with the intentional
act of turning know, like, and trust into try, buy, repeat, and refer, you

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