Happy Sunday!

If you’re reading today’s email, I hope you’re enjoying the final days of relaxation and summer, before the Q4 lock-in period begins. Get your hoodies, buy this foot massager for your desk, and turn on a live house set... Q4 is going to come fast and have its own challenges this year.

For today’s topic, I want to talk about the middle of the funnel. Everyone knows top of funnel as awareness and bottom of funnel as conversion, but WTF is the middle, and how can you maximize your opportunity to win there? But, before we get into that, this week’s VOTW...

Ecommerce Equation — Helping eCommerce founders scale faster and more profitably.

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Drawing on insights from thousands of ecommerce founders spending millions weekly, this is a chance to gain the clarity, tools, and frameworks you need to scale faster and more profitably. Spots are limited for these in-person workshops, so if you’re serious about leveling up your growth, claim your free ticket now!

To hear what the event looks like firsthand, check out my recent conversation with Jay.

This past week of Limited Supply was a tactical landing page episode. If you are running LPs, thinking about testing them, getting them tweaked for Q4, or just want to find a golden nugget... listen to the latest episode of Limited Supply, wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple or Spotify).

If you want me to roast your LP and make a loom video, email it to me.

When it comes to marketing, everyone is familiar with the concept of the AIDA funnel. Awareness. Interest. Desire. Action. The four stages a consumer goes through to make a purchase. Back when digital advertising wasn’t a thing, the AIDA funnel was great to help marketers understand what to focus on, messaging-wise, in different ad inventory. Today, with the progression of digital advertising, privacy challenges, and the fact that a brand’s OWN word doesn’t mean much anymore (the customer’s does!), you can’t treat the AIDA funnel like people used to.

Awareness = the top of the funnel.

Interest / Desire = the middle of the funnel.

Action = the bottom of the funnel.

So, how do you combat the middle of the funnel, getting people curious, interested, and wanting your product? And why do so few brands put emphasis on the middle of the funnel? Simple answer: the middle of the funnel is the least-trackable part. Awareness, sure, you can track new vs returning consumer engagement, where your message reaches, how it’s displayed, etc. At the bottom of the funnel, you can get even more accurate with all of it. However, in the middle, you have zero control in today’s digital environment. 

Think about yourself as a consumer, and let’s think about the last big purchase you made: a cookware set, a car, a refrigerator, a couch, or maybe even a really nice dinner out. You heard about the product (either through a message the brand coordinated to put out, or through a referral), got interested, and started doing your own research. In the olden days of advertising, there weren’t many places to get research done; you just had a few broadcast channels, and everything would come through, and that was how information flowed down the chain, from broadcast to buyer.

Now, with today’s available tools, you can control some parts of the middle funnel:

• Email & SMS
  • By having a strong pop-up, you can maximize how many emails you can collect, which turns into consumers to educate on how you can better their lives.
• Retargeting Ads
  • You can run very straightforward retargeting ads on ad platforms. The best you can, you must make sure the creative feels segmented, individual, and encourages urgency.
• CDP (Customer Data Platform)
  • If you’re big enough and have done a good job gathering zero-party data (think: customer “adjectives”), you may use a more advanced CDP that customizes the site based on someone’s previous shopping activity, segments them based on activity/engagement, and displays/sends dynamic content.
• Custom Programs
  • If you’re someone like Warby Parker, you may create an at-home try-on kit with 5 glasses.
  • If you’re Oura Ring, you may sell a $7 kit of plastic rings to find your size.
  • If you’re a couch company, you may sell a $10 leather swatch sample for people to feel the material.

All that said, that is still only part of the battle, because what a brand says, and everything that comes from them, doesn’t have the same consumer sentiment and trust as someone that appears in your feed naturally, or comes from a friend. This exact reason is why I have been telling you in this newsletter for 3 years to start running advertorials. It combines the concept of third-party validation with first-party learnings to create a much stronger impression on consumers.

The punchline is: Back then, the message found you; today, you find the message. That is why brand and reputation are more critical than ever.

Matter of factly, here is what a realistic funnel might look like for a beauty, personal care, apparel, furniture, or supplement product. For this purpose, we’re going to name this random consumer, “Denise.”

Top of Funnel:

• Denise is walking around New York City, sees Jolie truck around the city with a catchy line of copy: “What if we told you that your shower water was dirtier than this truck?”
• Alternative scenario: Denise has been searching around the internet for a solution to dandruff (sorry, Denise), and gets a targeted ad on Instagram for a Jolie shower head, which clinically reduces dry skin and shedding.

