Update: A New Definition of Marketing

Last week I wrote a post called A New Definition of Marketing (if you haven’t read it – it might be worth a quick glance). It has sparked some interest on the comments, facebook, twitter and email! It has definitely been the most engaging post of the week, taking most of the web traffic and social network interaction.

I mentioned on the blog that anyone could take the diagram that I put together in Omnigraffle (iPad version) and change it as they thought. John LeMasney did just that and came up with an adapted version:

John’s idea of a circle connection intrigued me, and I have been playing around a lot this week with the diagram. A few emails back & forth with John and afew others, I eventually came up with this amendment – taking the original idea and adding the connections in.

As you can see, instead of the circle joining from the Ally back to the Beginnings section – I noticed with my customers a much tighter pattern emerging. Specifically, I saw two (general) things:

1. Engagement Cycle: People on their journey are more likely to have an engagement cycle with the previous phase of their journey.
2. Spread the Message: People pull in other people to their previous phase of their journey.

The Engagement Cycle

For example, let’s say that I have just released a new product to the market – Product Y. If an existing contact is at the Conversion phase with my company (with, say Product X), then they will end up at the Beginnings stage with Product Y. Our previous connection helps them speed through the Discovery phase, but because I don’t have much connection with them, they end up in the Conversion-Beginnings cycle.

Spreading the Message

People at the conversion phase tend to be good at gathering people into the beginnings stage. They don’t have a lot of connection with your company – but they have enough to at least recommend you to people. These people then join at beginnings.

The Engagement Cycle

The Existing customers are somewhat easier to get involved with our new Product Y. They have a stronger connection with us. They like our company and services, so end up back at the Conversion phase and take a little persuasion to get involved.

Spreading the Message

Customers have a much stronger connection with us, so when they refer people to our company – they do so as part of your sales team. They convince the people a little more than those at the conversion stage – so people that come to our company as a result of the Customer referral tend to enter at the Conversion stage and are easier to convert into sales.

A Business

This is the end point for most companies and indeed where I find our company at. We have customers that are connected to us. We don’t win them on every product or service we sell – but we are, at least asked and stand some chance.

We spend our time then, increasing the amount of people in the discovery phase (lead generation), and through our sales process – lead them to conversion. We also work on providing a great follow up service to our Customers (at least a portion of them) and we also get some great referrals from Customers.

A movement

I came across a quote by Ron Bruder: Bruder doesn’t run companies. He leads movements.

This quote gave me a great split on this diagram. Movements come as a result of deepening the connection with Customers and thereby creating Allies. This is where I want to take the companies that I am involved in – not being just a business but a movement, and I guess to do that I have work at getting the customers in to the Ally phase, because here is where the magic starts to happen.

The Engagement Cycle

Apple have done this well. That’s why they have people queuing for 8 hours to get the new iPhone, even though they have never used it. They buy just because you make it. That’s all the reason they need. There is no conversation or conversion – they are sold immediately.

Spreading the Message

Not only that – but Allies persuade other people to join your movement. They draw in people – and these people by-pass all of the other stages and quickly become customers – just because of the passion and evangelism of your Allies. How many people have decided to buy Apple stuff long before ever connecting with them simply because of the Apple Evangelist Friend?

Takeaways

Takeaways are actions that you can takeaway from reading this blog post that hopefully help:

1. Quick Check. Print the diagram out or quickly redraw it. Mark on the diagram where most of your current marketing effort goes (in terms of money and resource but also in terms of ROI). This should show strong and weak spots.
2. Strengthen. Now you understand where you weak spots are – write down a list of 20 things you can do in the next 3 months to strengthen each weak spot.
3. Implement. Take the top three items from your lists and work on those today.
4. Review. Schedule a time in your calendar to do this exercise again in 2-3 months.

A quick thanks…

So, there you go – this is my thinking so far of the Connection Journey Diagram. If you want a quick recap of the different phases of the journey – then please read my blog post: A New Definition of Marketing.

Thanks to all those that contributed so far with thoughts and ideas (through all the various forms of social media) and thanks again to John for doing a great job of re-drawing my initial model.

What do you all think of this model? How can we make it better?