Episode 787: The Funnel Is Dead. Here’s What Full-Funnel Actually Means Now

March 27, 2026

Is your digital strategy outdated? Let our experts audit it and give you the blueprint you need to scale.

Book your spot: https://www.tiereleven.com/audit (only 3 spots available).

Are your ads blending in, allowing cheaper competitors to win? If you’re still leading with product features and price, you’re playing a losing game. The real question is: are you selling what the product does or how it makes people feel?

Today, we break down a major shift we’re seeing with Meta and modern performance marketing, where brand storytelling is no longer optional. We walk you through a real case study with a premium hammock brand that couldn’t sell a $4,000 product until we leaned into the founder story, mission, and emotional positioning.

We also unpack why relying on Google or Amazon alone is a dangerous strategy and how brands without identity get commoditized overnight. If you want higher margins, better customers, and scalable growth, you’ll need to rethink your entire approach. We’ve got some tips to get you started, so tune in!

In this episode you’ll learn:

Why brand storytelling drives higher ROAS than product-focused ads
How Meta Andromeda compresses the funnel into the ad itself
Selling benefits vs features to increase conversion rates
Why high-ticket ecommerce requires emotional positioning, not specs
The risks that Google and Amazon-only brands face
How Google commoditizes businesses without brand differentiation
Blending organic and paid content styles in your creative strategy
How top-of-funnel brand ads influence bottom-of-funnel conversions

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

The Funnel Is Dead. Here’s What Full-Funnel Actually Means Now

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;05;15
Ralph Burns
Creating a brand is part of performance marketing now with Amazon that.

00;00;05;18 – 00;00;16;26
Lauren Petrullo
Disney didn’t sell a product. Disney sold a feeling and it’s making memories. That type of thing. How can you justify your own brand? Is how you’re going to be able to compete against being just a product come online.

00;00;17;00 – 00;00;40;05
Ralph Burns
The brand and the differentiator that makes you different than everything else that’s out there is now a part of the advertising, and it’s not necessarily the thing that will get the final click, but it will create brand awareness that will. Hey, before we get into today’s show, my marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode because he wanted to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand.

00;00;40;11 – 00;01;16;18
Ralph Burns
So we are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free in this audit. And this isn’t one of those audits that you get from some AI generated bot. This actually takes us two plus weeks, 7 or 8 of our team members. And it is incredibly in-depth and will give you insights into your media, buying your creative, your actual business metrics, and find out exactly where the gaps are and where your growth is stalled and what we can do about it, or what you can do about it when you get the audit.

00;01;16;22 – 00;01;30;13
Ralph Burns
Now here’s the catch. We only have three spots, so head on over to tier 11.com/audit right now. Fill out the form and let’s see how we can scale your business in the coming year.

00;01;30;15 – 00;01;51;23
Ralph Burns
Hello and welcome to the Professional Traffic Podcast. This is your host Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11. Today’s show is all about, the extension of, I think this the last show that I don’t know is if we realized we were going to go down that road on the comment side and it ended up being, I think, a really good discussion.

00;01;51;23 – 00;02;20;23
Ralph Burns
So if you’ve missed that show for whatever reason, go back and listen to it. We’ll leave the link over on the show notes. And it really is about how comments are sort of your sales funnel. It’s like your sales floor, so to speak, and being able to attend to that. And we were talking pre-record. If you look at where all your comments are actually happening on your socials, are they on your ads or on the are they on your social posts, the.

00;02;20;23 – 00;02;21;06
Lauren Petrullo
Organic.

00;02;21;06 – 00;02;23;22
Ralph Burns
Content, the organic content that maybe your social team.

00;02;23;24 – 00;02;42;15
Lauren Petrullo
Or they should be on your Spotify listening record of this episode? Because I love comment, you can comment on a per episode basis. I actually really like that because of episodes that I like. I listened to and they’ve now disabled comments. Why? But like two bobs and stuff like that. Like I like I enjoy commenting on a per episode basis and it’s not in my Spotify wrap.

00;02;42;15 – 00;02;58;29
Lauren Petrullo
I’m hoping it becomes that way. So like in the the podcast, you commented on the most or. But I love that you get to be provide feedback the way that YouTubers socialize on the content. And I think I told you in a previous episode how like TikTok and Disney Plus launched all of High School Musical and made like 257 shorts.

