The Marketing Funnel is Dead: Why the Script Flipped on Marketing & Trust in the Age of AI

“The more I studied the funnel, the more I think it’s broken.”

— Brian Halligan (co-founder & former CEO of HubSpot)

If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, you know the feeling: On top of a business (and life), you’re juggling website, social media, and email marketing—a chaotic, overwhelming, and often disconnected “maze” of modern marketing. Your email inboxes are full of different marketing schemes and “opportunities.” Every month, there’s a new tactic, algorithm tweak, and influencer promising another shortcut to success. You feel stuck on a tactical hamster wheel, exhausting time and resources, while the gap between your business goals and your results only seems to widen.

This struggle is not all your fault. It’s a systemic problem built into the very architecture of traditional marketing models. Over the last couple of decades, the digital world has only multiplied as have its software, services, and systems. The industry has long operated on a flawed premise: that attention can be bought, and persuasion can replace trust—that if we understand the psychology of buyers well enough, we can extract value before we’ve earned it. It can be easy to make humans a commodity. Without internal integrity and awareness, we can treat people as objects and subjects, rather than as humans.

My core belief has always been simple, yet a bit “backwards” by modern standards: people are both the ends and the means of any real organization. Business without integrity and marketing without authenticity is just noise and narcissism. Your business is real; your marketing should be too. In marketing as in business, it always begins and ends with humans. People are the most common denominator in both. Authenticity is Stigma Marketing & Development’s shtick.

That’s why I’ve been developing and now introducing an Authentic Marketing Engine—an Upside-Down, Value-Based Funnel. This model rejects some old assumptions of “capture” and consumer marketing and flips the script, starting where real business operates and meets the customer. It’s a roadmap for aligning vision, values, and voice into a single, cohesive strategy that is informative, useful, and built to last.

“Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.”

— Seth Godin

Part I: The Core Shift—The End of the “Capture” Funnel

The traditional Marketing Funnel (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) is fundamentally a “Capture” Funnel¹. It starts broadly at Awareness, moving everyone through a narrowing conversion path designed to squeeze them into a purchase. This model is a relic of an attention-scarcity economy, where we assumed there weren’t enough resources to survive, and we had to compete with everyone else to be “successful.” It’s built on interruption and distraction, not relationship.

But customers have changed. Most people see through the mirage of status and materialism, and many can spot flattery or mixed intentions from the subject line alone.

The Unstoppable Demand for Trust and Transparency

Today, the demand for trust is at an all-time high. People are tired of being gimmicked, funneled, and sold to. They want real solutions from real, trustworthy sources, and they are quick to spot anything that feels manipulative or inauthentic. This cultural shift—where consumers prioritize being treated as a human over being a cog in a machine—is the single biggest driver behind the change in marketing and in AI search. Consumer trust is becoming harder to earn and keep. 94% of consumers are likely to remain loyal to brands that practice transparency. In contrast, according to a 2025 report by Emplifi, “70% of consumers say they will abandon a brand after just two bad experiences, and nearly 24% say they would stop purchasing from a brand after only one bad experience.” Brand loyalty is slipping too: SAP Emarsys showed that “true Loyalty has declined for the first time in five years, dropping 5% from 2024 to 29% in 2025.“

This shift requires a different philosophy, and one that was always true: Marketing is a Natural Extension of Real Business.

It is not a separate function or a layer of “gimmicks” you add on top. It’s the DNA and mindset you and the people of your business embody and model, it’s how your systems work, and it all stems from your Why. The foundation of all successful marketing is that actual service and solutions drive the marketing of them, not the other way around. When you erase the gap between what you do and how you market yourself, the experience becomes frictionless, transparent, and manageable.

