Customers decide whether to trust a brand using the same signals they use with people. Seven parallels carry over from human trust to brand trust: honesty becomes clarity, understanding becomes relevance, proof of character becomes evidence, ease becomes low friction, consistency becomes reliability, integrity becomes values, and care becomes relationship. Brands that practice all seven consistently move past simple awareness and become the obvious choice.

Think about the people you trust most. You might not be able to explain exactly why you trust them, but it usually comes down to a few simple things, like being straight with you and showing up when they said they would. Customers size up brands the same way, often without realizing it, and the signals they look for are more familiar than you might expect.

From Human Trust to Brand Trust

Familiarity...check. But what does brand trust look like, practically?

Let’s take a step back. Trust is not a business invention, nor is it something to be manipulated. Trust is practiced daily in our relationships. We decide whom to believe, whom to invest in, and whom to avoid based on a set of signals that feel natural and almost invisible. The same is true when customers evaluate brands. What earns trust from a company often looks strikingly similar to what earns trust from a friend. By looking first at how people build trust with one another, we can draw parallels for how brands should act…

Read the full article

Customer research pays off when real customer needs stay present in every decision your company makes. Once you know who your customers are, your next job is earning their trust, and that starts with frequency. The Marketing Rule of 7 holds that people need about seven touchpoints with a brand before they buy, a pattern rooted in availability bias, our tendency to pick whatever comes to mind most easily. The exact number varies, but the principle holds: create enough meaningful touchpoints to stay familiar, and back that visibility with credibility so familiarity turns into trust.

Who speaks for the customer when they aren’t in the room, and how do you earn their trust? Your customer is making decisions in rooms you’ll never see. Whether you come to mind there depends on how well you know them and how often you’ve shown up in ways that matter.

Giving Customers a Seat at the Table

When you define your customer segments around needs instead of relying on internal opinions, your marketing campaigns, product development, and even company culture begin to align with the jobs your customers are hiring you to solve. That alignment gives focus, helps you avoid distractions, and directs your energy toward the opportunities that truly matter.

One company I worked for created a consistent reminder of this principle. Translucent chairs were placed around the office in conference rooms, each clearly labeled with the word customer. These chairs were meant to symbolize that the customer always deserved a seat at the table. These chairs were physically placed at the meeting table, reminding us to pause and ask whether a decision made sense for the people we served. It was a simple, theatrical gesture that kept the customer present in every conversation and helped us make better choices.

That is ultimately the role of customer strategy and customer research. Just as those chairs gave the customer a physical presence in the room, research gives your customers a voice in the way you lead, build, and grow. Personas help you see them clearly, and research tools help you hear them accurately. Together, they ensure that your company is guided not by assumptions but by real human needs. When you commit to that mindset, you are not just collecting data. You are building a culture that keeps the customer at the center of everything you do, which, ultimately, will keep them interested in everything you do.

The Marketing Rule of 7

Okay, so now that you understand who your customers are and what their core needs are…

Read the full article

Customer research extends well beyond personas. Ten established methods cover most of what a company needs to learn. Conjoint analysis, MaxDiff, Likert scales, and the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter surface preferences and pricing thresholds. Usability testing, A/B testing, Customer Effort Score, and Customer Satisfaction Score measure the experience itself, while Net Promoter Score and brand tracking studies monitor loyalty and brand health over time. Most companies don’t need all ten at once, but knowing what each one does determines which to reach for when a specific question arrives.

Most companies have one research move, and it’s a survey. That works for some things, like gathering the input behind the segments and personas we covered in last week’s article. But different questions need different tools, and these ten research methods are worth having in your arsenal. The goal is not to make you an expert in every method, but to show you what exists so you know which tool to reach for when the moment comes.

Ten Valuable Research Tools

Personas are one of the most powerful outputs of customer research, and they will remain a foundation of your strategy. Yet personas are only part of the picture. Customer research can also provide practical tools for shaping products, refining pricing, guiding marketing, and measuring brand health.

