We need to talk about the funnel.
Not kill it. Not declare it dead for the 400th time on LinkedIn. And definitely not replace it with another complicated diagram that looks suspiciously like the same funnel turned sideways.
We just need to admit something.
Your buyer is not in it. At least not the way you think they are.
While your CRM says someone is neatly sitting in an awareness stage, that person could be listening to a podcast on a flight, texting a former coworker about your company, asking a community who they recommend, or reading three LinkedIn posts from one of your employees while completely ignoring your company page. They could be asking AI to compare you to a competitor before they have ever visited your website.
They could also be walking around a conference asking, “Have you worked with these guys?” They might have heard your name six months ago, forgotten about you, and then heard it again from someone they trust.
They’re lurking. They’re learning. They’re collecting information. They’re forming an opinion about you without ever raising their hand.
And somewhere, a dashboard still says they came from Google.
Cute.
We Built a Seller Journey and Called It a Buyer Journey
Awareness. Consideration. Decision.
Nice. Clean. Orderly.
Also: have you met people?
People do not buy software like they are progressing through airport security. They don't politely move from one designated stage to another because that's how we configured HubSpot.
They jump around. They discover you, forget you, rediscover you six months later, hear your name from someone they trust, stalk three people from your company on LinkedIn, visit your website, leave, see you at an event, ask an AI tool about you, go silent again, and then suddenly show up asking for a demo.
By the time that demo request arrives, they may know far more about you than you know about them.
Marketing looks at the CRM and says, “Great! Website conversion.”
No.
The website might have been where they finally raised their hand. That doesn't mean it was where you won them.
There is a massive difference between where someone converted and why someone converted. We keep confusing the two, and then we build budgets, strategies and entire marketing organizations around the wrong answer.
Your Attribution Report Is Missing Most of the Story
Marketing loves what it can measure. UTMs. Clicks. Form fills. MQLs. Campaign influence. First touch. Last touch. Multi-touch.
I love data too. We should measure marketing. We should know what's working. We should absolutely be accountable to revenue.
But data becomes dangerous when we start believing that what we can measure is the same thing as what mattered.
Your attribution model probably doesn't know about the dinner conversation where your company came up. It doesn't know someone heard your CEO speak six months ago and remembered one sentence. It doesn't know your customer recommended you in a private community when someone asked for help.
It doesn't know someone has been reading your CMO's posts every week without clicking anything. It doesn't know your podcast changed how someone thought about a problem. It doesn't know someone walked past your booth three times before finally stopping because they'd been seeing your name everywhere for months.
And it definitely doesn't know someone asked their favorite AI tool, “Who are the best companies solving this problem?”
Most of those interactions aren't going to show up nicely in an attribution report.
They still influence revenue.
That doesn't make attribution useless. It makes attribution incomplete.
And there is a very big difference.
The Dark Funnel Was Never Empty
We've spent years talking about the “dark funnel” like it's some mysterious place where buyers disappear.
Maybe we need to stop acting like darkness means nothing is happening.
A lot is happening.
Trust is happening.
Your buyer is collecting tiny pieces of evidence over time. They are watching how you show up, who talks about you, what your customers say, whether your people seem credible and whether your company actually understands the problem it claims to solve.
They are quietly asking themselves questions you will probably never see in a form field.
Do these people know what they're talking about? Do I see them consistently? Do people I respect know them? Do their customers seem happy? Do they understand my problem? Do they sound exactly like every other company in this category?
And eventually, the biggest question:
Do I trust them enough to put my reputation behind this purchase?
That matters more than most marketing teams want to admit.
Especially in B2B.
Your buyer isn't just buying software. They're making a decision they may eventually have to defend to their boss, their CFO, their board, their users or their team.
If the implementation goes sideways, nobody is going to blame your beautiful campaign.
They're going to remember who recommended the vendor.
That's why trust matters.
Stop Asking How to Move Them to the Next Stage
This is where I think we've gotten ourselves into trouble.
We keep asking how to move someone from awareness to consideration. How do we nurture them? How do we accelerate them? How do we get them back into the funnel? What CTA gets them to the next stage?
Maybe stop trying to drag people around your funnel.
They're busy.
Your buyer does not wake up wondering what piece of gated content would help them progress into your consideration stage today.
They have a job.
They have meetings. Budgets. Deadlines. Internal politics. A boss asking questions. Seventeen tabs open. A Teams notification going off while they're trying to figure out why something isn't working.
Your funnel is not the main character in their day.
The better question is:
How do we become the company they already trust when they're finally ready to buy?
