The marketing funnel is dead. The buyer journey is now circular

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Welcome to the 217th edition of The Growth Elements Newsletter. Every Monday and sometimes on Thursday, I write an essay on growth metrics & experiments and business case studies.

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Most of the CMO and Head of Growth I speak to is still managing a marketing funnel that buyers stopped following in 2024.

The journey went from linear to circular. Buyers decide in private and then contact you to confirm a decision they have already made.

[1] What happened

Enterprise B2B buyers now complete 70% to 80% of their research before contacting a single vendor.

DTC and B2C buyers touch 5 to 7 channels before purchase, most of them outside your tracking.

The buyer loops through AI search, peer recommendations on Slack and WhatsApp, podcasts, newsletters, and dark social.

They watch a founder's LinkedIn video. They check ChatGPT. Three colleagues get pinged on Slack. A Reddit thread surfaces. A competitor demo lands on autoplay in their YouTube feed. Three weeks later, they cycle back.

By the time you see a form fill in HubSpot, the deal is closer to closed than your CRM admits.

[2] Why it happened

Two things broke at the same time. Information went from scarce to infinite, and AI made buyer research effectively free.

Buyers no longer need your nurture sequence to learn about your category. They have a tireless analyst sitting in their browser.

Dark social compounded the change. The actual decisions are happening in private DMs, in Slack groups, in voice notes shared between buyers. None of that touches your funnel.

Your CRM only sees the public surface, which is the noise layer of the buyer journey.

[3] What you do about it

Stop building funnels. Start building presence in the loop.

Show up everywhere the buyer cycles through. Get cited in AI answers. Publish a founder POV that travels in dark social. Sponsor newsletters and podcasts your ICP actually reads. Build relationships with the operators your buyer screenshots in their decision threads.

Change the metrics you measure. Pipeline created is a lagging indicator. Track unaided recall, branded search, podcast downloads from your ICP, and share of voice inside AI answers.

Treat sales conversations as confirmation calls, not conversion calls. The buyer already decided. Your job is to not break the decision.

Final Words

[1] Audit your last 20 closed-won deals this week. Map how each buyer actually found you. Most paths will not be in your CRM.

[2] Reallocate at least 30% of nurture-sequence budget into channels that show up inside the buyer's private loop. Newsletters, podcasts, communities, founder content.

[3] Add three loop metrics to your monthly board deck. Unaided recall, branded search trend, and share of voice in AI answers.

That's it for today's article! I hope you found this essay insightful.

Wishing you a productive week ahead!

I always appreciate you reading.

Thanks,
Chintankumar Maisuria