The following ten methods are some of the most valuable ways to uncover what your customers think, feel, and truly want. Each serves a different purpose, and the strongest brands combine them at different stages of their customer research journey…

Read the full article

Customer segmentation divides a broad market into smaller groups that share similar characteristics, so a company can decide who it serves and how. The common approaches sort customers by demographics, geography, psychographics, behavior, or, for B2B companies, firmographics. Each of those describes who customers are and how they act without explaining why they choose what they choose. Needs-based segmentation answers that question by grouping people according to the jobs they are trying to get done and the outcomes they value. Personas then turn a segment into a specific person with a name, a situation, and a stated job, which gives a team something concrete to design and market against.

In last week’s article we covered how to actually research your customers, moving between interviews and surveys until patterns start to surface. But that’s just the first step. If you run the interviews, field the survey, build the deck, and then the deck goes into a folder that nobody opens again, you’re wasting your research. Research only counts if it changes a decision, and the first decision it should change is who you are actually trying to serve.

Segment Your Customers

By combining qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, you gather a better picture of how customers think and what they value. The next step is to organize those insights into a structure that helps you make decisions. This is where customer segmentation comes in.

Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a broad market into smaller groups of people or organizations that share similar characteristics. The purpose is to better understand customers, identify meaningful differences between them, and decide which groups to prioritize. Segmentation helps you decide who you are trying to serve and how you will serve them.

Practically, segmentation is about identifying the differences that influence buying decisions and using those insights to guide your company’s strategies. A good segmentation creates clarity. It tells your marketing team where to focus messages, your product team what to build, and your sales team which opportunities to pursue. Without it, you risk spreading resources too thin or chasing the wrong customers altogether.

There are several common approaches to segmentation…

Read the full article

Customer research is the practice of gathering and analyzing information about current and potential customers to understand their needs, motivations, and pain points. It works in two modes. Quantitative research measures customers through analytics, surveys, and scores like Net Promoter Score, while qualitative research listens to them through interviews and focus groups. The strongest approach cycles between the two continuously, using interviews to surface themes, surveys to validate those themes at scale, then returning to interviews to explain what the numbers mean. Companies that research regularly report significantly higher growth and profitability than those that do not, and consumers view brands more favorably when those brands ask for feedback and act on it.

You can measure almost everything now. Bounce rates, session times, Net Promoter Scores, cart abandonment tracked to the percentage point. Most companies hold more data about their customers than they know what to do with. Numbers tell you what happened. On their own, they do not tell you who your customer is and what they are thinking. Finding out what your customers actually need means asking more structured questions that go beyond raw numbers.

The Reason for Research

Let’s take a step back. Who even are your customers? And how do you discover their core needs?

There is an entire field dedicated to customer research, the process of gathering and analyzing information about current and potential customers to understand their needs, preferences, behaviors, motivations, and pain points. You may also hear terms such as customer insights and customer strategy used to describe this work. Many companies have even created chief customer officer roles, executives whose primary responsibility is to empathize with and advocate for customer needs. Their mandate is to represent the voice of the customer in decision-making and, in doing so, drive stronger business outcomes.

Studies confirm that this intentional focus pays off. Organizations that conduct regular customer research experience 30.7% growth and 19.9% profitability, compared to just 2.8% growth and 11.0% profitability among companies that do not invest in research. The impact is not only financial. There is also a reputational benefit: Seventy-seven percent of consumers say they perceive brands more favorably when those brands ask for and act on customer feedback. In other words, customer research not only makes you smarter and more profitable, but it also makes you more trusted…

Read the full article

Jobs to Be Done is a framework that treats every purchase as an act of hiring. Customers do not buy products so much as hire them to make progress on a job. Those jobs fall into three categories: functional, emotional, and social. Jobs stay stable over time even as the products serving them change, which makes them a more durable thing to build around than product features. Marketing Myopia is the opposite failure, where a company defines itself by what it sells rather than the job it performs. It’s a blind spot that is the cause of many famous failures, like why the railroads lost transportation and why Hollywood nearly lost entertainment to television.

What does your company do? If you answered with a description of your product’s features, you might be at risk of making an expensive but common marketing mistake. Customers are not really buying the thing you make. They are trying to get somewhere, and your product is one of several options for getting them there.