That's a very different marketing strategy.
It means your podcast matters. Your community presence matters. Your events matter. Your employees' voices matter. Your executives having actual opinions matters. Your customers telling stories matters. Your brand matters.
The conversation someone had about you when nobody from your company was in the room matters.
And yes, your demand gen still matters.
This isn't an argument for abandoning performance marketing. It's an argument for admitting that performance marketing is only part of the performance.
Your People Are Part of Your Revenue Engine
I've said this before and I'll keep saying it: Your logo isn't a thought leader. Your people are.
Buyers don't build relationships with logos. They build familiarity with humans.
They recognize the person who keeps teaching them something useful. They remember the executive who actually said something different. They trust the employee who participates in the community because they genuinely belong there instead of appearing once a quarter to drop a corporate blog link and disappear.
They remember the podcast host who made them think differently. The speaker who taught them something without turning the session into a sales pitch. The customer advocate who answered their question. The salesperson who helped them before there was an opportunity attached.
Those moments accumulate.
One LinkedIn post probably doesn't close a six-figure deal.
That's not the point.
Twenty posts, three podcast appearances, a conference session, a recommendation from someone they trust, a customer story and six months of consistently showing up might create something far more valuable than a click.
Familiarity.
And familiarity has a funny way of turning into trust.
This is why personal brand, community and thought leadership cannot keep living in the “nice to have” bucket. They are part of how modern buyers build trust.
And trust is part of how revenue gets made.
AI Just Made This Even Messier
If you thought attribution was difficult before, welcome to the next era. (Maybe that’s the theme of some AMBUSH speaking sessions in 2027?)
Buyers can now research your category without visiting your website at all.
They can ask AI to explain the problem they're experiencing, identify possible solutions, build a shortlist, compare vendors, summarize reviews, explain pricing models, identify potential risks and tell them what questions they should ask during a demo.
Think about what that means.
A meaningful chunk of the buyer journey can now happen without the buyer ever entering an environment you control.
They don't have to download your ebook to learn about the problem. They don't have to read your comparison page to compare you. They don't even necessarily have to search Google and click through ten websites.
They can ask.
And get an answer.
Which means the obsession with getting everyone onto your website, into your nurture and through your carefully designed journey makes even less sense than it did before.
You cannot control every path your buyer takes.
You can influence what they find along the way.
That distinction matters.
Because suddenly your brand footprint matters beyond your own channels. Your reputation matters. Your customer stories matter. Your presence across the ecosystem matters. The clarity and consistency of what other people say about you matters.
The question isn't only whether buyers can find your content anymore.
It's whether they can find you in the places where they're asking questions.
Marketing Has to Be Bigger Than Campaigns
This is why I keep pushing on the idea that marketing should influence business strategy instead of simply executing campaigns.
Because if buyers are forming opinions everywhere, marketing's job has to be bigger than generating leads.
We should understand what the market believes about us. We should know who buyers trust in our category and where the real conversations are happening. We should know what questions people ask before they ever talk to sales and what objections exist before an opportunity appears in the CRM.
We should know what customers say when we're not in the room.
We should know which people inside our company should have a stronger voice.
We should understand where we're building actual trust and where we're simply renting attention.
And now we should probably be asking another question too:
What do AI systems understand about our company?
Those aren't campaign questions.
Those are business questions.
And marketing should absolutely be in the room answering them.
The Funnel Isn't Dead. Your Control Over It Is.
Keep your funnel.
Seriously.
Sales still needs stages. Finance still needs forecasting. Leadership still needs pipeline visibility. Marketing still needs measurement.
The funnel is useful for understanding our process.
The mistake is assuming it perfectly represents their experience.
It doesn't.
Your buyer is wandering around the internet. They're in communities. They're at dinners. They're listening to podcasts. They're asking friends. They're watching your people. They're attending events. They're reading things without clicking them. They're using AI.
Some of them are sitting quietly in your audience for six months without giving you a single measurable signal.
Until one day they do.
And when that happens, don't make the mistake of believing the last click did all the work.
Don't give Google credit for six months of trust.
Don't give the form credit for the community.
Don't give the demo request credit for the podcast, the conference conversation, the customer recommendation, the executive's point of view and the hundred tiny moments that made someone think:
Yeah. I know these people.
Because that might be the actual buyer journey.
Messy. Human. Mostly invisible.
And completely normal.
Your buyer wasn't lost.
They just weren't following the path you drew for them.
Maybe marketing's next evolution isn't building a better funnel.
Maybe it's making sure that wherever your buyer wanders, they keep running into reasons to trust you.