00;02;58;29 – 00;03;13;16
Lauren Petrullo
And then this massive socialization of everyone consuming a 25 year old movie in real time with the masses like that was one of the coolest localizations of content. And I think Spotify gives you that morsel or a little sound.

00;03;13;21 – 00;03;22;22
Ralph Burns
The comments themselves. The line between social and advertising used to be very specific lines like your social was more you kind of did your branding.

00;03;22;29 – 00;03;26;01
Lauren Petrullo
Sure. And your evergreen stuff, the playing.

00;03;26;01 – 00;03;43;13
Ralph Burns
And then your ads were, hey, my thing by by myself 20% this week. Yeah. You know, 20% off. Here’s my thing. Here’s the coupon code, very bottom of funnel. And that worked for years and years. Like we were just talking about this, I guess I’ve been running Facebook ads for almost 17 years now.

00;03;43;16 – 00;03;45;28
Lauren Petrullo
You say, oh, that’s how old I pretend I am.

00;03;45;29 – 00;04;05;17
Ralph Burns
Yeah. So I think going back to what we were saying when this advertising thing started, it was just so simple. You could just put your product out there and say, all right, click this thing and buy my buy my stuff. And so social was more about the branding and sort of all together sort of evergreen. And now I believe and this is sort of.

00;04;05;19 – 00;04;08;17
Lauren Petrullo
I think it’s like becoming popular versus becoming profitable.

00;04;08;19 – 00;04;15;20
Ralph Burns
Well, I think the popular stuff that tells the brand story is now the thing that’s actually creating a lot of the profit.

00;04;15;22 – 00;04;27;21
Lauren Petrullo
Well, that’s what Jem, because they said, like you, the way you stand out in ads is you have ads that feel organic, and the way you make sales in organic is if organic content that converts like ads.

00;04;27;24 – 00;04;47;06
Ralph Burns
Yeah. It’s true. So tangibly, it’s I mean, you want to stand out by blending in to a certain degree, but you also want to be able to tell your brand story. And every brand has its own individual story, depending on what they what, you know, nothing is going to replace a shitty product or a bad product.

00;04;47;11 – 00;05;06;02
Lauren Petrullo
There are bad products that people believe in. Yeah, for the potential. And that’s why they like the current Tesla robot is a bad product, doesn’t really do anything worth $20,000, but it’s still doing sales. Like the early adopters and the believers of a shit project, a product. And that’s the only thing like, you can totally cut all of this out.

00;05;06;09 – 00;05;08;21
Lauren Petrullo
But the Prius car was a bad product.

00;05;08;21 – 00;05;10;15
Ralph Burns
When it first came out, was mediocre.

00;05;10;18 – 00;05;27;26
Lauren Petrullo
And it was environmental. It was suggestively, environmentally better car. But when you looked into it, the battery that allowed that charging to be more sustainable, the hybrid aspect of it, as I understand, was actually environmentally detrimental when compared to other cars that you got rid of.

00;05;28;02 – 00;05;43;15
Ralph Burns
Yeah. I mean, I think you could look at something like the Prius and say, okay, that’s sold. It wasn’t necessarily a great product, but it was novel and new and no one else had it. At that point in time, there was no such thing as an electric or hybrid car. So I think the novelty of it and.

00;05;43;18 – 00;05;46;22
Lauren Petrullo
Then there wasn’t the product. That was the prestige that was associated to the product.

00;05;46;29 – 00;06;05;23
Ralph Burns
But it’s also something that no one else had. I mean, if you’re in a market and we’ve had that customers that have come out with a product that no one else in the market has, and then all of a sudden and they’re like, wow, marketing is easy. You know, it’s ten zero as every single day or it’s ten mur every single day because no one else has something like we have.

00;06;05;25 – 00;06;22;11
Ralph Burns
And then all of a sudden you’ve got competitors that flood the market that come out that are better all of a sudden, that’s not such a great product because it’s no longer new and novel, and now it’s flooding competition that’s half the price. Or you know, performs the, you know, the particular job to be done better than the original.