As we continue to explore the Marketing Funnel, now we’re moving from the Awareness phase to the Consideration phase. In this part of their journey, the customer needs confidence in your offering. Your role is to build trust.

The Power of Jobs to Be Done

You can’t build trust with someone you don’t understand. That’s why every strong marketing strategy begins with a baseline of customer research. Before customers will trust you, you need to see the world through their eyes and grasp what they are truly trying to accomplish.

One of the most powerful ways to do this is through the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework. The late Harvard professor Clayton Christensen popularized the idea in Competing Against Luck. He explains:

When we buy a product, we essentially ‘hire’ something to get a job done. If it does the job well, when we are confronted with the same job, we hire that same product again. And if the product does a crummy job, we “fire” it and look around for something else we might hire to solve the problem.

A question to consider: Do you really need a kitchen knife, or are you hiring a tool that helps you slice ingredients quickly, prepare a beautiful meal, and impress your guests at a dinner party? The job is not simply owning a knife. The real job is creating a dining experience worth sharing. Once you view products this way, you stop focusing only on features and begin to understand the progress customers are trying to make in their lives.

If Christensen brought Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) to the mainstream, Anthony Ulwick was an early pioneer. Ulwick’s book, Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice, outlines a structured methodology for defining and analyzing customer jobs. At its core, jobs theory encourages you to ask, What is the customer really trying to accomplish beyond just buying a product?

Ulwick explains that jobs are stable over time, independent of geography, and not tied to any single solution. In other words, the underlying job remains constant, even as products and technologies evolve.

He also distinguishes three types of jobs:

1. Functional jobs: The practical tasks or outcomes customers want to complete

2. Emotional jobs: The feelings customers want to experience or the ones they want to avoid while getting the core job done

3. Social jobs: The way customers want to be perceived by others as they pursue that outcome

Understanding jobs at this deeper level gives you a focused lens on customer needs and helps you avoid being trapped in promoting only surface-level product features.

Avoid Marketing Myopia

Marketing Myopia is the opposite of Jobs to Be Done…

Read the full article

The 97% rule says that roughly 97% of the people who visit your site are not ready to purchase. They are researching, comparing, and building confidence rather than rejecting you. This matters most in the Consideration stage of the Marketing Funnel, where customers start asking which solution is right for them. In this stage, you need to have empathy for the 97% of people who aren’t ready to purchase yet. Brands that win in this stage are the ones that demonstrate credibility and proof instead of applying pressure. Optimizing only for the 3% who are ready to buy today produces short-term conversions at the cost of long-term trust.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

— Maya Angelou, American poet and civil rights activist

I once found myself at a military checkpoint in Egypt. My passport had been taken away, I was unable to speak the local language, and I overheard the captain say, “American,” several times into his phone. I was a person of interest, and I didn’t know why. Another time, I was bouncing through the streets of Delhi in an auto rickshaw at 1:00 a.m., tired, itchy from bedbug bites, carrying all my luggage, and lacking a hotel to go to. In other cases, I have slept in an old, converted communist camp in Russia and even wandered deep into sub-Saharan Kenya alongside local tribes.

On the surface, these situations may sound a bit precarious. And to be honest, I was a little nervous in Egypt and frustrated in India. Yet I rarely felt unsafe. Why? Because I trusted the people around me. They were locals I had spent time with before the situation unfolded. I’d met them through people I trusted. In word and deed, they had shown themselves to be reliable.

That trust changed everything. It turned moments that could have felt terrifying into ones I knew would simply make good stories—experiences that enriched my life. It made the difference between panic and perspective.

The idea of trust, or the lack of it, also applies to brands like yours. At times, customers will not approach you and immediately feel a sense of relief. Often, they are feeling uncertain, weighing risks, and wondering whether your solution is right for them. Just as I relied on people who proved trustworthy in unfamiliar places, customers rely on brands that demonstrate integrity, provide evidence, and show up consistently.

