Hey Reader, it’s time for part one of the email series marketing funnels are silly!

​If you missed the intro, go have a read.​

It’s a quick one.

And now, on to the good stuff.

Part one: Company or customer?

In our opinion at Strange Birds, there are two main lenses to look through when it comes to marketing, growth, and retention: company- or customer-centered.

If we went on the far end of the spectrum for a company-centered lens, we’d see decisions based on solely on profit.

This lens encourages a company to do whatever they can to sell more of their stuff.

This could look like bait-and-switch tactics, shame-based marketing, aggressive ad targeting, list buying, aggressive purchasing flows with ever-increasing upsells, getting someone wholly dependent on the product and then turning it into an ad-generation machine (ahem… ChatGPT, Google, Meta, etc).

The customer is merely a number on a page, something to be increased at all costs.

Decisions are made without feeling, nearly robotic, and without consideration for how humans actually operate.

On the far end of the customer-centered lens, we’d see decisions based solely on humans.

This lens would encourage a company to do whatever they can to make someone happy.

This could look like apologetic marketing (as in, “I’m sorry I’m marketing to you but this product might help?”), return policies that put the business under, no marketing at all because it feels gross, and utterly confusing purchasing flows that make it hard to actually buy a thing.

The customer is not just a persona, they are a person! And they deserve to make their own choices!

Decisions are made with too much feeling, often on a whim, and with little consideration for long-term business viability.

At Strange Birds, we try to help our clients find a place somewhere in the middle.

You need to have a company-centered lens in order to keep the company afloat.

You also need to have a customer-centered lens in order to not turn into a extractive evil corporation that eventually fails because everyone hates it.

And here is where marketing funnels come in.

Ugh.

Funnels, and how they visualize and simplify something as complex as marketing, lean heavily into the company-centered side of things.

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They encourage organizations to force people through the steps through to purchase.

Over and over and over again.

The rigidity of the marketing funnel leaves little room for humanity.

And your customers are human.

Let me give you a mini story of why marketing funnels are too company-centered.

I can’t tell you how often I’ve had clients and colleagues who fell into the “I’ll just make a course and sell it and then become a millionaire” trap.

Heck. I fell into that trap once with Community Camp (RIP).

They (we) did all the right things.

Awareness: Guested on podcasts, applied to be a speaker, started a YouTube channel, began posting more on social media

Interest: Captured emails via a newsletter or a lead magnet tripwire

Consideration: Put those emails through a sales sequence leading them to a webinar

Intent: Hosted multiple free/low-priced webinars that sort of gave value but was mostly a sales pitch

Evaluation: Pitched aggressively at the end of the webinar and in an email sequence afterward

Purchase: Celebrated each time someone bought their $2,000 online course

This was a tried and true formula, and it followed the marketing funnel perfectly.

And 9 times out of 10 this formula failed.

The only reason why it was so popular is because a handful of people made a TON of money with this formula, so everyone believed it would work for them.

Yet, there are too many points of potential failure here.

It’s all solely focused on the company goals: get someone to purchase the course at the end.

This doesn’t account for how humans actually interact with something.

As in, humans are absolutely chaotic ridiculously messy and inconsistent beings.

Thinking that a whole bunch of humans will nicely fit into this funnel is a giant gamble.

A gamble that too many of my clients and colleagues paid for dearly.

The conclusion?

Marketing funnels create tunnel vision.

Your action item for this week:

Take a look at your most recent marketing decisions.

How much of it was based purely on company goals?

How much of it was based on what your customers are actively asking you for?

Next week I’ll share a story on how someone got out of the marketing funnel tunnel vision.

Cheers,

Anna (they/them)

🏳️‍⚧️✊🏳️‍🌈✊🇵🇸

Marketing funnels are silly, the series

• THIS WEEK: What it means to have company vs customer-focused marketing strategies
• NEXT WEEK: How to get out of marketing tunnel vision
• Why the chaotic nature of being a human makes everything really hard
• Creating a system that works for you

What I'm reading

​Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe​

Oh boy oh boy my friend got me hooked and I cannot stop reading. I read a volume a day. I don't know how to savor this series. I'm devouring it.

A podcast about rethinking how business works - and who it should work for. We’re Janel and Anna, small business owners learning in public as we turn our company into a worker-owned co-op.

​Go have a listen!