Stop talking about funnels

They don't provide you with an actionable way of thinking. Here is what will.

“Do you want fries with that?”

I stared back blankly. 

The bartender repeated her question.

“Do you want fries with that?”

With.. my drink? No no, I’m ok. 

You see - context matters. Had I been checking out from the fat food line in McDonalds, that question would have made more sense. Had I just begun a silent meditation retreat, that question would have made even less sense.

As obvious as this is with fries, it’s something we do everyday in our business. Our websites are built to speak to people. To ask them questions wherever they are, yet we fundamentally miss both understanding where they are in the journey and how to speak to them there. 

In marketing speak you’ll hear about funnels a lot. As if users just tumble their way through whatever funnel you built and stumble into buying your product. All you have to do is to add a new page to part of your funnel and more users will roll in. 

This fallacy is probably the biggest reason you see startups make the mistake of chasing traffic and brand while still having pages that trip their users on their way in. 

So, what is better than a funnel? It’s understanding the mindset and the expectation of your customers. Then - speak to them that way. 

The Five Stages of Intent

The first stage - high intent

This is when your potential customer is most aware of your product, what it does, aware of their own problem, and in fact knows they want your product already. In this stage, you have little that you need to do except to remind the customer about your product and ideally give them something to tip them over into paying. This may be a discount, it may just be a reasonable excuse - “Why not now?” works shockingly well but so does getting them to say something like  “bonus time is a good time to spend more on a course” to themselves.

The second stage - Medium intent

At this stage your potential customer has heard of your product. They’re also aware of their general needs. They’re just not convinced that your product is what they want. They may not be aware that your product actually works. Or on what things it can be successful in doing. For example - they may be aware that your product can work for “other people” but just not them. To use a personal example, when I think about marketing my advising work, many people are aware of the value that I bring generally, either in what I created as a full-time executive at startups or in advising work with other companies. They’re not yet convinced about what I can do for their specific company though, whether it’s because of the industry they’re in, the stage of company, or more.

The third stage - low intent

In this stage, your potential customer has no idea that you exist. They do know that they have a problem and they would like a solution to their problem. Think of anything you generally get frustrated about at home or work that is yet unsolved. One common one we hear a lot about right now is collaboration in remote work. It is unsolved yet people desperately want it solved. If you were to stumble on a product that solved collaboration issues in remote work, you’d buy it for your company right away. Easy. Yet, if one exists, I at least am not aware of it.

The fourth stage - a variant of the third stage

There is a variant of the third stage where your potential customer isn’t actually aware that the problem can be solved in the first place. Perhaps collaboration in remote work is here for some people. They see it as a problem which no product can solve at this point. So, they push to go back to the office. If you make a product that does solve it, then your task here is to first convince them that the problem can be solved at all, and then to tell them that your product is what will solve it.

The fifth stage - no intent

In this stage, you’ll often here the phrase of a “solution looking for a problem.” This has been used across most of the recent tech trends, whether it’s web3 from a year ago, to AI earlier this year, and now as a description for Apple’s Vision Pro and other AR/VR products. You actually can still sell to people in this market, but the job is just far more difficult. You must convince them that they have a problem in the first place, that their problem is solvable, and that your solution is the one that can solve it. 

Why this matters

As you think about the intent levels above, there are two important things to consider in your marketing efforts.

What works at one level doesn’t work at another

Pick two of the stages above and think about what an advertisement might look like. It should hopefully clarify quickly in your mind that the wording and approach created for one stage won’t work in another stage. Let’s say you are selling an online school focused on how to grow apples. For the group in the first stage, they know they have a problem with growing apples and need to learn. In fact, they know that your school will be the one that teaches what they need to know. Reaching those potential customers with a message like “ApplesFirst - sign up today to finally learn to grow apples. 10% off this week” will likely be very effective. 

To someone just one stage away, at the second stage, this will be an ineffective advertisement. It’s unlikely any price discount, for example, will convince them to buy something they’re not convinced will work. 

For groups in the second stage, adding customer testimonials to your page that speaks directly to some of the questions you have can be incredibly powerful. Let’s assume they don’t believe growing apples is something that can be learned online. Then a message that says something like “Over 300 students have gone from never gardening to 1+ acre orchards after just six weeks of our course.” will prove compelling for the second stage. 

That same message will be ineffective across any other stage. Even in the first, remember that group is aware your problem can solve their needs so further proof only works in that it reminds them you exist.

So - to build effective marketing across the entire funnel, including down into your product and how you think about paywalls, you need to think about what stage your customer is in and speak to them in the way they expect.

Solve highest intent first

Because you have to start somewhere, and you can’t pick a message that speaks to everyone, then you must start with the highest intent users. Take a look at the stages above. You can build a single experience that takes even the lowest intent person in stage 5 from no intent to a purchase. That is difficult, but doable. Easier is to help move them along from having no intent to having low intent, from low intent to middle intent, and so on. More like a series of escalators than a funnel. 

Which is why you need to start with the highest intent first. If you start at the ground floor of no intent and you move your potential customer up to middle intent, they won’t just magically convert now. They’ll now be open to whatever competitor is actually able to speak to them in their new mindset. So, you’ll be spending all this money building your brand, creating awareness, and creating a market while your competitors capture all the value. 

Instead - ensure that you can convert your high intent users. When you can do that, then moving someone from middle intent to high intent will actually continue to work for you. Those new people will get your marketing messages meant for high intent and actually convert into paying customers. Once you’ve “solved” for middle intent then you can move onto high intent. 

It never stops

I put “solved’ in quotes above, because really it is never solved. Whatever is working with your middle intent users today will change. New customers will enter the market with a different set of questions about whether or not you’ll work for them. Competitors will reframe expectations within the market, and your product will change. 

Following the guidance above should give you a good framework to constantly review all your marketing efforts through, from the advertisements you’re placing on Google to the payment page your customers are going through during checkout.