Archive for Marketing-Funnel
The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC – Analyze Stage
Posted by: | CommentsThe first 2-steps of the DMAIC process answered the questions: What is important and how are we doing? We also considered the marketing funnel stages of Awareness and Consider. The third stage of the process in DMAIC is Analyze and in the Marketing funnel it is Prefer or Trust. This is also time to reiterate that the thinking process must be about the external customer. Analyzing is about finding ROOT CAUSE to the already described process steps of Define and Measure.
Are listening to your prospects requirements and measuring yourself on how you are performing based on those requirements? Are you correct? Have you properly identified, verified and quantified the root causes of their pain and statistically linked input with output? If this seems mind boggling, you are at the proper stage. Now, is the time to make sense of all the data and confirm the validity of it? This is the time that so-called common sense can get in the way. Even at the most basic level of Six Sigma training, examples are given of problems that be reviewing the data there seems to be an obvious answer. It is simply an eye-opening experience when you input the data into a statistical program such as Mini-tab and see the results. If you would not have analyzed the problem correctly, you may have been working on a problem that did not exist and as a result have little impact. Remember the old adage, numbers do not lie! However, garbage in will equal garbage out, verification of the data is extremely important.
Using a high level process map or as I prefer, a Value Stream Map is important. The visualization of the process will help as you analyze the data. The first several times you do this, it may only involve several simple tools such as a Fishbone Diagram and/or a Pareto Chart. This also the stage we look at Value-Added activities. We can very often find many things that are adding little value from the customers’ point of view at this time. Sometimes significant reduction that will pay for the entire improvement policy can be found in this stage.
As a customer, I may have entered your funnel with a specific problem and now have determined that you are someone that I should consider. It is time for me to analyze your organization and start developing preferences. How does my marketing play this role? My marketing at this time needs to identify your root cause. Are you identifying it? I believe that it is very difficult for a prospect to move from consider to prefer without having their root cause addressed. If you start with the definition of the problem you solved and take a marketing segment or even an individual prospect and use a tool such as the fishbone diagram, you will be able to determine whether you product or service addresses root cause. If it does not, is there a reason to continue with this customer? Is it a good fit? Maybe, there is a better product or service you should be offering?
Definitions:
The Fishbone Diagram, also known as the Cause and Effect Diagram or Ishikawa Diagram, is a graphical construct used to identify and explore on a single chart, in increasing detail commonly using the 5- Why technique, the possible causes which lead to a given effect. The ultimate aim is to work down through the causes to identify basic root causes of a problem.
A Pareto chart, named after Vilfredo Pareto, is a type of chart which contains both bars and a line graph. The bars display the values in descending order, and the line graph shows the cumulative totals of each category, left to right. The purpose of the Pareto chart is to highlight the most important among a (typically large) set of factors. In quality control, it often represents the most common sources of defects, the highest occurring type of defect, or the most frequent reasons for customer complaints, and so on.
Related Posts:
The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology
Using DMAIC for your A3 Report in the Lean Marketing House
Analyzing Failure on Projects
Analyzing a complex problem, make it simple by using…
Picture courtesy of Systems2win.
The Marketing Funnel using DMAIC
Posted by: | CommentsIf you search Google, there are 88,800 thousand images for the marketing funnel and 38,100 for the marketing hourglass depicted. All of them depicting a systematic way to go from initial contact to buy and many of the adding the referral and repeat stages. I believe a systematic way to manage your marketing should not be an option but a fundamental of marketing.
In previous blogs, you have heard me mention that one of the main culprits is variation and the lack of proper segmentation. We think of segmentation both in a horizontal fashion and a vertical. Horizontal will typically result in segments such as: Direct, Internet, Distributor, Joint-Venture and so on. The vertical aspect of your Marketing Funnel is the image on the right depicted below. This funnel allows you to assign different products to each process stage in the hope of maximizing efforts.
However, if you attempt to improve your Marketing Funnel, how would you go about it? Being a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, the Marketing Funnel bears a close resemblance to the DMAIC process of Six Sigma. Not that I am trying to replace the marketing funnel with DMAIC, but it certainly would not hurt to analyze the resemblance to improve our marketing process. Using some generic definitions of DMAIC and just relating them to the Marketing Funnel can create some interesting observation.
Define
Purpose: Identify the clients, their needs and requirements.
Deliverable: State the need of the client (CTS) and the problem
Measure
Purpose: Quantify Process Performance
Deliverable: Determine baseline process performance
Analyze
Purpose: Identify, Verify and Quantify Root causes
Deliverable: Statistically linking input with output
Improve
Purpose: Create the Solution and Validate
Deliverable: Optimizing Process Operating Conditions
Control
Purpose: Document and Standardize Process
Deliverable: Meet Critical to Quality(CTQ) consistently (Involvement)
Looking at your Marketing Funnel from the DMAIC viewpoint is not that farfetched, is it?
Related Posts
Your Marketing Vision should define your Customer’s Core Problem
Following the Customer’s Need in your Value Stream Map
The Marketing Funnel using the Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology – Measure stage
Posted by: | CommentsProcesses lend themselves to measurement. If you treat your marketing as a process, then you should be able to measure your marketing. The define stage answers the question: What is important? The measure stage will answer that question by asking: How are we doing?
I stated in a previous post that the purpose of the Measure stage was to quantify process performance and deliverable was to determine baseline process performance. Without these facts, you will be very ineffective in improving performance. This is the stage which is most difficult for the novice. Adequate measurements in the current state are simply not there many times and as a result we either never get out of this stage be trying to be too precise or we move on without inadequate information that causes us reduce effectiveness of the latter stages. Another common fault is that we start analyzing the data which is the next stage of the process.
Remember that this is a current state not a future state step in the process. Remember, if you think something that you are doing is not measurable, there is someone already measuring it, YOUR CUSTOMER. This brings us back to the marketing funnel and I am correlating the measure phase to the consider phase. In the consider phase, or the like stage of the funnel, prospects are aware of you but now you must prepare them to consider you as a worthy candidate. How do you do that? In the DMAIC methodology we use tools such as Critical to Quality and other tools to determine what is important to a prospect. Instead of thinking about this step from an internal point of view step back and consider what the prospect would use to measure your product or service and make the decision to move through the funnel. Developing measures with customer input will certainly help a prospect move though the funnel.
At this stage, do you know how a prospect is measuring you? What is the most Critical to quality standard that influences your product or service? What is more critical than others? The old saying is that people perform by how they are measured? If your company is based on how they are being measured do you have measurements in places that you are performing too?
This is an area that we taking the process map to a deeper level or developing the current state in a Value Stream Mapping process?
From the Developing and Measuring Training the Six Sigma Way: A Business Approach to Training and Development
Developing marketing measurements requires a mind-set for accountability. Measurements must be understandable, quantifiable, and economic. Customers objectively and clearly state these requirements and pay the supplier for meeting their explicit expectations. We must be there listening and responding to them. The more these requirements are met, the more the customer is satisfied.
Do you have listening posts built into your processes? What targets are you meeting?
Related Posts:
The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC Methodology
The Marketing Funnel using Six Sigma DMAIC – Define stage
Related book: What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services
