I remember back in college I had a chunky, thick laptop. IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, I can’t remember.
All I remember is that it was thick and a pain in the ass.
One day, I sat next to a classmate that had an Apple PowerBook. I couldn’t stop looking at it.
It was sleek. It was smooth. It was cool as shit.
I wanted one. I didn’t even care that it didn’t run the software that I ran. I didn’t care that it didn’t play the games that I played.
All I knew was that it felt like the type of computer I was meant to have.
It was Apple marketing to me. It’s how they got me started inside of their own Infinite Funnel.
What’s the Infinite Funnel? It’s what you as a content creator, business owner, marketer, influencer, or whatever you think you are need to be aware of.
And it’s the future of online marketing.
The Social Media Funnel Is Dead
If you’re familiar with the traditional online marketing funnel then you know it goes something like this:
Outreach via social media or content creation -> mailing list -> offer
Fairly traditional and it makes perfect sense.
The problem is that it is rarely how people come across our products/offers. How many times have you learned about a product because someone else told you about it?
From there you go and search for the product. Maybe you come across the company’s website or maybe you come across a reviewer doing a YouTube video.
With the traditional funnel, marketers want to believe they can control everything because that is how they get to measure everything.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
Yes, there are people that will find you on social media and then click on the link in your bio and then go through your traditional email funnel.
But that is just one part of your Infinite Funnel.
What do you do about the person who hears from their cousin at Thanksgiving that they need to take a look at your product? You have absolutely no idea where they will find you.
Do they hop on TikTok (since it’s their favorite app) to see what you have? Do they go to YouTube hoping to find some tutorials and reviews? Maybe they hit up their favorite podcaster to ask if they know about you.
There are more people learning about you and your product in ways you can’t measure than there are people going through your traditional funnel.
And the gap between those two groups is only going to grow.
So I guess the question then becomes what can you do about it?
Telling Your Infinite Story
First, the bad news. You can’t control everything. You can’t control what people will say about you and you can’t control what they think about you.
You can’t be everywhere as much as you want to be.
And this is where the Infinite Story comes into play.
I don’t want to come across as the biggest Apple Fanboy but there are an easy example to use.
Let’s go back to me in college. Like I said before, I wanted a Powerbook so what did I do?
I went to the Apple Store and let me tell you something.
You might be used to the Apple Store now, but back then it was a revelation. It was an experience.
It felt like the kind of store that was supposed to sell the Powerbook. It continued the story that I picked up class.
Someone asked if I needed help. I told them I wanted a Powerbook. They radioed the person in the back and then just chilled and had a conversation with me while we waited.
They were genuinely excited about me getting this computer. You could tell that they had bought into the Apple story.
The person in the back came out with that sleek Apple shopping bag and I raced home to open the immaculate packaging.
Now, this is important. This is where the story could easily break but it didn’t.
Instead, I opened the box and the way Apple had laid out all of the materials was immaculate. It felt expensive.
They make it a pleasure to take things out of a box.
And then you turn the computer on and it just works.
The story is ALWAYS being told.
And that’s the difficulty with social media marketing and the traditional funnel.
We aren’t used to telling an Infinite Story. Instead, we’re focused on a single point and we drive that single point home and optimize completely around it.
And then we switch to another story. And another.
Even better is when the boss/client/ourselves decides that we aren’t getting the right numbers so we need to switch temporary stories again.
Your Story Is Your Purpose
The truth is that most marketers aren’t going to be cut out for the future of marketing which is actually the NOW of marketing and the reason isn’t because they don’t have the skills.
The reason is because there is no purpose behind the company besides making more money.
It’s easy to think that the social media stars of today that are making millions (or billions) of dollars are doing so simply due to large followings. But the truth is that they’ve had a story from the beginning that people followed and everything they do after is associated with that story.
If you didn’t grow up watching them then it’s easy for you to not understand why they succeed when your greatest tactics fail.
By no means am I saying all of these newfound starts are genuine. Some know how to play the game so their audience believes something that isn’t true.
Those people won’t end up with Infinite Businesses.
WHY does your business exist? People need to understand why you’re doing something before they can care about if they want that something.
When you have a purpose (or Why as Simon Sinek refers to it) then you have your story.
And that story needs to permeate through everything.
How?
Through Infinite Content.