Middle of Funnel:

• Denise, now intrigued, goes to ChatGPT to ask a question. “i just saw a jolie truck in nyc saying it's cleaner than the local shower water... is that true? would their filter help my dandruff?” (see the conversation here)
• If she’s not hip to ChatGPT, maybe she goes to Google and immediately realizes that all the links talking about Jolie aren’t from Jolie, they’re from unbiased independent reviewers, Redditors, Quora users, Amazon, and summarized at the top by Google’s AI.
• Next time she goes to Amazon, she sees a sponsored listing for the shower head on the home page, but ignores it.
• If she’s young, Denise may go to TikTok and search, “Jolie water review,” where you can scroll to find thousands of video reviews of the shower head.
• Later, Denise checks out the website to learn more, but isn’t fully convinced yet and decides not to purchase.
• A week later, she sees her favorite content creator posts a GRWM (“Get ready with me”) video, and she mentions her Jolie shower head. She’s intrigued again!
• The same week, Denise gets an email from Jolie offering her a free water report, breaking down the chemicals in her local zip code’s water (data is taken in real-time from the EPA’s API). She puts her zip code in and realizes her water has 40x the higher legal limit of a chemical, and it’s just... allowed.
• Denise goes on Instagram, gets a retargeting ad to buy the shower head, gets intrigued, asks a friend for her opinion, and her friend says, “They’re amazing, get it at Ulta!”

Bottom of Funnel:

• Denise drives over to Ulta, buys the shower head, installs it, and loves the product.

Now, think about the attribution software. They’re literally just models; they can’t know everything about every part of the customer journey. That’s why the middle of the funnel is so hard to spend into — it’s hard to calculate the return!

The middle of the funnel that matters to consumers is a playing field you’re only allowed to be on the sidelines for.

• Amazon reviews.
• Reddit comments.
• Quora answers.
• TikTok Shop reviews.
• Friend’s opinions.
• Influencer content.
• Editor lists or publication inclusions.
• YouTuber reviews.
• Peer-to-peer referrals.

All of these are middle funnel activities that you need to focus on growing, improving, and ensuring they have a positive sentiment. If consumers on any platform say the product doesn’t work, doesn’t benefit their lives, or in any way doesn’t deliver on the promise, no amount of advertising or beautiful email flows will convince a potential customer to spend their money with you.

What can you do? Well, here’s a checklist of things to run through. From this, whatever you don’t have optimized, add to your to-do list. 

• Product Reviews & UGC: Make sure reviews, testimonials, and UGC are easy to find across Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and your own site.
• Advertorials / Third-Party Validation: Invest in content that looks and feels unbiased (press, affiliate sites, advertorials) to build trust when customers go searching.
• Email & SMS Flows: Build flows beyond abandoned cart — include browse recovery, post-view education, and objection-handling sequences.
• Retargeting Campaigns: Run segmented retargeting (site visitors vs product viewers vs cart abandoners) with creative that answers objections and uses urgency.
• CDP / Personalization: If you’re at scale, use customer data to personalize website banners, recommendations, and email/SMS content based on browsing behavior.
• Custom Try-Before-You-Buy Programs: Swatch kits, size finders, quizzes, or free trials that lower friction and build trust in the purchase decision.
• Social Listening: Actively monitor Reddit, Quora, TikTok comments, and Amazon reviews — respond, fix problems, and amplify the positive.
• Influencer + Creator Content: Seed product widely so creators produce authentic reviews that show up in searches and feeds.
• Referral Programs: Make it dead simple for happy customers to bring friends into the fold with clear referral incentives.
• Measure MoF Health: Track branded search lift, time on site, review volume/sentiment, engagement on retargeting, and post-purchase survey data (“Where did you first hear about us?”) to gauge what’s working.

Last week, I promised this week would come the BFCM playbook, but I am going to save that for next Sunday. Just recently, I had a call with an amazing brand that couldn’t figure out why their CPA on paid social is SO HIGH. The brand has a good reputation, but past that, a mediocre site and a non-existent middle funnel experience. It inspired this newsletter, and I hope this helps others figure this out.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you’re on track to get 9 hours of sleep tonight. Have a fantastic upcoming week, and I’ll see you next week. Same time, same place.

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