What is Waterfall Marketing - and is it Right for your Business?

TechsPlace | Waterfall marketing is a part of the whole new jargon that has evolved in the land of sales and marketing. And if you are a marketer or a business owner, you would do well to pay attention to it and remember it. So what is waterfall marketing and how do you gauge whether or not it is right for your business? Well, here’s what we think.

To begin with, waterfall marketing is a whole new field within the niche of marketing. The approach was first adopted in the world of technology in the 1950s and the 1960s. It greatly helped the cause of the software companies that had to get their products and services up and running with a blatant focus on the end goal instead of getting lost in the coding. This helped in creating a series of tasks with deadlines. But what is the waterfall methodology and how does it help? It refers to a highly localized effort that helps you focus on a goal with a severely linear process at play. The waterfall marketing methodology is one that follows a sequence of tasks, backed by tests, research and deadlines. It is by far one of the most efficient forms of marketing and has already proved to be a powerful weapon in any marketer’s arsenal. Let us cast a glance at the waterfall methodology before we move forward with our discussion:

Understanding the Requirement: This first phase in the waterfall marketing methodology is also known as the requirement gathering phase where you would be required to gather all the information to understand the requirement. It would be helpful to understand this requirement from the point of view of the customer so that you can build this up into a full-fledged strategy so that you then understand the requirements of that strategy. This would also culminate well into the steps of the final deployment. In this stage, you would be more concerned with what this strategy would do and how it would help the customers, rather than being concerned with how your strategy will do so.

Analysis: This is the phase in waterfall marketing that comes between the requirement and the design phase. In this phase, it is important to understand what are the pros and cons of the strategy that you are about to design and deploy. Like most of the phases in the waterfall marketing methodology, this one would also require lots of research and insights so that you are armed with all the information and backup plan when you start designing. This also helps you to keep an eye on the larger goal and the possible areas that could crop up as problems so that your design of the strategy can potentially avoid the same.

Design: This phase is the most important in the waterfall methodology since it brings a semblance of structure to your plan and helps you actually put it into a concrete form that can actually show you what kind of results it may or may not yield. This phase would come after much research and hence you would be able to bring in many insights so that you can implement this in a proper fashion. Remember that this phase should also be carried out in a focussed manner which is why the requirement understanding and analysis part is so important. This will help you remain focused and steadfast on the design on hand without trying to juggle other areas.

Implementation: This is the phase that comes right after design, in the waterfall marketing methodology. When you are implementing the design, you must remember to constantly check for insights to add to analysis and make the design even better. The implementation also has to be carried out in a focussed manner with an eye on the goal. It is important to execute the design and implement it in the best possible manner with as few distractions as possible so that you can meet the deadline and understand exactly what goes into the implementation and what can make it even better. If you focus on other goals and tasks, you will deviate from this task and you will not be able to accurately measure what needs to be done for improvement.

Verification: This comes right after the implementation phase in waterfall marketing because each step is generally followed or preceded by plenty of testing and research so that your singular focus is not broken by problem-solving and other distractions. You would need to focus on the verification and testing of the implementation phase here so that you can find solutions to any problems encountered during the stage and also to find a way to improve upon the design and implementation. Yet, during this phase of the waterfall marketing methodology, it is also important to remember that you have a deadline to abide by, so you would not be able to dawdle along. You would need to act fast in this phase so that you can go straight to deployment.

Deployment: In this phase, the design and the implementation of the same are deployed after successful verification and testing. This step makes your prototype a practical reality and it can show you how far you have come as a brand and business in the long run.

Maintenance: Even after deployment, waterfall marketing makes sure that you have your work cut out for you since upgrades, improvement and troubleshooting will continue well into the deployment process.

So how would you know if this is the process for you? Well, if you are a small business with scarce resources and a few products or services to push, then you would do well to put your team through the waterfall marketing methodology so that your focus can be built. This also helps you make optimum use of all resources. You can also employ this method for various campaigns being run by various teams to engage and convert customers across a number of niches.