Watch the Greatest Video Ever Created Explaining the Marketing Funnel

Bryan Karas

September 17, 2018

We can’t deny it…marketing people love a good funnel – and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO of MarketingExperiments, lays out the flaws behind the ways most marketers think about them…

In the quick video, he tells us that you need to flip the funnel upside down…and “all marketing should influence a decision – if not, it’s a waste.”

He goes on to say that “people are not falling into your funnel. People are falling out of your funnel.” MarketingExperiments has conducted over 10,000 path test experiments to try and understand what gets people to the ultimate “yes” – the sale.

The answer? Overcome the resistance, or the friction (competitors, distractions, etc) that reduces the likelihood of someone moving all the way through the funnel to a conversion.

Another finding is that people don’t move down the center of your funnel – they move up the sides. There are a number of paths a customer can take and “each of those paths are essential to understanding, and even to map, if you are going to achieve a maximize yield.”

Micro and Macro

We’re not talking economics here…we’re talking about the inverted sales funnel and how we get customers to climb to the top – to a conversion, a Macro Yes.

Flint tells us that the Macro Yes is “the sum of a whole series of Micro Yeses and each of those Micro Yeses are essential if you’re going to achieve a Macro Yes. In fact, one single ‘no’ can keep someone from reaching the full conclusion of this process.”

So what’s a Micro Yes? It’s something as simple as opening an email, moving from a headline to a subheadline, watching a video or clicking a button.

See, sometimes we get so “caught up in optimizing a move from an email to a landing page when in fact there are a whole series of Micro Yeses that need to be achieved in the email…”

Something to chew on…

If you’re a company that generates 10 million dollars in sales but you have a performance problem of x percent, “that means you’re losing that much money until you plug that leak and fixing this process is not a matter of seizing opportunity it is a matter of stopping the bleeding.”

Every site has a leak in the funnel but you can’t see it if you look at a website…because people don’t buy from websites, people buy from people…

Now I hope you’re ready to get deep…

Flint goes on to say that you have to look into the mind of a customer – that we aren’t optimizing websites or ads…we’re optimizing a thought sequence. And during that thought sequence there will be some point where you ask the customer to take a step, to give a Micro Yes. If you see performance fall off at that point it’s because the perceived cost outweighs the perceived value…

The whole video is epic and we only covered the first half…not bad for a guy who just decided to go off the cuff…

Conversion Rate Optimization: The Theory Behind Getting a Macro Yes

MarketingExperiments is one site every marketer should get lost in. Just start clicking around and you’ll be blown away. One article that specifically relates to the video and how you can achieve the “ultimate yes” can be read here…