From Awareness to Consideration

In the Awareness stage of the marketing funnel, a customer recognizes that they have a problem and begins to look for solutions. They move from being Problem Unaware to Problem Aware to Solution Aware to Product Aware and finally, to Most Aware. By this point, they ideally understand their options and are ready to weigh them. This transition brings them into the Consideration stage of the funnel…

Read the full article

Three examples show the four content types at work in the real world. Red Bull turned a record-breaking space jump into branded entertainment that reached eight million live viewers and drove $500 million in additional sales. HubSpot built a durable growth engine on education, earning 93% of its website traffic through direct visits and organic search rather than paid ads. And a fractional CMO consultancy launched with just two thousand LinkedIn connections found clients by clarifying a confusing concept instead of pitching services.

Last week, we covered the four types of content every brand needs: entertain, educate, inspire, and convince. What does each of these content types look like in practice? These three examples that follow come from very different places, but they share one thing. Each one gave the audience something worth their time before asking for anything in return.

A Case Study in Entertaining Content: Red Bull

In October 2012, Red Bull transformed the boundaries of branded content with Red Bull Stratos, an audacious project that sent Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner to the edge of space. Suspended beneath a massive helium balloon above the New Mexico desert, Baumgartner ascended twenty-four miles into the stratosphere, then stepped off the capsule ledge and plummeted back to Earth.

What followed was not just a record-breaking skydive but one of the most iconic brand moments in modern history. Baumgartner reached a supersonic speed of 843.6 miles per hour, becoming the first human to break the sound barrier in free fall. He earned three world records in a single jump: highest balloon flight, highest free fall, and fastest speed in free fall. His descent lasted just over four minutes before he landed safely.

While the mission carried undeniable scientific value, it was, at its core, a piece of branded entertainment. The event embodied Red Bull’s slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings.” Instead of a traditional advertisement, Red Bull created a spectacle so compelling that global news outlets, social media, and everyday conversation revolved around their brand for weeks. Over eight million people watched the event live on YouTube, the largest audience for a live stream at the time, cementing the project as a marketing masterstroke.

The cost of the project is debated, with one estimate placing it at $30 million, yet the returns far outweighed that figure, with reports crediting it for generating an additional $500 million in sales.

Red Bull Stratos was not a commercial. It was an event. By staging a high-drama, visually spectacular moment, Red Bull positioned itself as not just an energy drink company but a cultural force in extreme sports and adventure. Entertainment, rather than product promotion, became the vehicle of persuasion.

This case demonstrates how brands can capture audiences not by pushing a message, but by creating experiences so entertaining and shareable that the audience pulls the message to themselves. Red Bull Stratos wasn’t about a beverage; it was a story of courage, innovation, and human possibility, all of which became inseparably tied to the Red Bull name.

A Case Study in Educational Content: HubSpot

Customer relationship management (CRM) platform HubSpot has become a leader in marketing and sales technology not only because of its product, but also because of its ability to educate. Competing with giants, such as Salesforce, HubSpot built its growth strategy around…

Read the full article

Content is any message a company creates to reach, inform, or influence an audience, and content marketing is the deliberate practice of using those messages to build interest over time. The most effective content balances what the customer needs with what the company needs, and falls into four types: entertain, educate, inspire, and convince. Entertaining content captures attention, educational content builds trust, inspirational content creates aspiration, and convincing content removes the friction that stands between interest and purchase. Auditing your existing content against these four categories reveals where you are strong and where there are gaps.

When you post a piece of content, do you know exactly what job it is doing? Most brands produce content without a clear sense of what each piece is supposed to accomplish. They post because they are supposed to post. But content marketing works best when each piece of content has a clear purpose. Some of it exists to get noticed, some to build credibility, some to stir aspiration, and some to close the deal.

From Value to Visibility: Four Content Types

Increasing perceived value is only part of the equation. People cannot appreciate your value if they don’t know you exist. This is why brand awareness is essential. Awareness does not simply come from shouting louder. It comes from creating content that meets people where they are and gives them a reason to care.

