The Marketing Funnel Doesn’t Exist
Marketing funnels are a staple of B2B marketing strategy. However, if you consider how we buy, you’d agree they misrepresent how people make purchase decisions. Our traditional awareness→ consideration→ decision framework assumes a neat linear buying journey.
When did you last purchase anything that way? Real human behavior is messier and unpredictable.
Why The Funnel As We Think Of It Is A Fantasy
The marketing funnel assumes you can control when and how people buy. But people don't purchase because you nudged or nurtured or egged or hounded them down your funnel stages. They buy when they are ready. They buy because they have an unmet need. They buy because something triggered them to act.
“My problem with the marketing funnel is that it assumes people buy... when you show enough ads or send enough emails in a specific order,” says Justyna Ciercierska, Founder of Marketing Waiting Room, a program for brands looking to create an omnipresent ecosystem where they claim a mental space in their future buyers' minds.
“Recently, my husband and I were baking pizza and forgot to turn off the oven... we heard the alarm going off because there was too much smoke... that was for us the trigger to go and buy a fire extinguisher. Before that, I had zero interest,” she continues.
This unpredictable trigger pattern is how real purchases happen—not because someone methodically moved from awareness to consideration to decision over a predetermined timeline.
“Marketing works at the speed of buyers. No matter how effective or convincing your marketing might be, all of the revenue outcomes ultimately come down to the timing of buyers. And most of your potential buyers aren’t buying most of the time,” says Liam Moroney, CEO, Storybook Marketing.
The problem with viewing the marketing funnel as a neat, tri-colored pathway is we end up with company and channel-centric marketing programs.
But this approach misses something crucial. The buyer.
The fix? Instead of obsessing over how many emails to send to move the prospect down the funnel, we should be asking:
- How does your buyer’s journey unfold?
- What role would specific channels play?
- Would buyers actually find you in that context?
3 Ways To Escape Funnel Thinking
For marketers stuck in funnel-first thinking, Justyna recommends:
- Start with empathy probing: Gather your team and role-play your buyer’s journey, starting with “Take me back to the day you decided to buy that product.”
- Study human behavior: Learn how memory is created and how brands grow by reading about human behavior, attention, and brand building.
- Recalibrate your expectations about attention: Marketers who believe in funnels “overestimate how much attention people pay to their content.” Understand what it really takes to grab attention.
What’s Next?
Ready to keep growing? We've got a couple of other resources you might find helpful, such as:
- The 13 questions B2B brand marketers must answer before building a brand program
- Or this piece on why attribution haunts your brand
You should also subscribe to The CMO newsletter to stay on top of trends and get the latest tips, resources, and guides from our community of seasoned marketing leaders straight to your inbox.