The 6th P of Marketing: People

The traditional marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) is incomplete in the modern context. While the 5th P may be “Purple Cow,” introduced the year I graduated high school (for another blog post), the 6th P of Marketing is People. Building from these principles, we can recognize that the ultimate and most important factor is the human element. Marketing is built on understanding the customer, yes, but also understanding yourself, the thing you’re marketing

Everything else (models, strategies, and tools) is subservient to that relationship. Without a genuine focus on the well-being and relationship of the humans behind and in front of your brand, no amount of paid spend or AI-generated content can compensate. Trust has always been the currency, and people are the only ones who can mint it.

“The marketing funnel can give marketers funnel-vision. In focusing on the transaction over the relationship, marketers can lose sight of the actual consumer the funnel was designed to reach.”

— Tom Fishburne

Part II: The Authentic Marketing Engine—The Upside-Down Funnel

The Authentic Marketing Engine is a value-based funnel that roots marketing in real service and relationships, then uses proven systems and tools for intentional growth. It begins at the deepest point of trust—the authentic purpose of your business.

When people and businesses operate from that center, they stop being slaves to the algorithm. They live and work in ways that are inherently trustworthy, and that kind of consistency changes the algorithm itself. You’re no longer trying to manipulate it—it starts to recognize and amplify you because real value naturally attracts attention, connection, and engagement.

A system built on documented value, expertise, and genuine relationships is naturally anti-fragile. It doesn’t break when trends shift or economies wobble. Marketing stops being an expensive external interruption and becomes a self-reinforcing system where the quality of your output generates credibility signals that draw in the right people and deepen relationships. In this model, marketing isn’t performance; it’s purpose in motion.

Part III: The Fuel of the Engine—E-E-A-T and the AI Shift

The rise of AI has fundamentally changed the game for search and content visibility. Every market seems flooded, and consumers are overwhelmed with information. AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are designed to synthesize and cite reliable information, which means they are optimizing for answers, entities, and relationships, not just keywords.

E-E-A-T: How AI Grades Your Credibility

The gatekeeper to earning AI-based search visibility is E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. This is how AI grades your contribution to the conversation.

• Experience: Does your content come from real, first-hand experience?
• Expertise: Is the author a demonstrable expert on this topic?
• Authoritativeness: Is this the go-to source for this information?
• Trustworthiness: Is the site secure, transparent, and trusted by users?

AI SEO is simply a process of proving your real-world E-E-A-T to the algorithms. The AI doesn’t just count links and the quantity of content anymore, but maps credibility and knowledge. Your digital footprint now functions as an interconnected proof-of-trust system. So, the trick is to replicate your real-life experience and networks online.

From Backlinks to Brandlinks: Reputation Signals

The way we build reputation has evolved from a numbers game to a trust network.

Brandlinks are the next-generation currency of credibility—proof that your value is recognized beyond your own channels. They connect your business to a living ecosystem of trust, where authority is built through who vouches for you and how you show up over time.

This means your content strategy is no longer about gaming an algorithm; it’s about translating real-world integrity into a format the AI can recognize. Most businesses start by trying to impress the machine. You change the game by living the kind of business the machine is trying to find.

“73% say they would be willing to pay more for a product that offers complete transparency in all attributes.”

— PR Newswire, Sept. 2018

Part IV: The 5 Stages of the Authentic Marketing Engine

The Marketing Engine has five distinct phases, moving from your deepest internal identity outward to the broadest possible reach. Unlike the traditional funnel, we start at the center and let the value flow outward.

Stage 1: The Sphere of Influence (Your Authentic Core)

This is the most important part of the entire model.

The Sphere of Influence² is the non-replicable, authentic source material that AI search systems are now designed to reward. It is the origin of your E-E-A-T. This sphere is fundamentally made up of relationships—you, your team, and your existing connections.

This phase includes:

• Your existing relationships and partnerships.
• Your leadership, company culture, and administrative practices.
• Your proprietary “Why, How, and What”—the unique purpose, process, and products of your business.
• Your real-world, documented experience.
• Your real business stories and those of your customers.

In the Upside-Down Funnel, this is where you start. Your business is your marketing foundation. The strength of your Sphere of Influence determines the strength of every other phase. When your business reflects its authentic service, your customer journey becomes frictionless.

