I’d like to tell you a story about my friend Jeff (name changed).
Jeff has tried his hand at everything – Blogging, YouTubing, Podcasting, and LinkedIn(ing). Not just that, his Instagram account shows a few posts, and he has some fancy Tik-Tok reels too (although, he is a little embarrassed about that and would never confess to making those unless he is drunk).
The result? He has not made any progress on any platforms because the attention he is seeking… is simply not there.
It’s not just Jeff though
It’s all of us. As experts, consultants, and founders, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to capture our audience’s attention with our content.
- The number of content sources keep going up
- Mediocre content keeps increasing
- GenAI is flooding the content with poor-quality content
To fight this noise, we create more noise. Unfortunately, more noise doesn’t lead to better trust.
Building trust is no walk in the park.
Or is it?
Should we give up? Or is there hope?
It’s time to revisit the funnel
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Traditional growth hacking advice is to maximize the top of the funnel. Get more attention. Keep filling more and more people at the top.
- Send social media connection requests to more people
- Publish at the same time every day
- Write better headlines
- Use better images
And so on.
Does the traditional vertical funnel work?
Of course, it does.
Examples like Gary Vaynerchuk or more contemporary ones like Dan Koe and Justin Welsh come to mind. They have made an impact with the vertical funnel. They have hacked the system and, with exceptional content and copywriting skills. They have a huge number of followers, and their content gets a ton of attention.
But it doesn’t work for Jeff
As I said, it’s getting competitive, and while hacking the system is one solution, it’s losing its power. Of course, we could hack harder and be even more aggressive than our competitors, fiercely elbowing out the competition and grabbing the attention of our audience, but is that how we want our grandkids to remember us?
Someone who hacked the algorithm?
Someone who was good at growth hacks?
It’s time we re-think the funnel.
The idea for this email came after my conversation with Jessica Lackey. Here’s the screenshot –
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And this sparked an idea
What if we are looking at this the wrong way?
What if it’s not about optimizing the attention at the top?
I also reflected on a blog post by Seth Godin. Essentially, Seth talks about creating stuff that is so remarkable that people tell their friends about it.
What if we applied this to our content?
What if the right way to grow content was not through a funnel but from person to person?
The concentric circles
The final inspiration was Jay Acunzo’s idea of concentric circles. According to Jay, the traditional funnel is about “annoying the many to convert a few.”
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Jay, however, suggests replacing the traditional funnel with concentric circles.
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If your content is good
The people in the innermost circle (your die-hard fans) talk about it with the outer circles – (People who like you and strangers)
Essentially, Jay, Jessica, and Seth are saying the same thing – for the content to spread and your thought leadership to grow, you need conversations with your inner circle, who would then spread them to the outer ones.
Introducing the horizontal content funnel
If the vertical content marketing funnel is about hacking the system, the horizontal content marketing ‘funnel’ is about growing your content through relationships.
In the horizontal funnel, the content isn’t noticed because of hacks but because people choose to talk about it.
(To be clear, I don’t like the word funnel much. But well… )
But wouldn’t this take time?
One of the push-backs I get for this is that the growth will be too slow. Nobody has the patience to put their butt on the chair and create such good content that it gets shared. The path seems difficult and rather sloooooooow.
Or is it?
I have a client who has been trying to solve the thought-leadership problem for a long time. In the last two years, he has gone through multiple Marketing Heads and multiple agencies. Has he made any progress?
No.
Pushing harder and striving might seem productive, but it’s an illusion. It doesn’t take us anywhere. Instead of chasing volume, we could build 1 relationship, and then 2, and then 5. These relationships would engage with our content, and with this engagement, we would open ourselves to new relationships.
Do we give up on the vertical funnel altogether?
Not really. I wouldn’t be an idealist and say, “Don’t you dare touch social media. Give up on the vertical funnel and ONLY focus on the horizontal one!”
Because, in reality, we need support. While we can keep building relationships, the vertical funnel can give us some quick attention. So while we don’t give up on the vertical funnel completely, we could keep investing in the horizontal one.
Coming back to Jeff
I don’t mean to sound ‘holier than thou’. Jeff is me, and I am Jeff. Jeff is you and your Jeff. We have all played the vertical funnel game and will continue to do so. But if I want to build thought leadership, I know that it’d be rather stupid to depend solely on the vertical funnel.