Comparing Federal Communication Funnel Model With the Traditional Marketing Model
The traditional marketing funnel is a standard model used by consumer companies to think about a customer’s journey from awareness to purchase and ultimately to brand loyalty. This model, however, doesn’t quite reflect the public or stakeholder journey with a federal government agency. What’s required is a Federal Government Communication Funnel Model (FGCFM) that is specifically designed to address the unique needs of interactions with government organizations.
The FGCFM and the traditional marketing funnel share similarities in structure, but they significantly differ in terms of their goals, target audiences, and strategies. While consumer companies focus on converting prospects into loyal customers, federal agencies focus on effective public communication. This is an important distinction when creating a comprehensive communication strategy for government organizations.
The FGCFM consists of four main stages.
Awareness: This is the first stage of engagement a stakeholder typically has with a federal agency. This is where the stakeholder gains initial awareness about a government initiative, policy, or service. This often takes the form of a news story, press release, social media post, or a public event. In a similar manner, the top of the traditional marketing funnel hopes to create awareness about a product or service, often through advertisements.
Interest: At this stage, the focus is on generating interest among the target audience by providing relevant and engaging content. This is often achieved through educational materials, blog posts, webinars, and other interactive content. The traditional marketing funnel aims to pique the interest of potential customers by showcasing the benefits and features of a product or service.
Understanding: Focus here is dedicated to ensuring the public understands the government’s message, its implications, and its benefits. This can be accomplished through in-depth content such as whitepapers, reports, explanatory videos, etc. For consumer marketing, this is the Evaluation stage, where prospects evaluate the product or service and compare it to alternatives.
Action: This FGCFM stage focuses on driving the public to act, such as signing up for a program, changing behavior, participating in a survey, or attending a public meeting. Traditional marketing thinks of this as the Decision stage, the stage when a customer makes a purchase or subscribes to a service.
Advocacy: If all goes well, federal agencies can create community advocates who can help promote the agency’s message or call for action to their network. Similarly, the traditional marketing funnel this of this as loyalty and retention. This final stage is powerful, and like for-profit companies, federal agencies should reward advocacy. However, instead of offering incentives and sales promotions, the government agency can encourage advocates by providing them with toolkits and additional support, invitations to share expertise with others in their field, and opportunities to provide agency feedback.
There are many similarities and core differences between the FGCFM and the traditional marketing funnel. Instead of sales, the FGCFM helps the agency focus on the aim to inform, engage, and foster trust with the public. While audience targeting is used by government and consumer-focused organizations, government agencies often need to communicate to the general public in addition to specific groups of stakeholders. Always, government communication strategies should prioritize transparency, accuracy and accessibility over persuasion, differentiation, and emotional appeal.
Both models provide insight on the customer or citizen journey and the types of communication that may best serve the customer or citizen at various stages in the model. In addition to targeting audiences by things such as demographics and psychographics, effective government communication should also nurture relationships and ensure needs are met at each stage of the customer journey.
Barry Lawrence is a Senior Communications Program Manager