00;06;22;11 – 00;06;43;01
Ralph Burns
Yeah. So I think in the case of Prius and hybrid cars, because it wasn’t truly electric. Remember, it was a hybrid. It was gas and electric is there really wasn’t anything like it. And when it came out, that’s one of the reasons why it got a fair amount of well, that’s why it got a lot of momentum now.

00;06;43;04 – 00;07;06;27
Ralph Burns
I mean, the Prius itself, I’ve written a Prius about a year, about nine months ago in California. It was unbelievable. Great, amazing. And I drive a Tesla. So, Oh yeah. Now there’s another one. So when the model S came out, like, that’s an electric car, but it was a cool electric car. So what what I’m saying is that if you have a new and novel product, I don’t think you really.

00;07;07;00 – 00;07;08;27
Ralph Burns
Have you ever seen a Tesla ad?

00;07;09;00 – 00;07;14;24
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah, I think all of Elon’s in a higher X account is just one giant Tesla ad.

00;07;14;24 – 00;07;18;21
Ralph Burns
Yeah, but have you ever seen a Tesla ad? I never have.

00;07;18;22 – 00;07;31;23
Lauren Petrullo
No, but there’s a Tesla store. The Florida mall. And that store, I would argue is just one big ad they have. It’s an in-person pop up. So that counts as because you can’t test drive from there.

00;07;31;25 – 00;07;51;24
Ralph Burns
The point is this is when that came out, the early adopters for electric cars jumped on it. One of those was my wife, actually. We got one of the first like within the first six months, so we’ve had one ever since. So we love it. But the point is, it’s like it was new and novel, and it had an appeal to it that no one else had in the market at that particular point in time.

00;07;51;26 – 00;08;17;21
Ralph Burns
So how much marketing do you really have to do for that? That’s the question most. Until the other leads, most of the people that are listening to this show probably are a market where there is a lot of competition. Sure. And they’re not read only. Not the only ones. Absolutely. Yeah. Whether it’s a personal injury lawyer or whether you’re running mental health centers, whether you’re selling digital products or anything, supplements, supplements, you are in a absolutely competitive market.

00;08;17;25 – 00;08;42;03
Ralph Burns
So the point of this is that you need to be able to differentiate from a brand standpoint and social. The social part of it’s your social media that used to be like, oh, this is sort of all about our brand, but it’s not selling. And then your ads were let’s sell the product. Now the two of them have merged together, my opinion winners and I have great.

00;08;42;03 – 00;09;06;10
Ralph Burns
I have a lot of experience with this, with Andromeda, especially because the brand and the differentiator that makes you different than everything else that’s out there is now a part of the advertising, and it’s not necessarily the thing that will get the final click. It’s not necessarily the thing that will get the sale, but it will create brand awareness that will your other ads in combination with all of those top of funnel.

00;09;06;12 – 00;09;17;06
Ralph Burns
Here’s what we stand for. Here’s our founder story. You know, great example of this is a client that sells $4,000 hammocks. Love.

00;09;17;08 – 00;09;18;07
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah that.

00;09;18;14 – 00;09;24;10
Ralph Burns
Yeah $4,000 hammocks. But they also sell 3 to $400 hammocks which pretty expensive actually.

00;09;24;11 – 00;09;31;29
Lauren Petrullo
I was like I got in my hammock and with my uplift desk and that was like a free thing added on for buying these things.

00;09;31;29 – 00;09;32;20
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Uplift.

00;09;32;23 – 00;09;36;04
Lauren Petrullo
I’m like a $400 $4,000 hammock.

00;09;36;09 – 00;09;52;29
Ralph Burns
That’s right. So how you can possibly sell a $4,000 hammock? Well, as it turns out, if you try and sell it in the newsfeed, whereas hey, here’s our hammock. It’s $4,000. It’s really, really nice. You know who buys it? Nobody.

00;09;53;05 – 00;10;04;00
Lauren Petrullo
Unless it’s like Mr. Beast and he’s making a video like, I bought the most expensive hammock out there. And then he does like that. I’m. I’m not in the hammock marketplace.

00;10;04;00 – 00;10;28;04
Ralph Burns
My example here is that as soon as we stopped trying to sell the $4,000 hammock and we sold the story of the hammock, which is it’s they are handwoven by 250 women in third world countries that otherwise would not have any way to provide for their families.

00;10;28;05 – 00;10;32;25
Lauren Petrullo
Okay, so you’re selling legacy and like feeling good. The prestige again.

