I love visual models of complex ideas. I’m a visual thinker and tend to understand things better when I can see them. This framework, the Asymmetric Marketing Engine, is a valuable tool for visualizing and understanding the marketing process.
Marketing is rife with models and concepts—many of which, when compared, are contradictory and either too complex or too shallow. My military training leads me to believe that models should be as simple as possible and resonate with the knowledge and understanding from empirical evidence and experience.
So, to create a unified model that supports our mission to empower, enable, and energize small businesses, we have created the “Asymmetric Marketing Engine.” Asymmetric marketing involves applying principles of asymmetric warfare to business, using unique tactics to help smaller businesses compete against larger, more firmly entrenched competitors.
In modern business, these concepts are crucial for smaller brands to gain an advantage over larger, more established companies.
The Basics of The Asymmetric Marketing Engine
This model borrows from others' ideas, and there is probably not much new information here. It is just our way of illustrating the various elements of marketing processes and their interrelatedness.
The customer journey is a well-trodden path and has been written about in detail elsewhere. Two ideas can highlight our view on the customer journey:
- The customer journey and the funnel are tightly connected and directly related.
- The customer journey certainly doesn’t end with the sale.
The funnel also does not end with the sale. Here is a traditional funnel:
- Awareness: Prospects become aware of your product or service.
- Interest: Prospects show interest in your product or service.
- Consideration: Prospects evaluate your product or service.
- Intent: Prospects intend to purchase your product or service.
- Purchase: Prospects purchase your product or service.
The funnel also does not end with the sale. Here is a traditional funnel:
The Asymmetric Marketing Funnel
The Asymmetric Marketing Funnel articulates that the funnel doesn’t end with the sale. On the contrary, the sale is in the middle stage of the funnel, and much is to be done post-sale. This is true whether the company sells a software subscription, a service, or a product.
The extended funnel stages include:
- Retention: Engaging and satisfying customers post-sale to ensure they return.
- Advocacy: Encouraging customers to become advocates for your brand.
The Flywheel Concept
The flywheel is a version popular with the HubSpot crowd. It shows the customer at the center with three stages that continually rotate around the customer, creating data-segmented two-way loops with the audience instead of one-way promotion. These three stages—attract (find new prospects and leads), engage (convert to customers), and delight (provide excellent service)—can be matched up with the customer journey and the funnel.
- Attract: This involves bringing new prospects into the awareness stage, utilizing strategies like content marketing, SEO, and social media across different channels.
- Engage: This focuses on converting prospects into customers through personalized communication, email marketing, and effective sales strategies that prompt active engagement from prospective buyers.
- Delight: This stage emphasizes providing exceptional customer service and support, ensuring customer satisfaction, and fostering loyalty.
Applying The Asymmetric Marketing Engine in Strategic Planning
Small businesses often face the challenge of competing against unequal forces, such as a larger, apparently superior adversary. By leveraging the principles of asymmetric marketing and implementing effective business planning strategies, they can use unconventional tactics to level the playing field and succeed in the marketplace.
A business owner can strategically employ these methods to maximize returns through psychological, technological, or systemic advantages while making each investment work harder and enhancing overall financial success. In practice, asymmetric marketing deploys dynamic data-driven digital ecosystems alongside structured marketing planning at strategic, operational, and tactical levels, supported by repeatable systems that keep execution focused.
Key Relationships in the Asymmetric Marketing Engine
One way to look at this is that the following relationships exist:
- Customer-Centric Approach: The customer is always at the center of everything the company does. Being customer-centric is principle #1.
- Journey Stage Awareness: Related to the funnel stages of prospect and lead.
- Journey Stage Consideration: This stage is related to the funnel stages of marketing qualified and sales-qualified leads. These first two journey stages (and their related funnel stages) drive the attracting element of the flywheel.
- Decision-Making Journey Stage: Related to the funnel stages of opportunity and new customer (sale).
- Journey Stage Retention: Related to casual and repeat customer funnel stages. These second two journey stages drive the engaging element of the flywheel.
- Journey Stage Expansion: Related to multi-line customers and full-spectrum customers.
- Journey Stage Advocacy: Related to loyal customers and advocates. These last two journey stages drive the delight element of the flywheel.
These relationships are not absolute, and some overlap in certain instances. However, the relationships are well aligned, and the model withstands examination and criticism. An asymmetric marketing team leverages principles from asymmetric marketing strategy and military strategy to disrupt traditional marketing approaches and differentiate themselves from established competitors.
