Happy Sunday!

If you're reading this, I hope you got outside this weekend, you're hydrated, and you have a few minutes for something I've been explaining on calls a lot and finally wanted to write down.

Whether you feel it or not, your marketing is always working through at least two funnels. The first one is about whether someone is problem aware. Do they know they have a problem, or that they have something that can actually be resolved? The second one is about whether they're solution aware about your brand specifically. Once they know the problem is real, do they understand why yours is the thing to buy?

Take Jolie. Most people have never once thought about their shower water. They turn the handle and the water comes out. There's nothing to evaluate because there's no question in their head. So before Jolie can sell a filtered showerhead, someone has to get that person to consider that the water hitting their skin and hair is worth thinking about at all. That's the first funnel. Then, once someone believes their water might be worth filtering, the job changes completely. Now it's about making Jolie the obvious brand in their mind to buy a showerhead from. That's the second funnel.

Here's the thing. Most brands are really only running one of these, and they usually don't know which one. Founders live inside the category. You know the problem and the product language cold, and you know why the third feature on the PDP matters. Your customer might have none of that context. You're drinking your own Kool-Aid, and the person on the other end of the ad hasn't even opened the bottle.

That's the framing for today. Once it clicks, positioning and "building a strong funnel" stop being abstract and start being about one question: what does this person already know, and what do they still need from me?

But, before we get into that...

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Funnel one: does this person know there's anything to fix?

Alright let’s get into the newsletter. Problem aware sounds simple, but there are a few different people hiding inside that phrase. Some people have noticed something (dry skin after a shower, hair that never feels quite clean) but have no idea what's causing it. Others know something bothers them and have quietly decided that's just how it is. And plenty of people have never noticed anything at all. None of them are shopping for a showerhead, and a product-first ad that leads with the filter and the finishes is answering a question none of them asked.

So the first job is to make the problem real and addressable, without making it scary. There's a version of this that leans on fear and blanket statements about water supplies, and I'd stay far away from it. The honest version gives the person a reason to think about their water and a credible way to evaluate it. Water varies a lot by city, and even building to building. That's a much better conversation to start than "your water is dirty."

This is where framing actually matters, and it's a lot less abstract than people make it. The version of this from my old ads newsletter was benefits over features, and it still holds. Listing what's in a filter is a feature. Describing what a customer notices in the shower, in their actual routine, is a benefit they can recognize. I used a deodorant example years ago that made the same point... generic ingredient language versus a specific line about how it holds up on a run. Same product. One of them lands because the customer sees themselves in it.

One more thing about this funnel that's easy to miss. You don't always have to do all of it yourself. A friend, a creator, a search, another brand in the category... any of them might have done a chunk of the work before your ad shows up. And a single strong piece of creative can do some of funnel one and some of funnel two in the same breath. This isn't about building two campaigns or two websites. It's about knowing which job your marketing is doing at any given moment, because the copy changes depending on the answer.

Funnel two: why you, and not whatever else they could do

Once someone accepts that their shower water might be worth filtering, everything changes. The question moves from "is this a problem?" to "what am I actually buying, and is this specific product a sensible choice?"

Knowing a category exists is a long way from preferring a brand inside it. Marketers have had names for these awareness stages for decades, so I'm not inventing anything here. What I keep seeing is brands running funnel two copy while their customer is still stuck in funnel one, or running funnel one education at someone who already believes and just wants to compare.

The person in funnel two has a different set of questions. Does the filter actually do what it says? What does it look like on my wall? How often do I replace the cartridge and what does that cost me over a year? Who's behind this company and can I trust them? Those are buying questions, and they don't get answered by another paragraph about why water matters.

Positioning lives here. "Premium" and "high quality" are assertions until the customer understands what the difference is and why it matters to them. A founder story might help someone understand why the product exists, but it doesn't prove the product works. Same with a testimonial. It speaks to one person's experience and isn't a substitute for actual substantiation. Bring forward whichever piece of evidence actually answers the comparison the customer is running in their head, and stop treating every proof element as interchangeable.