00;10;32;28 – 00;10;35;28
Ralph Burns
Yeah. This is brand I’m differentiation. You’re going to. Yeah.

00;10;36;03 – 00;10;55;02
Lauren Petrullo
Like products with purpose and purpose that my dollar is going towards. I feel good for my capitalism. Like you’re like, what is it like a limousine liberal or like, luggage caviar where you’re like, I love being a consumer, but I’m fighting for social rights so I can use my dollar to consume as the best I can.

00;10;55;02 – 00;10;56;26
Lauren Petrullo
So I make the world a better place in the back end.

00;10;56;27 – 00;11;18;02
Ralph Burns
Absolutely. But that’s the angle that is now. So the test that John and I did for this particular client, the we stopped running the $4,000 as look at this $4,000 hammock. We sold the $400 hammock. But set all the traffic to the home page which tells the story of yeah, and vice versa.

00;11;18;02 – 00;11;18;19
Lauren Petrullo
The home page.

00;11;18;19 – 00;11;39;08
Ralph Burns
Yeah. And it’s also like a by the way, here’s like halfway down. This is our social story. This is exactly what we do for, you know, this population of women in Central America. This is these are the, you know, this is these are the fabrics that we use, that they’re all organic, you know, it’s eco friendly. It’s all this sort of thing.

00;11;39;12 – 00;11;46;26
Ralph Burns
So that story, we brought that into the ad, and those are the ads that are driving all.

00;11;46;26 – 00;11;47;25
Lauren Petrullo
Of the Whole Foods is.

00;11;47;25 – 00;12;19;22
Ralph Burns
Ammo. Exactly. But what we’re finding out is that in those ads were mentioning the three $400 hammock obviously is a part of the story, but as soon as we stopped running the $4,000 hammock ads, sales of the $4,000 hammocks doubled. Okay, because we were attracting them with the story of the brand itself. They’re clicking on the home page, learning about the brand more understanding, maybe, you know, oh, I can buy maybe two, 3 or 4 of these things.

00;12;19;22 – 00;12;22;14
Ralph Burns
And then oh, by the way, here’s the $4,000 version.

00;12;22;14 – 00;12;25;16
Lauren Petrullo
Oh, I was like two three for those $4,000.

00;12;25;19 – 00;12;27;12
Ralph Burns
For the like the 3 or $400.

00;12;27;13 – 00;12;31;21
Lauren Petrullo
Terms. Or I can get one. That’s the Cadillac of hammocks.

00;12;31;25 – 00;12;59;24
Ralph Burns
Wait. My marketing manager finally convinced me to run a wild experiment in this episode, because we want to prove what the conversion engine can do for your brand. We are giving away three of our $10,000 deep dive audits for free. We’re going to look at your creative, your media buying, your actual business metrics to find exactly where your growth is stalled.

00;12;59;26 – 00;13;21;14
Ralph Burns
This is two weeks of our best work, but we only have three spots. So go to tier 11.com/audit right now. Fill out the form and let’s see how we can scale your business. In the past those ads those ads that are now conversion ads would have been social ads. They would have been. That’s what you tell on your social stalking.

00;13;21;17 – 00;13;38;17
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Not salesy. That’s the thing that’s different now about meta Andromeda. You’re compressing. You’re actually creating your own individual sales funnel in your ads. So much so that by the time they actually click and go to your site or go to Amazon, they’re so pre framed with your brand.

00;13;38;17 – 00;13;39;09
Lauren Petrullo
Story or.

00;13;39;10 – 00;13;45;12
Ralph Burns
Makes you different. How why you should be premium priced that we’re selling a $4,000 hammock without even so you’re not.

00;13;45;12 – 00;13;50;09
Lauren Petrullo
Styling for 4100. You’re selling the benefits of owning a four of that.

00;13;50;09 – 00;14;00;03
Ralph Burns
We’re selling $4,000 hammocks as a result of it. It’s complete reverse psychology, but if you really do think about it, it’s actually human psychology. And it makes a whole lot of sense.

00;14;00;06 – 00;14;21;04
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah, well, people want to buy the transformation. They don’t want to buy the product. And so it’s it’s you know, it’s like not never be feature forward always be benefit happy. Because when you’re talking about the features of like, oh, this hammock is for 48ft long or whatever, unless you’ve got a giant partner. Like those type of things aren’t what people are looking at until the very end of the details.

