Often times when marketing and sales refer to the buyer’s journey, they use a funnel model, moving prospects down the funnel. In today’s society as marketing is touching their buyers in various places, is the funnel still the correct model?
An Author, Marketing Leader, and CEO & Chief Revenue Scientist at Square 2, Mike Lieberman, challenges marketing and sales to expand their mindset of the buyer’s journey to create memorable experiences for them at each stage.



 
Takeaways:
The traditional sales funnel has become obsolete to represent the buyer's journey because it implies that the journey is a linear process with gravity, to move the buyer to the next stage. The only thing moving the buyer from stage to stage is your influence on them.
A cyclone model infers there is no gravity to move the buyer to the next stage. There is just a series of influences that could potentially throw a prospect out of a stage, get them to the next stage, or make them skip a stage.
Business to business marketing and sales teams deal with business to people. Businesses are made of people and people are afraid of change and the unknown. As marketers we have to make buyers feel comfortable enough to get out of the norm of the status quo.
The eight stages of the buyer's journey are pre-awareness, awareness, education, consideration, evaluation, rationalization, decision making, and then delivery. 
We have to know what questions people are asking at each stage of the buyer’s journey, to structure content that answers those questions.
Focus on creating amazing experiences for people as they interact with your brand. What can you do to create an inventory of memorable stories for your prospects, your qualified leads, your customers, and then your referrals?
Random Acts of Marketing - When marketing tactics are done without strategy. Focus on the strategy first and answer the question, what are you trying to accomplish? Define the goal, and then decide how much of that goal you are trying to reach.
If you want to double your revenue, you need to make sure that your marketing is budgeted and scaled at an appropriate level to make this goal possible.




 
Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-lieberman-7a9579/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mike2Marketing
Square 2 Marketing: https://www.square2marketing.com/
Agencies 2 Inbound: https://www.agencies2inbound.com/
MAXG: https://www.maxg.ai/
Smash the Funnel: https://www.smashthefunnel.com/




 
Busted Myths:
The sales funnel is an accurate depiction of the buyer’s journey. - This is no longer the case. A cyclone is a more accurate depiction because the buyer’s journey is not a linear process anymore. We are touching them at all these different touch points which can have the buyer skip to a more advanced stage, or be set back, depending on their experience.