Price belongs here too, and I want to be honest about it. Someone can fully understand the problem, believe your solution works, and still not buy because they don't think it's worth what you're charging. I wrote about this years ago in the ads newsletter and it's still true. Not every conversion problem is a teaching problem or a headline problem. Sometimes the unresolved objection is the offer, or the product itself, and no amount of copy fixes that.

The test I'd run on any funnel two argument is the switching question. If someone already accepts the category, what would make them choose you over whatever else they could buy? And I mean the real alternative. Early in funnel one, the alternative is doing nothing and keeping the same shower. Later, the alternative is another filtration product. Your positioning has to know which one it's competing against.

Same product, two broken pages

Here's where I see this break most often. Someone sees a piece of education about shower water, gets curious enough to click, and lands on a page that opens with a finish picker and a first-order discount. What did that page assume had already happened? It assumed the person was already sold on the category and just needed to pick a color. They weren't. They clicked because something made them curious, and the page skipped the part of the conversation they actually needed.

Now flip it. Someone already wants a filtered showerhead. They've done the reading, maybe they saw a friend's, and they click an ad ready to compare. They land on a long explanation of why water matters, and they can't find the filter details or the replacement cost without scrolling for a minute. Nothing on that page is wrong. It's answering the questions they already resolved and hiding the ones they still have. Same product, completely different problem.

And the fix is not "long pages for cold traffic, short pages for warm traffic." I hear that one a lot and it's lazy. A skeptical comparison shopper might need a lot of evidence. Someone brand new to the category might get it in two sentences. The amount of explanation follows what's still unresolved in the customer's head, not a rule about page length.

What the ad sets up, the page has to finish

When I'm building the actual acquisition path, I start with the person's starting understanding and say it out loud. "This person has never thought about their shower water." Then the ad has one job, which is to raise the question in a way that feels relevant to them. It doesn't need to carry the whole argument. It needs to earn the click. After the click, the page has to supply the information that ad just made them want. Why this might matter for them, how they'd know if it applies, and what the product actually does about it. Then the buying questions about evidence, install, upkeep, and cost. Same person, carried all the way through, instead of restarting the lesson under a new headline.

For the person arriving to compare, the page still gets to educate. It just has to make the buying information easy to find first. Reasons to choose you, proof, the offer, and the practical stuff about shipping and returns should be reachable without wading through premises they've already settled.

I asked a version of this in the 50 questions piece a few years back... would someone who has never heard of your brand have to leave your site and open Google to understand what you do or whether it works? The same idea applies to the handoff from the ad. If the ad makes a promise, the page has to develop and support that promise. Continuity means continuing the explanation, not just matching the colors and repeating the headline.

One thing worth knowing as you build this. When you educate someone into wanting the category, they start shopping the category, and you might not be the only option they look at. So your problem explanation has to connect directly to a credible brand argument on the same path, or the person you just taught finishes the purchase somewhere else. Which is why the two funnels have to be connected on the same path, and why I'd never take this as a reason to educate less.

Finding out what they actually know

Don't assume a traffic source tells you what a visitor understands. A first-time site visitor might have researched the category for a week. Someone who's seen six of your ads might still not get why the problem matters. Treat "what does this person know before they click" as a question you actually have to go investigate.

The clues are usually sitting around. Comments that question the premise ("is this even a thing?") point to a funnel one gap. Comments asking about installation or cartridge cost point to funnel two. Search terms, support tickets, post-purchase surveys, and session recordings all tell you something. Clicks followed by almost no engagement might mean the promise and the first screen don't line up, or it might mean slow load or junk traffic. None of these read a customer's mind, but they'll usually tell you where to look first.

If you change the path, make the test answer one specific question. Does a page that finishes the ad's explanation help that incoming audience buy, compared to where you're sending them today? Judge the business outcome. More clicks alone doesn't mean better acquisition economics.

That's all for this week!

If this framing is helpful, I'm happy to go deeper on it. Building funnels around what your customer actually knows is a big topic, and this was just the opening.I could write an entire book on building customer journeys… maybe I will.

It's Sunday night, so I hope you plan to get a full 9 hours of sleep tonight and have an incredible upcoming week. Take care of yourself as things ramp up into Q4... get a walk in, drink some water, get a good sweat in.

I'll see you next Sunday. Same time, same place.

Nik