00;14;21;06 – 00;14;37;17
Ralph Burns
Yeah. I mean, there’s other ads that are, hey, it’s portable, you know, you can fold it like this is the three $400 version. You could fold it up and then it actually has a compressible, I forget, hangar, I guess it is, is what they call it, which you can put in a backpack and they show people setting it up.

00;14;37;17 – 00;14;38;08
Ralph Burns
And then there’s all these.

00;14;38;08 – 00;14;47;04
Lauren Petrullo
So this is camper friendly. So if you want to have glamping yeah. Then you can go camp with a hammock, feel like you’re outside and then not okay. That makes sense.

00;14;47;04 – 00;15;15;16
Ralph Burns
So after summer, what we’re sort of finding is that this mini funnel that’s going on inside their Facebook ads, they’re attracting because 60, 60% of the spend is going towards the social benefit, the how the company, the founder story, the company story, what’s behind the brand. Those are the ads that are capturing all the attention and then middle of the funnel, the ones that are, hey, it’s portable.

00;15;15;18 – 00;15;20;13
Ralph Burns
This you can take it glamping. You can do this with that. It’s, you know, it’s.

00;15;20;13 – 00;15;27;00
Lauren Petrullo
Great Halloween costume. If you fail to show up, want to look like Jane Birkin and make your own hammock purse like all these different.

00;15;27;00 – 00;15;48;11
Ralph Burns
Haven’t explored that angle, but now might be the angle. And then the bottom of funnel ads are the ones that hey, get it here. Yeah. And so what we’re seeing is people sort of coming in through this virtual funnel just based upon ad spend. Yeah, top of funnel, middle of phone, bottom of funnel. And when they’re actually in the bottom of and by the time they actually hit the site, then they’re looking at saying, oh, I feel so good about this product.

00;15;48;11 – 00;16;06;15
Ralph Burns
I can afford the $4,000 one. Now, the $4,000 one is not the one that we’re trying to sell. We’re trying to sell the brand. But the brand itself was. And that branding play was what used to be considered sort of social media marketing. Now it’s all the same. Yeah. All together.

00;16;06;17 – 00;16;08;05
Lauren Petrullo
That content is good content.

00;16;08;07 – 00;16;16;28
Ralph Burns
Absolutely. And so for anyone who’s listening or watching, like what’s your brand story? Like why do you exist? Like why are you different than me?

00;16;16;28 – 00;16;38;26
Lauren Petrullo
Yeah. And your USP is your unique selling points that make you like, why would I choose you over my other options? Right. And if you’re going to be like sometimes if you are on a race to the bottom for price, if you’ve got a consumer good that’s commoditized and you are on this race to the bottom, especially if you’re going after Gen Z, we’ve said this a lot like they have no loyalty.

00;16;39;03 – 00;17;01;20
Lauren Petrullo
They’re just looking for the best price point. So are now in 2026. So many of the, factories abroad are competing direct into American market, where they used to be white labeled. It’s a shitty race to the bottom. And if you want to be able to have room and margin, you have to sell not on the product but on the brand.

00;17;01;22 – 00;17;22;13
Lauren Petrullo
And I like I’m about that. This is you’ve got this case study that showcasing it because if you like that race to the bottom. I hate saying that lab. I have a friend who had a business. He was in the school supply space in a specific product that he was selling 10,000 units a day for on Amazon, on Amazon basics came out within three weeks.

00;17;22;13 – 00;17;25;24
Lauren Petrullo
He lost his number one listing that he had held for six years.

00;17;25;26 – 00;17;27;01
Ralph Burns
Amazon came out with their own.

00;17;27;01 – 00;17;53;00
Lauren Petrullo
Amazon came all their own. He didn’t have a brand, right? So his company went from worth millions of dollars every night. You had an auto and he had. Yeah. And a lot like for the Amazon listeners. You know this to be true. You drive external traffic to your Amazon listing, and you know that when you want to exit your Amazon store, if you don’t have a diversity of revenue channels, if all of your revenue was Amazon, you’re one Amazon Basics decision away from not existing.

