The Lean Marketing Funnel

A Lesson from over 150 startups: A frugal go-to-Market strategy to find foundation clients & build a following.

When a startup goes to market, it needs buyer attention asap or sooner.

But this can take time and money - both of which startups don’t have.

Regardless, they somehow still need to find a way to reach their target buyers fast and at scale.

At the time of writing this, I’ve worked with over 150 startups across their go-to-market and growth strategies.

Most of them face the same early stage lead generation problems:

• Traditional marketing too expensive:

  • Agency & paid marketing is too expensive for startups. Most don’t work for undefined markets and low-to-no product market fit.

• >97% of B2B buyers aren’t buying & need early influence (more here):

  • Finding leads is hard enough for startups. But when >97% of them aren’t ready to buy - startups MUST retain attention and trust for when they are ready.

• B2B markets are flooded - it’s extremely hard to stand out:

  • Differentiating yourself and establishing you (and your team) as an expert of your domain is no longer an advantage - it’s an expectation.

• Too much noise - the age of community selling is here.

  • Options are at at an all time high, and trust is at an all time low. People now value genuine relationships & need trust for new B2B purchases.

• Cold outbound is good for short-term, but limited for long term scaling.

  • Cold outbound is a very effective short-term strategy. But it’s only effective on <0.54%, and can easily exhaust your market & your brand if you’re not careful...

Considering all the above, there needs to be a solution that is optimised for - time, budget and reach.

This is where I highly recommend the Lean Marketing Funnel (LMF):

I first learnt this process from a very talented founder. He later sold his business to Google for more than $60 million USD. He swears by this process.

The LMF is built on some fundamental go-to-market truths:

• locating and pitching your ideal buyers individually is time consuming and inefficient.

• Hubs of your ideal buyer already exist (e.g. associations, reddit forums, clubs, LinkedIn groups, etc.) - you just need a constructive way to get their attention.

• Admins of these hubs struggle with content creation (like all of us). They are usually resistant to promoting your product, but they’ll always be open to creating valuable content for their audience(s).

That being said, the LMF works like this:

First, build your funnel:

1. Establish your Authority & Expertise (that align with your brand):

   1. What is the unique niche skill set or knowledge that you can share with your audience. I.e. If your product didn’t exist - how else could you help them with their problem? Some examples of industry authorities:

      1. HubSpot = Marketing advice and best practice.

      2. Miro = collaboration and ideation.

      3. Canva = quick and easy design solutions.

2. Build your bucket (nurturing strategy):

   1. 97% of your market won’t be ready to buy, but half of them will be interested to buy later. So, create a way to retain their attention and build their trust until the time is right (more on communities here). Examples include:

      1. Weekly/Monthly Newsletter.

      2. Following your company page on LinkedIn/X/Facebook.

      3. Substack community.

      4. LinkedIn Group.

3. Create your gifts (lead magnets):

   1. We need a way to collect information and find signals from potential buyers to see who might be interested. To do this, we need to provide something in exchange for their fellowship 🧙‍♂️ (like an e-book, free guide, free course, etc.)

4. Define your LEEP (lowest effort entry point).

   1. For those in the 0.54% to 3% market segment who are ready to engage, you must create a simple, accessible and valuable entry point for them to easily step toward your product (e.g. free trial, discovery session, demo - more here).

Then, fill your funnel:

• Research ideal buyer hubs:

  • This is where you need to know your buyer persona(s) well. Where do your buyers hang out? Who do they follow? What do they subscribe to? Find this and contact the person/admin who manages these hubs/communities.

• Offer a win-win collaboration:

  • Popular communities stay popular because being their member is enjoyable. So those who run them will resist letting vendors pitch them. Instead, offer them something of value for their audience. In the past I have provided webinars on industry trends, how-to classes, free guest blogs, etc.

    • Example: A volunteer management app can offer a webinar on “5 best ways to source and retain valuable volunteers”.

• Share your expertise:

  • I.e. Execute on above win-win collab offer. Carry out the webinar or content and make sure to be highly engaging with the audience. Ask them questions and get to know them (this is your PR, research and branding at work).

• Provide your Gift:

  • Prompt the audience with your free gift (lead magnet) as a ‘take home’ package to utilise your advice. Make sure to cover the gift explanation in the last 5 mins of the session - and sell the hell out of it!

• Add Gift-takers to your Bucket:

  • Add those who sign up for the gift (and potentially those who registered to the event) to your nurturing cycle. Keep them engaged, help them where you can, and learn everything about their needs (for your product & marketing).

• Prompt your LEEP:

  • It’s usually best to take the 95—5 rule. Which means 95% of the time needs to be spent on giving and helping the audience, with <5% spent promoting. If you’ve done your positioning right, offering a simple next step towards exploring your product should be welcomed by some (i.e. the LEEP).

• Then… REPEAT… 🔁

  • Repeat as many times as you can, as frequently as you can.

  • You can save time by recycling the content to new audiences as well, so your return on effort will increase with time.

Here are some results from a LMF I recently did for a startup in Australia:

• Industry Association = 20,000+ members

• Creation of 1 Webinar = 3-4hrs effort

• Registrants = 180+

• Attendees = 91 (note: 50 later watched the recording)

• Gift Downloads = 22

• Free Trials = 9

• New paying clients = 3

Whilst I’ve seen success from using the LMF across many different startups and always recommend trying it - keep in mind every startup is different.

Each startup has it’s own unique collection of challenges and opportunities.

However the fundamental go-to-market truths should still stand and should be consistent across the board:

• Chasing individual buyers is time consuming and inefficient.

• Hubs of your ideal buyer already exist.

• Hubs struggle with content creation. They resist promoting vendors, but are always open to creating value for their audience.

So try the LMF and let me know your results!