From the Sales Funnel to the Messy Middle: Your Customer’s New Purchasing Process

Wouldn’t life be easy if the sales funnel was as straightforward as it looks on paper. Visually, the funnel breaks down a customer’s purchasing process into three parts: awareness, evaluation, and purchase. 

Now this makes the buying process sound sequential. Linear. Simple. It’s as if the customer, much like someone on a hike, follows the stages of a route marked on a map to reach their destination.

But we all know this isn’t the case. The process of taking a prospect from learning about your business to purchasing your product or service has way more detours, left turns, and tangents. So, let’s take a look at another model that helps us understand the buying process.

(Before we do: it’s good to acknowledge the sales funnel does a great job of showing how the number of potential customers shrinks as they near that ‘buy now’ moment.)

From the sequential sales funnel to the circular buying journey

The decision-making process involved in online purchasing has become more complex and way more chaotic over time. There’s a real shift in play. 

In fact, in a study of shopping behaviours, ‘Decoding decisions: making sense of the messy middle’, analysts from Google’s Consumer Insights team compared the infinite number of ways people can come into contact with a product – to a plate of spaghetti.

Amusing, apt, and for people having to make sense of it all, slightly daunting.

These same researchers named this complex and muddled intermediate stage the messy middle.

So, this messy middle lies between the trigger, the impulse to look for a product, and the final purchase. And it describes the chaotic and circular nature of the decision-making process that, today, defines a prospect’s purchasing journey.

Which explains why we’re moving from the idea of a funnel, to a circle.

The messy middle consists of three stages:

• The exposure stage: Where you run always-on marketing, across ongoing multi-channel strategies, for an undefined length of time.

• The exploration stage: Where the customer gathers information on everything to do with a product or service.

• The evaluation stage: Where the customer begins to narrow down their choices to the most useful options (based on what they learn in the exposure and exploration stages).

Unsurprisingly, the evaluation stage can last a very long time. It’s influenced by external factors and involves comparing tangible aspects (like price) to increasingly intangible aspects (like values or brand).  

Cognitive biases and the messy middle

Another factor that influences the messy middle – and the final purchasing decision – is cognitive biases. 

This is because the decision-making process is influenced by behaviours a customer isn’t always aware of. These come from unconscious motivations. 

These cognitive biases make people interpret reality subjectively, and in a way that blends with their personal convictions, beliefs, and values. 

While there are many cognitive biases, these six have the biggest impact on the purchasing process, especially in the messy middle.

• Categories: Product descriptions become a purchasing incentive.

• The power of now: The chances of someone purchasing a product rise if it’s available at that moment.

• Social proof: If other people have purchased a product and reviewed it, we’re more likely to buy it. (And on that, why not go explore the stories other Salesforce customers tell?)

• Scarcity bias: If a product has limited availability, it becomes more attractive.

• Authority bias: The opinion of an expert, a spokesperson, or another trustworthy source has a positive influence during the decision-making process.

• The power of free: It’s a classic, but including a free gift with a purchase is a pure incentive to buy.

   

What are the main marketing activities in the new messy middle?

All of this means each stage of the purchasing process needs to be supported by targeted marketing activities.

Our top four recommendations are:

• Create a brand awareness plan that keeps attention on your business. This helps it stand out among the different options they explore and evaluate – and ultimately, becomes more memorable. 

• Understand your customers’ cognitive biases and adapt your marketing according to these behaviours.

• Reduce the gap between the trigger moment and the moment of purchase, cutting the time your customers are exposed to your competition.

• Encourage cooperation between teams, to remove any potential gaps between the different stages of the purchasing process.

Once a customer makes that decision to buy, it doesn’t mean the sale is guaranteed. And at this point, user experience plays a critical role. The purchasing experience must be as quick and as smooth as possible! 

If the customer thinks the process is too complicated – they may abandon their cart or back out of the sale. And even if they do go through with the sale, it’s not a strong foundation to build customer loyalty on.

The new purchasing process, in summary

From the traditional sales funnel to the cyclical messy middle, we’ve covered a lot. So here are the key takeaways to build into your own business.

• Today’s customers have a complex, long-winded purchasing process, involving a lot of online research and an ever greater combination of the online and the offline.

• The messy middle has given us a new model for the purchasing process – and it’s circular. Don’t forget to tailor your marketing activities to this continuous, always-on cycle. 

• Purchasing behaviour and the decision-making stage are dependent on unconscious choices, strongly influenced by cognitive biases.

• It’s increasingly important for brands to stand out and become memorable in customers’ minds. (Remember, you’re competing for share of attention as much as you are for share of wallet.)

• The teams within your company must cooperate to create a synergy of online and offline marketing and sales activities.