00;17;53;02 – 00;18;14;22
Lauren Petrullo
I had a seven figure Amazon brand. We had a, review that we, you know, we are doing $10,000 a day in summers. And there was a review that came out that was related to fulfillment, and it got so much virality. And then we also like, we got tombstones. There was another time where one of our Asians, was listed as like child pornography.

00;18;14;22 – 00;18;37;10
Lauren Petrullo
And then Amazon pulled it for three months because they have to do this type of investigation. Like those things happen. And those are real concerns that if you don’t if you’re just a product and you’re just on Amazon, you won’t have a way to survive through those challenging months. And even if you’re not on Amazon, whether you’re high tech or whatever, if you don’t have a brand like you said, you’re just selling a product and I’m going to buy that product that’s cheaper.

00;18;37;10 – 00;18;43;16
Lauren Petrullo
You in order to convince me to give you more money where you’ll have margin to find me as a customer, you have to sell me on your brand.

00;18;43;23 – 00;19;12;15
Ralph Burns
Yeah. I mean, it’s the same thing could be said. I mean, if you’re not selling on Amazon, the same thing that we said was a number of the people that that come to us say, hey, I want you guys to run my Google ads and like, well, what do you actually look for? Yes, we’re good at Google, but that might be the wrong question to ask, because if you’re competing against everyone else, and this is just a pretty good example of one of our clients in the Brazilian butt lift market.

00;19;12;21 – 00;19;44;10
Ralph Burns
Okay, Brazilian butt lift near me, breast augmentation near me, Botox treatment near me. If you’re competing for that, you are competing against everyone else on price and you are creating a brand for yourself. So if a client comes to us and says, hey, I want you to run my Google for all these high value keywords, that’s great. I would prefer I would actually flip the script on that and say, if you’re spending 80% of your money on Google, like if you’re getting 80% of your business on Amazon, you are at risk of just being oh.

00;19;44;12 – 00;20;04;25
Lauren Petrullo
Oh are at risk of one update destroying your business. How many how many info coaches in like 2021 when there was the iOS update? They’re like, oh, I could sell a $27 product and I was selling it for $4 each. I’m just making money with new login, new login, new login. And then that’s radically changed. Oh, with the iOS updates.

00;20;04;25 – 00;20;21;03
Lauren Petrullo
And I every well, at least every month, almost every week I meet another business owner who was like, this was crushing it for me before. Yeah. And I was like, you had lazy advertising. You were lucky. I’m glad you rode that wave as long as you can. Yeah, but you had no brand. You had one product.

00;20;21;07 – 00;20;45;21
Ralph Burns
We all did. Yeah. And but it was easier back then. So anyway, so a brand that is relying on a single channel in a market where you’re not getting any brand differentiation, it’s a, it’s a recipe not only for economics that tend to not work well, but because if you are competing against everyone else in your market and Brazilian Butt Lift Boston, for example, is one of the keyword phrases for this client.

00;20;45;24 – 00;20;49;25
Lauren Petrullo
Brazilian butt lift. Boston. What a mouthful. That’s it. Say that three times strong.

00;20;49;25 – 00;20;54;06
Ralph Burns
Absolutely. I don’t even know what a Brazilian butt lift is. All I know it’s a really expensive keyword. It’s like a, I.

00;20;54;06 – 00;20;57;07
Lauren Petrullo
Think $70 or somewhere else. And they put yeah, in your.

00;20;57;07 – 00;21;03;14
Ralph Burns
Butt because it’s like a five. It’s a 15. It’s anywhere between a 10 to $15,000 procedure. It’s a.

00;21;03;17 – 00;21;03;28
Lauren Petrullo
U.S..

00;21;04;01 – 00;21;27;20
Ralph Burns
Disaster. So if you are competing against everybody else for that keyword, you’re not you are a first off spending more than you need to. And you’re also commoditize ING yourself. So the way in which for you to get away from that bloody red ocean of Google Ads or bloody red ocean of everyone else that’s competing against you on Amazon, is to create a brand for yourself on the interruption platforms.

00;21;27;20 – 00;21;35;03
Ralph Burns
Yeah, on meta is the one that we talk about all the time. Programmatic native is another one that we use quite a bit TikTok. But if you’re.