Stage 2: The Main Content Hub (The Strategic Core)

Your website is not just a digital brochure; it is your anti-fragile, algorithm-resistant nexus of expertise. This is the Main Content Hub in our model, and it serves a critical function: to translate your authentic content (from Stage 1) into machine-readable trust signals. For those without a website, your main online platform becomes your Main Hub.

Do what you do best and create content from that. “Write what you know.” Utilize Pillar Architecture to build deep, interconnected Topic Clusters³, not just isolated blog posts. This establishes your site as the single source of truth that AI systems reference.

To achieve this, technical authenticity is non-negotiable:

• People-First Technicals: Accessibility, fast load times (Core Web Vitals), and mobile-first design are essential, non-negotiable ranking signals that ensure a frictionless user experience. People want to be able to actually read and enjoy your stuff.
• Transparency: Real author bios, visible contact info, and open data policies establish the credibility AI needs to verify E-E-A-T.
• Structured Data (Schema)⁴: This is the code that validates the human element, explicitly communicating your authenticity to AI and labeling your content semantically (who you are, what you do).
• Authorship Consistency: An integrated content strategy built around one authentic, identifiable voice wins because algorithms identify consistent authorship patterns (tone, domain, identity).

Stage 3: Core Following (Integrated Outflow)

This is the Integrated Outflow phase—the point where your core value (from the Hub) becomes external authority signals. The goal here is strategic distribution: using the Macro Content from Stages 1 and 2 to generate Micro Content for the rest of your Marketing Engine. With modern tools, especially AI, we can create smaller content pieces that retain authenticity, narrative, and expertise, without producing AI slop. For example, a business presentation on Authentic Marketing and AI-SEO can become a blog post, a set of social graphics, and a reel script—all interconnected iterations of the same original value. (That’s exactly how this post came to be.)

Your social media platforms and email newsletter are critical channels. These are people who already want to follow you and engage with what you create, forming a curated audience of target customers. Email marketing, in particular, bypasses volatile platform algorithms and builds direct trust. This audience—the loyal inner circle at the Desire stage of the traditional funnel—is where real authority begins to scale.

Customer Reviews: Trust Signals That Scale

Reviews are more than just feedback—they are verifiable proof of your business’s integrity and value. Authentic reviews from Stage 1 through Stage 3 act as external authority signals, reinforcing what your Core Following already knows: that you deliver results and operate with transparency. For AI-driven search and recommendation systems, verified reviews contribute to E-E-A-T by demonstrating real-world experience and trustworthiness. For prospective customers, reviews are social proof that bridges the gap between interest and desire, helping attract a wider, yet qualified audience.

Even for businesses that operate offline, a review system matters. Integrating reviews into your customer process and journey creates a natural touchpoint for capturing feedback, building credibility, and generating signals that can reach new prospects. Beyond customers, reviews also serve as a form of professional validation: other businesses, partners, or collaborators who see authentic, positive reviews gain confidence in your capability and integrity. Encouraging and highlighting these reviews is not a gimmick—it’s a deliberate, strategic extension of your value-based marketing, translating actual service into measurable credibility and expanding your influence both in human networks and algorithmic systems.

The goal here is to create a frictionless loop:

• Your Pillar Content is segmented into micro-content for social media and video.
• You connect your website, email, and social platforms so interactions sync automatically via CRM & Integrations.
• This strengthens your interlinkability across systems, moving people back to your core hub where your E-E-A-T is archived.
• Leverage authentic customer reviews and testimonials as external authority signals, feeding both AI trust systems and human audiences.

Stage 4: Audience (Where Interest Meets Desire)

This group is aware of you and interested, but not yet in your loyal, inner circle. This phase uses the trust built with your Core Following (Stage 3) to generate powerful, qualified interest.