Content refers to any message a company creates to reach, inform, or influence an audience. It includes short videos, articles, social posts, guides, podcasts, and emails. Content marketing is the intentional practice of using these messages to attract and nurture interest over time.

As American digital marketer, entrepreneur, and New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel explains, “When it comes to building brand awareness for my company, the method that’s worked best has been content marketing. Although it involves a lot of work, and it takes six months to a year for it to be effective, it’s been proven to provide the biggest bang for the buck.” His point underscores that meaningful awareness is not a quick win, but a deliberate investment in content that steadily builds trust and recognition over time.

The most effective content strikes a balance between customer needs and company needs, guiding people along the path from Awareness to Purchase. Four types of content do this:

1. Entertain

2. Educate

3. Inspire

4. Convince

Each type plays a distinct role in shaping perception and driving action, addressing customers’ rational and emotional needs while also serving the company’s goals of building awareness and driving purchases.

Read the full article

The Value-Price-Cost Model explains the relationship between what a product costs to make, what you charge for it, and what the customer believes it is worth. For a purchase to happen, perceived value must exceed price, and profit is the gap between price and cost of goods sold. Perceived value is made up of three parts: the product’s tangible utility, the intangible brand, and the intangible marketing. Because branding and marketing raise perceived value without changing the product itself, they can both convert customers who would not have bought and support higher prices without hurting satisfaction.

Two products can be functionally identical and still sell at wildly different prices. The gap in price point is explained by more than just markup. It comes down to what customers believe a product is worth before they ever see the price tag. Understanding how that perception gets built, and how much of it you actually control, is one of the most useful things a business owner can learn.

Consistency Is Key

Good storytelling must be consistent across every customer touchpoint. Whether someone sees your social media post, reads your website’s About page, or speaks with your customer service team, they should feel they are experiencing the same narrative. Consistency builds familiarity, familiarity builds trust, and trust is the foundation of long-term brand loyalty.

In the context of keeping people interested, storytelling is the bridge between understanding a customer’s lived experience and showing how your brand fits naturally into it. This turns a basic transaction into an ongoing relationship and allows a product to become part of someone’s identity.

When storytelling is done well, customers are not only more likely to buy from you, but they are also more likely to share your story with others. They become advocates who extend your brand’s reach far beyond what you could accomplish on your own.

Storytelling creates the emotional connection that draws people in, but a strong brand must also deliver on the practical side of the equation.

The Value-Price-Cost Model

To truly sustain growth, you must align your story with the tangible and intangible values you provide. This is where the Value-Price-Cost (VPC) Model comes in.

Read the full article

Your brand is the summation of how people perceive your company, products, and services. It is far more than a logo or tagline. It is shaped by every touchpoint, from advertising and packaging to product performance, pricing, customer service, employee culture, and social impact. Shaping a brand requires clarity of purpose, a defined market position, consistency across every interaction, and delivering on the promise you make. Storytelling is what brings that foundation to life, and the most effective brand narratives cast the customer as the hero and the brand as the trusted guide.

Most companies think of their brand as something they design: a logo, a color palette, a set of fonts in a style guide. But your brand is not what you say about yourself. It is what other people think and feel when your name comes up, shaped by every interaction they have ever had with you. Brand is built in a thousand small places, and the businesses that grow are the ones that manage those places deliberately.

Transitioning to Awareness

In the Awareness stage of the Marketing Funnel, customers recognize they have a problem and begin to see your brand as a possible solution. They are not yet evaluating features or comparing options, but they are looking for a spark that helps them imagine a better possibility. This stage depends on inspiration, because inspiration prompts someone to lift their head, notice something new, and consider that change might be worthwhile. Your role is to capture attention in a way that feels fresh, relevant, and impossible to ignore.

The first step in capturing attention is to set your company up for success with a strong foundation. In other words, you must create a brand that is clear, consistent, and memorable. A strong brand communicates who you are, what you stand for, and why you matter. It reflects your positioning in the market, delivers a compelling promise to your customers, and shows up with consistency across every interaction. Without this foundation, even the best marketing tactics struggle to gain traction because customers won’t know what to remember you for.