00;21;35;03 – 00;21;41;02
Lauren Petrullo
Amazon, it’s to TikTok shoppers is the most dominant resource, especially with the influencer space in GMV max.

00;21;41;02 – 00;21;53;19
Ralph Burns
But so if you’re if you’re relying on any one of these specific channels, now is the time. I hate to say it, but you got to create a brand. But creating a brand is part of performance marketing. Now with Amazon Metas update.

00;21;53;23 – 00;22;07;09
Lauren Petrullo
I would say it’s not just a brand like was like when you’re saying it’s part of performance, like you need to have a brand, and a brand isn’t just like a logo and tone of voice and a guide. It’s a story. Now, I also think, like where Disney has done it so well and that’s my background why we’re in Orlando.

00;22;07;09 – 00;22;34;25
Lauren Petrullo
To begin with, Disney didn’t sell a product. Disney sold a feeling. And it’s making memories, right. And it’s Apple sells the feeling being superior to everyone else around you. Like I am a technical, but I mean, that’s why Android users feel so ashamed for their green bubbles Apple users like are buying into again the perceived like you’re selling a feeling that I have the latest technology that like piece of it.

00;22;34;25 – 00;22;53;12
Lauren Petrullo
I own a brand. It’s not just creating a logo, it’s not just creating color guide, voice guide and a story. It’s what is the feeling you want someone to take away every time they see or interact with your brand. And Disney is the easiest one. Like you think about Disney. You think of the memories. If you went to the parks and resorts, what was it like when you saw your daughter meet Mickey Mouse for the first time?

00;22;53;15 – 00;23;09;25
Lauren Petrullo
What was it like when, you know, like that first feeling of rope drop where you went on a ride with your teenager who would have ignored you every other day, like that type of thing? How can you dignify your own brand is how you’re going to be able to compete against being just a product with commoditized?

00;23;09;27 – 00;23;26;07
Ralph Burns
Yeah. What’s your thing? What’s your thing that’s different than everyone else? Like we found, you know, I’m looking on their website right now with a client that I’m talking about. We discovered this for like, well what’s your we don’t want to just be selling. Here’s this great hammock that’s 3 or $400. This here’s this great hammock. That’s $4,000.

00;23;26;07 – 00;23;56;05
Ralph Burns
It doesn’t work that way. Unfortunately. They left, went to another agency, came back. We looked at it very differently. There’s got to be a different story here or to really move the business forward. And it wasn’t about it. It was almost like it had to happen. Because if all you’re going to do is compete on price or us versus them and not develop any kind of level of brand awareness for what makes you different, all you’re going to be doing is just it’s a race to the bottom.

00;23;56;05 – 00;24;12;15
Ralph Burns
Yeah, because it’s whoever has the lowest price on your company. Dollar hammock is an expensive hammock. Still, it’s like I can buy a hammock at, you know, Walmart for, I guess, under 100 bucks, like maybe 100 bucks, like, cheapest. So the point is this. It’s like all of this.

00;24;12;15 – 00;24;13;23
Lauren Petrullo
$39 on.

00;24;13;23 – 00;24;14;17
Ralph Burns
$39.

00;24;14;17 – 00;24;15;17
Lauren Petrullo
On Walmart.com.

00;24;15;17 – 00;24;33;02
Ralph Burns
So. All right, so they’re selling ten acts that and then ask what is that a thousand x. If I do the math correctly, of the $4,000 hammock how are you going to sell that. You need a story. You need branding as part of your advertising in order to persuade and get people to understand the story behind the story.

00;24;33;08 – 00;24;39;28
Ralph Burns
And that’s what this whole thing is about. So if you are a brand that’s struggling on Google or Amazon, the best when.

00;24;39;28 – 00;24;42;14
Lauren Petrullo
You’re saying Google, are you talking about paid on Google? Or again, I hate it.

00;24;42;14 – 00;25;03;14
Ralph Burns
I hate ad Google Pay. That high intent based keywords. You want to really flip the script on that you should make it 80% on the socialism, 20% on Google. Hey, stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to the channel so you don’t miss the gold nuggets for the metrics that matter and grow your business. I’ll see you on the next video.

Episode 787: The Funnel Is Dead. Here’s What Full-Funnel Actually Means Now

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The Funnel Is Dead. Here’s What Full-Funnel Actually Means Now

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