What do tracking tool and funnel mean?
In his column, Benno Maggi explains terms from the fields of marketing and communications.
Tracking tool
Noun, neuter
If you think of hiking apps with GPS and insider tips for special routes, outdoor jackets with elastic softshells or the clacking of Nordic walking sticks, you may have your focus in the wrong place, but you're basically right. Tracking tools (not to be confused with trekking tools) are softwares that record our click behavior on the Internet as digital trails and deliver them directly to marketing departments and agencies to ensure that we get the right advertising. Tracking tools know at what time of day, on which device, from which location we are on the web, where we pause, take a break or don't even venture there. From this, click rates and costs per click are calculated in order to sell them at a high price. These softwares would actually also know in which weather we do this, but they are not (yet) allowed to monetize that. Nevertheless, Google Analytics is the best-known and most important tracking tool and part of an economic perpetual motion machine called Alphabet Inc.
Funnel
Noun, neuter
This is not a typo, even if the current media coverage of the opening of the Gotthard Base Tunnel makes one inclined to misread the word at the drop of a hat. In marketing language, the funnel replaces the time-honored concept of "AIDA" in much the same way that the Gotthard Base Tunnel replaces the helical tunnels at Wassen. The term describes the consumer's journey through the buying process, but also their journey through the Internet. A funnel must be thought of as a funnel with different levels. From the advertiser's point of view, each level has barriers where they could lose their customer: From the placement of an advertising message at the right time in the right place (page view), to the animation to click (don't click away, click on it), the dwell time on the corresponding website (landing page), to the skillful guidance and seduction to buy or like - the consumer's journey is paved with exit options. Marketers envy the SBB, whose trains whiz through the new tunnel without barriers and lose no passengers along the way.
* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the "Vom Fach" section in NZZ FOLIO and was in charge of it for many years. He presents and deciphers words and terms that can be used either for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.
