Daily Lab: No funnels, no journeys
Focus on giving attention, not getting it.
You’re not in my marketing “funnel” right now.
You’re not on a “journey” to become my customer.
You’re just living your life, reading some newsletters, and probably planning to get back to your real work pretty soon.
But you already knew that. The problem is, most marketers don’t.
Metaphors like funnels and journeys imply velocity—direction and speed, headed toward a purchase.
And that puts all the focus on the wrong place.
Most marketing “best practices” (i. e., the classic mistakes) focus on getting attention.
Good marketing, though, focuses on giving attention. To the people who value it most.
If potential customers are far away, make it easy for them to get closer. If they’re close to a purchase, make it clear that you’ve made the tradeoffs that matter. If they’re here and purchasing, get intensely curious about where and how they experience your value. And if they purchase, focus on the influence you’ve had on them, and the influence they can have on others. Which attracts more potential customers you can get closer to.
Seen this way, there is no “top of funnel,” and there is no bottom. There’s no place you must start other than where you feel you can do the most good right now.
Because an entrepreneur’s job isn’t to push people through a machine, it’s to find them where they are, when they need us, and to be there with extraordinary value.
By making and demonstrating the tradeoffs they care about most, based on the values we share with them.
So let’s leave the funnels out of it. They don’t help.