Power of the Asymmetric Marketing Engine
The power of these three components shown together in the Asymmetric Marketing Engine, with their relationships illustrated, is that each informs a unique perspective and a set of principles and values that cover the vast majority of marketing, sales, and service activities.
- Market Research: Understanding customer behavior and preferences is critical in informing these marketing strategies. Leveraging competitive intelligence services forms a robust business strategy to compete effectively in the marketplace.
- Customer Journey: This illustrates the path that the consumer or customer follows. It illustrates a linear progression of thought that they go through as they engage with the company and its products or services, similar to the purchase path framework from awareness to decision. Marketing tactics are essential in finding new and different ways to reach target customers through targeted demand creation instead of broad generic messaging, and to address the limitations of traditional advertising.
- Funnel: Illustrates how the company thinks about the consumer or customer as they interact and attempt to capture (and deliver) as much value as possible in the relationship. Asymmetric marketing prioritizes absolute attribution and scale, using scalable digital assets rather than accepting high upfront fixed capital investments, and benefits from integrating multiple marketing frameworks into one strategy.
- Flywheel: Explains that momentum comes from hyper-focused, out-of-the-box tactics that create a disproportionately high Return on Investment and gain an advantage over competitors, rather than simply doing more activity. This momentum is reinforced when leaders use business wargaming to anticipate competitive moves and refine their tactics.
Commitment to Small Businesses
We work with small businesses because we strongly believe they are our economy's heart and soul. They create tremendous innovation, service, and value in the lives of their owners, employees, vendors, and customers. We also know that these small businesses are challenged by the reality that they often compete day-to-day against larger adversaries with substantially more resources, where applying Sun Tzu inspired small business strategies can make a decisive difference. They often build strength through small wins instead of trying to match bigger rivals across every channel.
Engaging with the community through local events can enhance brand recognition and customer loyalty. Disciplined asymmetric execution may also mean shutting down ineffective social media channels to protect resources. Data-driven growth marketing strategies further help ensure every activity contributes to measurable progress. Small businesses are perpetually unfair and unbalanced in their fight to succeed as an ostensibly inferior force. Our mission is to work with small businesses and provide them with asymmetric tools, concepts, principles, processes, and insights to help them survive and thrive.
This Asymmetric Marketing Engine framework is a framework we use to illustrate and capture the core elements necessary for a small business to thrive in its sales, marketing, and service processes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the Asymmetric Marketing Engine?A: The Asymmetric Marketing Engine is a proprietary framework developed by Asymmetric Marketing to optimize and streamline your marketing efforts. It combines advanced analytics, strategic planning, and innovative tactics to drive growth and maximize ROI.
Q: How can the Asymmetric Marketing Engine benefit my business?A: Our engine helps identify untapped opportunities, enhance customer engagement, and improve conversion rates. By leveraging data-driven insights, it ensures your marketing strategies are both effective and efficient, particularly when paired with a high-performing small business website and SEO foundation. One example is 75F increasing event participation from 8 to 40 events per year.
Q: What industries can benefit from the Asymmetric Marketing Engine?A: The Asymmetric Marketing Engine is versatile and can be tailored to suit businesses across various industries, including retail, technology, healthcare, and more. Its flexibility allows it to address specific challenges and goals unique to each sector, especially when combined with seasoned marketing agency strategies for growth.
Q: How do I get started with the Asymmetric Marketing Engine?A: Getting started is easy! Contact us at mark.hope@asymmetric.pro or call (608) 410-4450 to schedule a consultation. We'll discuss your business needs and how our engine can be customized to meet your objectives, drawing on our small-business marketing expertise across local services, e-commerce, and B2B.
Q: What makes the Asymmetric Marketing Engine different from other marketing strategies?A: Unlike traditional marketing strategies, the Asymmetric Marketing Engine leverages asymmetrical advantages. This means we identify and exploit opportunities that competitors often overlook, frequently powered by data science applications for small businesses. One example is Dollar Shave Club, whose success stemmed from a $4,000 YouTube video that proved unconventional execution can outperform bigger budgets. This unique approach allows for more innovative and effective marketing solutions.
Use the Asymmetric Marketing Engine in Your Business
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About the author
Mark A. Hope is the co-founder and Partner at Asymmetric Marketing, an innovative agency dedicated to creating high-performance sales and marketing systems, campaigns, processes, and strategies tailored for small businesses. With extensive experience spanning various industries, Asymmetric Marketing excels in delivering customized solutions that drive growth and success. If you’re looking to implement the strategies discussed in this article or need expert guidance on enhancing your marketing efforts, Mark is here to help. Contact him at 608-410-4450 or via email at mark.hope@asymmetric.pro.