Miles Pollock, Partner, StrategicAmpersand Inc.
June 6, 2025
There was a time when every marketing or sales deck included a classic funnel diagram: Awareness → Consideration/Interest → Preference → Action/Purchase. It’s been a core of the marketing/sales landscape – you reach prospects in a variety of ways, nurture their interest leading to a preference, and end up with sales or, at the very least, well-qualified leads. Simple!
But those seemingly simple days have become much more complex and less predictable. (Spoiler alert: the process was never really all that simple.) Today, you need to immediately generate more than awareness – you need to deliver real insights and value propositions to closely-identified prospects if you expect to move them past the Consideration stage.
So is there really a funnel? Not anymore, because the traditional awareness-to-conversion model can actually be far from a straight line.
Why the traditional funnel is no longer a reliable approach
The marketing/sales funnel was a well-ordered, stage‑gated process. But today, it’s splintered into many overlapping, self‑directed detours. Here are some realities of your prospect’s journey today:
- More fingers in the decision-making pie – Depending on the size of the organization, buying decisions often involve several (and maybe even many) stakeholders, each doing their own discovery and often comparing notes along the way. The result is ideas and priorities being pushed in varying directions.
- Structured funnels replaced by personal learning paths – With analyst reports on one browser tab, Reddit or LinkedIn threads on another, closely-targeted ads delivered across the web, and many other information sources, your prospects can easily assemble their own mosaic of insights. So your well-considered nurture emails, for example, are just one element along an omni-channel decision-making path (and quite possibly not the most important element).
- The death of reliable attribution – Many web users block cookies and use VPNs. Many also use social media as a source of information that contributes to buying decisions. While tools are available to monitor sentiment or intent, they miss private conversations like DMs, shared links, Slack messages, and other interactions that impact purchase decision-making. All this makes reliable tracking of marketing results very difficult.
Today’s buying path is often so complex that no straight‑line model like a funnel can realistically map it.
If there’s no funnel, what’s your strategy? Enter the 4 Ps.
Today, businesses need to continuously engage with prospects using strategies that remain relevant as they move through various stages of your unique sales cycle. What’s important is that your prospects find and engage with reliable content and value propositions that inspire real interest and/or reflect their needs. That will lead them to take the next step in your engagement process.
In practice, instead of a static funnel, you can implement a strategy focused on four priorities (call them the 4 P’s):
- Presence where your buyers already hang out – Identify where decision‑makers gain new insights – social media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, subreddit threads, LI), relevant websites/content, media/publications, industry newsletters and podcasts, and of course, email and your company website.
- Provide answers that address real needs instantly. Deliver relevant content and value propositions that truly contribute to demand generation: an analyst report, insightful blog, customer case study, relevant media article, short video, virtual event, etc. The more relevance and trusted sources you offer, the likelier prospects will remember and act on your key messages and value propositions. (Here’s an example.)
- Precision in who sees what. It’s critical to ensure you’re truly reaching your prospects. Today’s AI-driven digital advertising platforms are extremely effective at precision targeting of ideal‑customer personas, where and when those prospects are primed to receive your marketing messages. Media and industry analyst relations are valuable means for delivering trusted content to well-defined audiences. Both of those channels, especially when used concurrently, help keep the misses low and the relevance high.
- Patience in inspiring sentiment and building intent. All marketers love results to be instantaneous – that your prospects’ decision-makers will act upon your content or selling messages right away. But buyers want to make informed decisions, especially when several people are involved in the process. So the marketing/sales process takes some patience, recognizing that the buyer’s decision-making journey requires relevant selling messages communicated consistently … and that can take time.
Nail those 4 P’s and you’ll have a well‑tuned strategic marketing engine that delivers relevant messages to likely prospects very effectively, and provides them with the key messages and value propositions that address their top-of-mind needs and drives them to your doorstep.
Survive and thrive in today’s marketing/sales landscape
All this is to say, simply, that you have to find the most effective ways to identify and reach your prospects. Email is still highly effective if you have the right data, but it’s a 1-to-1 medium when most decision-making involves multiple stakeholders. We’ve found success with these two broad tactics that, when used strategically, effectively reach the right prospects with your key messages:
- Programmatic and Social Targeted Advertising. Your prospects spend significant parts of their days on computers and cellphones. These AI-driven digital advertising media enable you to target prospects based on their browsing behaviours, specific interests, location (such as at an industry event or consumer show), and social media activity (based on the content they’re viewing, commenting on, or listening to). They enable your contextually-relevant ads to reach them in virtual real-time.
Precision campaigns using these digital media deliver high response with little waste because they are so closely-targeted, and reflect the known interests of prospects who influence buying decisions.
- Media and Analyst Relations. In today’s non-linear buyer journey, media outlets and industry analysts add a crucial layer of credibility by aligning your brand with trusted industry sources, especially when used in a campaign approach. When your story appears in specialized publications/platforms, podcasts and analyst channels that your prospects already follow, it ensures they learn about you in a context they trust, and makes it easy to share with others.
Moreover, leveraging the influence of acknowledged experts helps shape opinion and buyer consideration in your favour. Media and analyst relations works hand-in-hand with digital advertising, ensuring your brand is not just highly visible, but your marketing messages are validated at every turn in the buyer’s path.
Important to note: AI is becoming a primary discovery mechanism for your prospects. They’re not just scrolling through Google search results anymore – they’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini for information relevant to your needs. Why? AI models are trained on editorial journalism, industry analysis, and expert commentary found across the web. So the companies that will dominate AI-driven discovery are those gaining insights from authoritative and highly-relevant sources (read: the media).
Embrace a new approach to the sales cycle
The concept of the marketing funnel has forever changed. The old model of identifying and reaching audiences, then moving them through a defined sales cycle, no longer applies. Today, your prospects inevitably move from touchpoint to touchpoint, driven by a range of factors.
So shift the paradigm: Consider the concepts of the 4P’s – target your prospects with content and value propositions that truly contribute to demand generation; reach them at the exact moments they indicate an interest, with messages from trusted sources; and have patience to allow them to make informed decisions.
Do that consistently, and you won’t need a funnel diagram to reflect progress — the Closed/Won column in your CRM will do it for you.