What Brand Really Is

Your brand is the summation of how people perceive your company, products, and services. It is the overall identity and impression associated with you. In its simplest form, your brand is your reputation.

Brand is far more than logos, colors, and even a tagline. It is shaped by every way you show up in the world…

Read the full article

The MACJ process separates writing into four sequential roles: the Madman generates ideas, the Architect builds structure, the Carpenter drafts, and the Judge refines. Work through them in order, and the blank page stops being intimidating. I've used this for everything from short emails to my first business book, and it changed how much I produce and how good the result is.

This was the single most impactful lesson I learned at Harvard. What’s funny is I took an assessment and was permitted to not take the course, but I knew communication wasn’t one of my strengths, and I wanted it to be. So I took a class on business writing anyway.

And here’s what I learned. All good writers, whether they know it or not, follow a specific linear sequence in their writing process. Great writers don’t deviate from this, or it becomes far less efficient.

The process can be summarized into the MACJ writing process. This process has helped me write anything from a short email, to this article, to a full business book.

What is the MACJ Writing Process?

MACJ stands for the four essential “characters” you take on to complete a writing project: the Madman, the Architect, the Carpenter, and the Judge.

1. Madman: Every good piece of writing starts with chaos. This is the Madman phase. Your only job is to generate ideas. Capture everything that comes to mind: arguments, examples, stories, statistics, questions. Nothing needs to be logical. Nothing needs to be polished. In fact, it shouldn’t be. The biggest mistake people make is letting the Judge show up too early. The moment you start criticizing your ideas, creativity shuts down. The Madman’s job is simple: produce raw material.

2. Architect: Once you have ideas, the Architect steps in. The Architect organizes the chaos into structure. Which ideas belong together? What is the central argument? What order will make the most sense to the reader? Think of this stage as building the blueprint before constructing a house. A useful trick is to force yourself to identify the main points your piece will make. If you cannot summarize the argument in concise sentences, the structure probably isn’t clear yet. The Architect turns raw ideas into a plan.

3. Carpenter: Now the Carpenter gets to work. This is the drafting stage. The Carpenter follows the blueprint and builds the structure of the piece sentence by sentence. The key rule: write forward only. Do not edit. Do not re-read paragraphs. Do not obsess over word choice. Momentum matters more than perfection. A messy draft is infinitely more valuable than a perfect sentence that never gets finished. The Carpenter’s goal is progress.

4. Judge: Only after the draft is complete does the Judge arrive. The Judge edits, tightens, cuts unnecessary words, and clarifies the argument. Grammar gets fixed. Sentences get simplified. Weak sections get rewritten. This is where good writing becomes great writing. But the Judge must arrive last. When the Judge appears too early, the Madman stops producing ideas and the Carpenter stops building. That is how writer’s block happens.

   

   Read the full article

There are Five Stages of Customer Awareness: the progression a potential customer makes from not recognizing a problem to becoming deeply familiar with a specific product. The five stages are Problem Unaware, Problem Aware, Solution Aware, Product Aware, and Most Aware. Understanding where a customer sits in this progression is essential, because effective marketing does not just promote a product. It helps people recognize their own challenges, discover that solutions exist, and identify a specific product as the right one for them.

“Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk and peace activist

If you couldn’t tell yet, I’m a bit of an optimist. I love nonprofits and support many on a recurring basis, but I also believe for-profit organizations can be an incredible force for good. A business adds value by its very existence because every transaction is a sign that someone found what it offered worthwhile. After all, why would anyone trade their money for goods or services if they didn’t see value in them?

Of course, as the saying from Spider-Man reminds us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Too often, individuals and organizations with power fail to use it wisely. That is precisely why I am passionate about building and supporting all organizations that use their influence to actively benefit others.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, once said, “There’s no point in starting a company unless you want to make a contribution to society.” The optimist in me agrees, but the pragmatist recognizes a challenge. Many founders create products that are genuinely useful and solve real problems, yet their companies still fail to gain traction.

A great product combined with great marketing can create an enormous contribution to society. But a great product with poor marketing often results in wasted potential and wasted resources.

People need to know your brand exists.

