Seth Godin's Funnel

Seth Godin, Funnel? Seth who and what funnel you may ask, it will all become clear in a few minutes, so let's Start with the who:

Who is Seth Godin?
No he is not a Jean-Luc Picard stunt double or a mentor to all those with a shave head (me included), he is according to Wikipedia an American author of business books and a popular speaker with appearances at Google, TED and a number of charities. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.

He is also the creator of Squidoo - a community website which allows users to create pages which are called "lenses" on subjects on just about anything.

What About The Funnel?
Seth's funnel is a theory whereby instead of spending tons of money on advertising and marketing your company or product as in the traditional way, you can turn it all around and use the power of people to turn the "funnel" into a megaphone, thus getting people to shout about your business or product.

The web is an excellent place to do this and it can even be done for free especially with all the social media sites out there, the Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo and Flickr's of this world.

Seth goes on to say about his funnel: "Once you see the funnel, it's easy to understand how valuable your existing customers are, and easy to think about how you want to spend time and money in promoting and building your site. Most marketers are running a flat campaign. Embracing the funnel changes the way you treat people. And treating different people differently is what consumers demand."

You can download his ebook for free: Flipping the Funnel and in my book, even though it was published in 2006 is still highly relevant and a must read for anyone interested in marketing.