Although it is important that brands define customer relationships through the lens of the consumer journey, it is helpful sometimes to think of funnels when trying to optimize customer acquisition. Brands lacking a strong acquisition strategy tend to fall into one of four funnel types: Transactional, Viral, Salesforce, Bottleneck.
Transactional – Typically commodity, price-inelastic brands with focus on a low cost product or service but not a quality product nor user experience.
Viral – A popular product or service where the brand is unprepared to handle the high demand. Products are often out of stock or ecommerce website crashes because it cannot handle volume. Customer support also falls short.
Salesforce – Typically a B2B brands where transactions are driven by its salesforce but lacks both a strong marketing strategy or product/customer support.
Bottleneck – This is the opposite of the Salesforce Funnel. Where marketing and customer support are very strong but the salesforce infrastructure cannot handle the volume of transactions.