Let me share a simple statistic with you, one that requires no citation: Your company will sell zero products if zero people know you’re selling them…

Read the full article

Keeping people interested is not about constant promotion. It is about delivering the right kind of value at each transition in the customer's journey. There are five key moments where interest grows or fades, each tied to a distinct customer need: inspiration, confidence, clarity and ease, satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. Brands that understand and respond to these needs move customers forward sustainably, without losing trust along the way.

Most businesses treat marketing as a volume problem: say it louder, say it more often, and eventually people will buy. But that is not how interest actually works. People move through a buying journey because they received the right kind of value at the right moment, not because they were pushed. Understanding what that value looks like at every stage of the journey, and delivering it with the right timing, is what separates brands that earn loyal customers from brands that are always starting over.

How to Keep People Interested

Now that we have explored the marketing funnel, the question becomes how to help people move through it. There is value in not only understanding the stages, but in understanding what helps someone transition from one stage to the next.

Some people will jump stages on their own, but most will not. They need you to add the right kind of value at the right moment. And if you push too hard or try to force someone ahead before they are ready, you risk losing their interest entirely.

This is a core component of maintaining interest. Keeping people interested does not mean constantly trying to sell to them. It means having empathy for what they need at each stage of their journey and offering value that helps them move forward. Brands that take this patient yet compelling approach grow sustainably. When you continually push purchasing messages at people who are not ready, you may win a few short-term transactions, but you will lose long-term trust.

This is why we need to focus on the transitions themselves. These moments are where interest grows or fades:

• Unawareness → Awareness

• Awareness → Consideration

• Consideration → Purchase

• Purchase → Repeat

• Repeat → Advocate

Each transition is driven by one core customer need, and each need carries a clear implication for your brand…

Read the full article

The marketing funnel maps the six stages every customer travels through, from Unawareness to Advocacy, giving marketers and business owners a shared language for diagnosing where attention is growing or fading. Critics call it too simple, but a model doesn't need to capture every nuance to be useful. It needs to help you see more clearly, and this one does.

Have you ever wondered why some customers never seem to move from curious to committed? Most businesses invest in marketing without a clear picture of what their customers are actually going through. They run ads, send emails, post content, and still can't pinpoint where interest stalls or why people drop off. The marketing funnel gives you that picture. It maps the full journey from the moment someone has never heard of you to the moment they're actively recommending you to others. And the reason it has stayed relevant for so long is not because it's perfect. It's because it works.

The Marketing Funnel

Marketing can be defined as the process of moving a target audience through the shopping journey. The natural next step is to understand what that journey looks like.

There are six stages in the shopping journey. They are:

1. Unawareness

2. Awareness

3. Consideration

4. Purchase

5. Repeat

6. Advocate

Together, these stages form what is commonly known as the marketing funnel. It earns this name because of the shape created when you visualize the number of people in each stage. The largest group sits at Unawareness, and the smallest group sits at Advocate.

Here is a simple overview of the six stages…

Read the full article

Have you ever encountered a brand that made you feel like a better version of yourself, not just sold you something? Marketing exists on a spectrum. Bad marketing preys on psychological triggers, good marketing motivates by connecting real solutions to real needs, and great marketing inspires by making customers feel capable of becoming a better version of themselves.

Have you ever struggled to explain what marketing actually is, beyond ads and slogans? You need a solid framework if you want to grow your business. Once we agree on what marketing means and how to view it at a fundamental level, we have a solid framework to expand into more advanced principles in future articles.

Not all marketing is created equal, and most of us have felt the difference firsthand. Some brands make us feel like a better version of ourselves. Others introduce us to a product that solves a problem we already had. And others push us toward a decision we almost immediately regret. Marketing falls on a spectrum: great marketing inspires, good marketing motivates, and bad marketing preys.

