Table of Contents
You sent them from Instagram to your email list. They’re on your list. They’re reading your emails. So why aren’t they buying?
You’ve been told marketing is a funnel. That awareness leads to consideration leads to purchase. A→B→C. It should be simple, but something feels off.
Maybe you’re wondering if your emails aren’t good enough. Or your offers simply aren’t what they need …
But here’s the thing: you might not be doing it wrong. The framework itself might just not match how your customers actually think and decide.
Why Funnels Don't Match Reality
The traditional marketing funnel has been around forever. It’s based on a simple idea: you cast a wide net at the top (awareness), part of that group moves into consideration, and a smaller number become customers.
It made sense when marketing was mostly one-way. You ran ads, people saw them, and some people bought. That’s very predictable, a linear line.
Even the Know→Like→Trust model that gets talked about often follows the same linear path.
But the problem is that your potential customers can find you anywhere these days. They’re on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Google, your website, your email list, your podcast. They’re consuming content in dozens of different places, sometimes all at once.
The funnel model assumes people go from A to B to C in a straight line. But people aren’t that linear.
They might bounce between Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for weeks, just consuming content, before suddenly visiting your website, reading about your offers, and buying.
Or they could move from LinkedIn straight to your newsletter and stay there for months, also listening to your podcast, before finally downloading a freebie and then purchasing.
There’s nothing wrong with these customer journeys. People are just being people, waiting until they feel ready to buy.
But depending on how you’ve set things up, they might also go from Instagram to your newsletter… and then you send them back to engage on Instagram.
And that’s where the problem starts. When you send people from your newsletter back to Instagram, you’re pushing them backwards in their journey with you.
Understanding Marketing Circles
The five marketing stages are:
- Know – People are discovering you exist. This is Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn posts, podcast guest appearances.
- Like – They’re starting to pay attention. Maybe they’ve followed you, they’re reading more of your content, they’re noticing when you post. Most of this is social media.
- Trust – They’re building a relationship with you. This is your email list, your podcast, your blog; any longer-form content where they really get to know how you think.
- Buy – They’re ready to purchase. Sales pages, checkout processes, sales calls.
- Care – They’re customers now. Onboarding sequences, delivery of your product/service, and creating a continued relationship.
Â
People discover you from the outside (Know) and move inward as they get closer to buying from you.
When someone is on your email list, they’re in the Trust circle. They’re building a relationship with you, learning how you think, getting closer to being ready to buy. When you send them from your email back to Instagram, you’re sending them from Trust back out to Know or Like. You’re literally moving them further away from buying.
A Simple Way to Start Seeing Your Own Patterns
Want to see how this plays out in your business? Try this: list all your marketing channels and activities, then place each one in its circle.
Your Instagram posts? Know and Like. Your email newsletter? Trust. Your sales page? Buy. Your client onboarding? Care.
Where do most of your activities land? Are you spending all your time in Know and Like (social media posts, blog posts for SEO) with nothing building Trust? Do you have a strong Trust circle (email list, podcast, in-depth blog content) but no clear path to Buy? Or maybe you’re great at getting people to Buy but you’ve completely forgotten about Care?
Just this simple exercise will show you patterns you couldn’t see before. Gaps you didn’t know existed. Activities that are accidentally pushing people backwards instead of forwards.
When Know and Like Aren't Enough
I worked with a business coach who was doing everything “right” according to conventional marketing advice. He was active on LinkedIn and Instagram, he’d done podcast guest appearances, he spoke at conferences. People knew who he was. They followed him. They engaged with his posts.
But when it came to booking his high-touch coaching programme (working with leadership teams in a business setting), the sales weren’t happening.
In our Pick My Brain session, I asked him to list out everything he was doing for marketing. LinkedIn posts. Instagram content. Speaking engagements. Guest podcast appearances. Conference presentations.
Then we started placing each activity into the marketing circles.
LinkedIn posts? Know and Like. Instagram? Know mostly. Speaking at conferences? Know and Like. Podcast guest appearances? Still Know and Like.
The pattern became immediately obvious: he had no Trust circle.
He was brilliant at Know and Like. People discovered him, they paid attention, they found him interesting. But there was nowhere for them to actually build a relationship with him before he asked them to buy an expensive, high-commitment coaching package.
He was asking people to jump from “I’ve seen a few of your LinkedIn posts” straight to “let’s work together for six months with your entire leadership team.” No wonder his conversion rate was so low.
We built his Trust circle. He created an email list with a targeted lead magnet, started sending weekly newsletters where people could really understand his thinking and approach, and we discussed adding longer-form content like a blog or podcast to give people multiple ways to get to know him.
The result? His sales increased. But more importantly, the people who did book calls were already halfway to yes. They’d spent time in his Trust circle, they understood his methodology, and the sales conversations became about fit rather than convincing.
All because he could finally see the gap in his marketing circles.
The Three Most Common Marketing Mistakes
He is not the only one struggling with seeing gaps in his marketing circles. When I map marketing circles with clients, I see the same gaps over and over:
1. Building Know and Like, but never moving people to Trust
You’re posting consistently on Instagram and TikTok. You’ve got followers, engagement, likes. But your email list isn’t growing, and neither are your sales.
That’s because you’re stuck in the outer circles. You’re great at helping people discover you (Know) and start paying attention (Like), but you haven’t built the bridge to Trust. You need something that moves people inward – a lead magnet, a newsletter signup, more in-depth knowledge. It’s not like TikTok can’t offer that. But you have to be the one to make that happen and then send them from that Trust to the Buy circle.
2. Jumping people from Know straight to Buy
Your Instagram bio says “Book a call!” or “Shop here!” You’re trying to move people from discovering you exist straight to purchasing. For some businesses (especially product-based), this can work. But for service-based businesses and coaches? People need to trust you first.
You’re asking for a sale before you’ve built a relationship. And then wondering why your conversion rate is so low.
3. Forgetting the Care circle exists
You make the sale, deliver your service or course, and… that’s it. No onboarding sequence, no continued relationship, no plan for what happens after someone buys.
But the Care circle is where referrals come from. It’s where repeat customers come from. It’s where testimonials and case studies come from. If you’re only focused on getting people to Buy, you’re leaving money (and relationships) on the table.
Seeing Your Own Business Clearly
These patterns are invisible until you see your marketing as circles instead of a funnel. Once you see them, you can fix them. But first, you need to know which circle you’re actually struggling with.
When you map your own marketing circles, you can see where people are getting stuck, where you’re accidentally sending them backwards, and where to focus your energy. Instead of feeling like you need to be everywhere doing everything, you can make strategic decisions based on where people are actually leaking out.
That’s the work I do with clients in Pick My Brain sessions. We map out your specific marketing circles, find where people are leaking out, and create a clear plan for what to focus on next. But whether you work with me or tackle it on your own, draw out your circles and find where you need to focus. Your marketing will be better for it.