This is where social media has reach. Earned media and collaborations organically kill a few birds with one stone. Your Core Following shares your content, you appear on podcasts, you do collabs with businesses you work with, and you engage with other credible experts. These are called Entity Associations or semantic co-signs—being co-cited or mentioned with trusted experts strengthens your “knowledge network” and reinforces your credibility.

The goal is to leverage your proven authority to attract a wider, yet still highly relevant, audience that should know you because people they trust do know you.

Stage 5: Growth (Scalable & Manageable Reach)

In the Authentic Marketing Engine, paid strategies are always saved for last.

Why it’s last: You never use paid strategies to buy authority you don’t have. Paying for attention before you’ve built a proven, anti-fragile message is a fool’s errand, and a cash sinkhole.

Instead, you use paid strategies to amplify the proven, authentic authority you’ve already built in Stages 1-4. This is where you leverage Reach/Ads, but you direct your ads toward either your Products & Services or your proven Pillar Content (Stage 2) or strong Lead Magnets (Stage 3). Advertising becomes a scalable tool, rather than a gamble.⁵

The Goal is to fund and accelerate the reach of your authentic message, not to invent one. The result is a Credibility Stacking Model—a method that captures the attention of the right people and leaves a verifiable footprint that teaches the AI your brand is legitimate and trustworthy (a topic for yet another post).

“Too many companies want their brands to reflect some idealised, perfected image of themselves. As a consequence, their brands acquire no texture, no character, and no public trust.”

— Richard Branson

Conclusion: The New Definition of Marketing Success

The shift in marketing is not a fad; it’s a permanent cultural and technological reality driven by a collective demand for transparency, purpose, and proof. The old Marketing Funnel is obsolete because it views marketing as a transaction to be forced.

The Authentic Marketing Engine, our Upside-Down, Value-Based Funnel, offers an alternative: it views marketing as an outflow of service. We start with your non-replicable value (Stage 1), structure it into an authoritative archive (Stage 2), distribute it through owned relationships (Stage 3), let our authority be leveraged by peers (Stage 4), and only then amplify the proven message (Stage 5).

By centering the WHY behind the HOW and WHAT you do, marketing becomes transparent, aligned, and truly effective. It scales naturally without gimmicks or forcing it into trends.

At Stigma Marketing & Development, we don’t just market—we build marketing ecosystems that work for you, with you, and because of you. We believe great marketing should feel like a conversation, not an interruption. By committing to authentic service, you erase the gap between your business and your message, creating the only kind of growth that lasts: compounding, consistent, and genuinely anti-fragile.

1. The AIDA model is indeed the canonical structure of the traditional marketing funnel, originating from early 20th-century advertising psychology (E. St. Elmo Lewis, 1898). It remains widely cited and used in digital marketing. ↩︎
2. The “sphere of influence” model, sometimes used in real estate sales, is a relationship-based strategy that builds business through your network of personal and professional connections. Rather than chasing cold leads, it focuses on cultivating trust within the circles that already know, like, and respect you, allowing referrals and opportunities to grow organically. At Stigma M&D, we expand on this concept using three concentric spheres: Control, Influence, and Interest. The innermost circle (Control) represents your business and its internal systems; Influence includes your immediate relationships and collaborators; and Interest encompasses those beginning to engage with your brand. These layers naturally overlap with the first two stages of the Authentic Marketing Engine, linking your operational integrity to your expanding trust network. ↩︎
3. Pillar content is the main subjects your business knows best and should be known for. Topic clusters are the related conversations that naturally branch off those core subjects. Together, they form the structure that helps search engines (and AI) understand what your business is truly an expert in. ↩︎
4. Schema is structured information added to your website that tells search engines exactly who you are and what your business does, providing that context more directly to searches so AI can verify your expertise and authenticity. ↩︎
5. Using ads for research, such as A/B testing headlines, messaging, or audience segments, is a smart move. The danger is in letting that testing replace the slower, more durable work of building real authority. Data can refine delivery, but only substance builds longevity. ↩︎