Great Marketing Inspires

I believe marketing is good for the world and that advertising makes my life better, though I’m sure this is not a popular opinion. As customers, we have been frustrated by the flood of ads interrupting our lives. As companies, we have been frustrated that marketing isn’t doing its job helping the bottom line…

Read the full article

Marketing is the intentional process of moving people through their decision journey by aligning what they need with what a business can uniquely provide, not simply advertising, branding, or persuasion. It has evolved through distinct eras: the production and product concepts of the early 1900s, the sales concept of the 1950s, the customer-first marketing concept of the 1990s, and today's societal marketing approach. Together, these shifts show a steady move toward deeper understanding of the people businesses serve.

Have you ever struggled to explain what marketing actually is, beyond ads and slogans? You need a solid framework if you want to grow your business. Once we agree on what marketing means and how to view it at a fundamental level, we have a solid framework to expand into more advanced principles in future articles.

Marketing is more than the misconceptions that surround it, and it has changed dramatically since the first market stalls of 3000 BCE, moving through eras of production, sales, and customer-first thinking on the way to today’s societal marketing approach.

What Is Marketing?

Marketing is the process of moving a target audience through the shopping journey.

Marketing is a process, which means it is an ongoing effort. It acknowledges that people go through a journey when making purchase decisions. And all this is for a target audience, which is a grouping of people with common needs.

In contrast, here’s what marketing is not…

Read the full article

The Risk/Reward Matrix helps leaders evaluate opportunities by comparing potential payoff with the level of risk. It categorizes projects into four types: Oysters (high risk, high reward), Pearls (low risk, high reward), White Elephants (high risk, low reward), and Bread and Butter (low risk, low reward). By scoring and plotting initiatives on these two dimensions, organizations can see where to invest, scale, or divest, creating a balanced portfolio that blends innovation, growth, and stability.

In our recent articles on the 2x2 Matrix, BCG Matrix, and Eisenhower Matrix we explored how two simple variables can turn complexity into clarity. The Risk/Reward Matrix continues that series, but this time, the focus is on how to evaluate strategic opportunities.

This matrix is often used in innovation and investment decision-making, helping leaders determine which projects to fund, which to scale, and which to let go.

The origin of the quadrant names emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, though it is a bit unclear who originally developed and popularized them together in this framework. Many credit McKinsey & Company or the Mathesons in their book The Smart Organization.

What is the Risk/Reward Matrix

Read the full article

The Eisenhower Matrix is a time management framework that helps you prioritize tasks by evaluating two dimensions: urgency and importance. It divides your work into four categories: Do (urgent and important), Schedule (important but not urgent), Delegate (urgent but less important), and Delete (neither urgent nor important). By listing tasks, scoring them for urgency and importance, plotting them into these quadrants, and building an action plan, you can reduce reactivity, focus on high-value work, and make more intentional use of your time.

In our recent article on the 2x2 Matrix, we explored how plotting two variables can uncover meaningful insights. We later applied that thinking to business portfolios in the BCG Matrix. Today, we’re shifting from company strategy to personal strategy with one of the simplest and most useful 2x2 frameworks: the Eisenhower Matrix.

Named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States, the matrix is based on his famous principle:

“What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”

Eisenhower used this mindset to manage competing demands as a five-star general and later as president. The framework that bears his name remains one of the most effective ways to prioritize when everything feels like it matters.

What is the Eisenhower Matrix?

Read the full article

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Matrix is a portfolio management framework that helps organizations allocate resources and prioritize investments across their business units. It maps products on two dimensions: market growth rate and relative market share, categorizing them as Stars, Cash Cows, Question Marks, or Dogs. By clarifying which areas drive growth, generate cash, or consume resources, the BCG Matrix helps leaders balance short-term profitability with long-term strategic investment.

In our recent article on the 2x2 Matrix, we explored how two simple variables can reveal powerful insights. We briefly mentioned the BCG Matrix, one of the most famous examples of this framework. In today’s deep dive, we will look more closely at what it is, where it came from, and how to use it to make smarter strategic decisions.

The BCG Matrix was developed in 1970 by Bruce Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group, as a tool to help large corporations allocate resources across multiple business units. Its core idea is that a company’s growth and profitability depend on maintaining a balanced portfolio of businesses: some that generate cash, and others that require it.

What is the BCG Matrix?

Read the full article