Funnel Reboot

Small businesses run on lean marketing teams and tight budgets, but don't count them out. They're the overwhelming majority of businesses on earth. Small companies have one function that's poised to figure out AI through experimentation, analysis and strategic changes in direction. It's marketing, and it may very well determine the winner of the AI race. After graduating from Laurentian University...

Everyone makes content now. But having content doesn't automatically mean anyone will actually consume it. There are brands with long-running programs and audiences that carve out time for their content, while other brands' programs fade because it became a thankless chore. What's different between content that's adored and content that dies in obscurity?   The brands that win make content that au...

I can't prove it, but I think many marketers wish they could improve how they're perceived by corporate leadership.  I have felt this way in more than one role, and racked my brain on how to fix it. I've entertained everything including coming to board meetings with a dozen custom-branded donuts.   Thankfully, the a solution I have come up with isn't extreme and it doesn't require donuts. I was re...

We humans like conversations that keep moving forward.  Every time we share some detail about ourselves, we expect the other person to remember it.  If they bring that detail back up in our next interaction, we feel pleased and want to keep that relationship going. Conversely, we get annoyed when they blast us with messages we had already said didn't interest us.   This is severely problematic for...

Episode 233 In the 2009 movie "Up" there's a golden retriever whose collar can translate his thoughts to speech. When Dug the dog first  starts speaking, the main characters marvel at how smart he is, but expectations drop a moment later when he snaps his head around and halts mid-sentence when he hears a squirrel.   We marketers are prone to Squirrel-chasing. Let's be honest and admit that we get...

Episode 232 There is a quiet, enduring power in wisdom that resists the urge to conform. Wise people refuse to abandon their convictions. It's not obvious who will be the Wise character in These Stories, the role often casts them as having lowly beginnings or in the shadow of others who are more powerful. But they speak out anyway, even if they are mocked or sidelined. Take: Don Quixote's sidekick...

It goes without saying that the purpose of sales and marketing is to help a company grow. We create forecasts where revenue grows a hundred-thousand, a million, or 10 million dollars.  But we expect to achieve that with incremental changes to our resources and tech-stacks.  When Base 10 Math is used to express numbers that differ by orders of magnitude, we use exponents, noted with the letter N pu...

Social media platforms can serve as both vibrant marketplaces and spaces for genuine social interaction, where consumers feel valued, while businesses boost engagement and sales. This picture may not look anything like the reality of social media that you see, but our guest will remind you that things haven't always been this way.   A short glance back of the Internet shows that in the year 2000 t...

Episode 229 We need to talk about what's been happening with the use of AI on Google and Meta's ad platforms.  A few years ago, we were surgeons. We had the scalpel. We chose the exact keywords, the specific bid modifiers, the precise placements. Now? Google and Meta are basically telling us, "Hey, don't worry your pretty little human head about it. Just give us your credit card, a few grainy imag...

How do you amplify a message when you can't lean on traditional justifications like "because we'll make a profit out of this"?   In the for-profit world, the justification for marketing spend is straightforward: you put money in to get more money out. But how do you amplify a message when you can't lean on traditional bottom-line justifications? For non-profits, associations, and social enterprise...

Episode 226 Positioning is an element that's so foundational to  Marketing, it's taught in every introductory class alongside the "Four Ps" of marketing. Positioning is meant to describe the choices a brand makes to maximize how the market sees it. Positioning is very powerful because it can set perceptions that drive customer loyalty, strong demand, and the willingness to pay a premium price.   B...

Episode 225 At the time I'm recording this it's a new year. This is a typical time when people plan what they're going to achieve fitness-wise, financially and professionally. If you're working on that last one and wonder about what marketing reads you should try, I have some marketing books that could do just the thing. There are Five in all. - Let's dive right in. Links to everything mentioned i...

Thinking up a new product and commercializing it is not easy. All products face Financial, Technological and of course Competitive market barriers. But doing this in the field of Healthcare is not like any other industry.  In healthcare, there exist extra regulatory hurdles that make product innovation even more difficult.  Before every medical device is introduced, they must find academics who wi...

The world we inhabit today is, in countless ways, an extended echo of breakthroughs made by two extraordinary cultures that came from a compact corner of the mediterranean between the 4th century BCE to the 2nd century of the current era. I'm talking about Greece and Rome, whose influence on contemporary language, thought, and culture is so deeply woven into the modern world that we navigate it ev...

We often hear marketers talk about how vital their work is to sales. What we don't hear nearly as often is the reverse: how essential sales is to a well-functioning marketing team. If marketing creates the content, sales provides the context. And that context is what makes campaigns relevant, credible, and grounded in the real world. Sales teams feed marketing the on-the-ground truth—what prospect...

Is your Brand truly memorable? Would a person who bought from you a year ago be able to recall your name or say what they found compelling about you? The reality is that a lot of brands are instantly forgettable.  You don't have to wallow in a world of Meh - you can turn your brand into something memorable - we're going to hear a process that's been codified in a book that came out in 2025 called...

Here's a question a lot of us are asking ourselves today. How do marketers build genuine, durable trust when the cost of generating massive volumes of AI content is basically zero? How can you argue for making humanly-crafted content in small quantities  When it's so easy to have AI pump it out in big quantities? The hard truth is that humans are wired to notice what other humans do. Meaningful co...

Up to the 18th century, making and trading things was harder than it needed to be. You had to deal with a bewildering patchwork of local constants and norms. It was actually the French Revolution & administrators who came out of it that started to codify how we measure things. The standards they adopted were ultimately formalized in 1875 at a Convention  whose name you may recognize, the Metre - o...

For any professional, life often presents unexpected challenges that test our resilience and strength. The Ottawa-based marketer we'll hear from today, has had an extraordinary journey,  For those born with congenital heart defects like Danny Covey's, surgery isn't an if, it's not even a when, it a HOW MANY. Without undergoing them, they have no hope of living to adulthood, Danny has had eight of...

One of the best known events in the modern Olympics is the High jump. Since its dawn in 1896 all jumpers used the same technique. They would run towards the bar, then begin their vault by putting one leg over, or trying to go head-first over the bar. But someone came to the 1968 Mexico City games, who couldn't win on physicality, but who did have a hack no one had thought of.    That person was 21...

Artificial General Intelligence is a term that most of us have heard, a good number of us know how its defined, and some claim to know what it will mean for the average marketer. Here's what OpenAI's Sam Altman said "It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI."   Wh...

Hey, Glenn here. It's the middle of summer when I'm recording this; a time we don a pair of shades, a beach towel and a good book. Funnel Reboot usually shares talks with marketing book authors, but for this show I'm going to share some reads that go a little farther afield.  Come along with me through six books that are all amazing. The subjects range between business, humanities, technology and...

Sometimes, to reach a solution, we must take unfamiliar paths.  In the early 1940s, a brilliant mathematician named Abraham Wald left his homeland in Hungary fleeing the spectre of war. He moved to the United States, and became part of a team at Columbia University tasked in 1942 with an aspect of the war where the Allies were losing badly to the Nazis. It involved the many Allied planes that woul...

We as consumers do a lot of things just because the people around us are doing them. For proof, look no further than some historical examples—from the 17th-century tulip bulb craze in Holland to doomsday cults and prepper movements in the lead-up to Y2K. Buying fads such as pet rocks, fidget spinners, Beanie Babies, and NFTs all show how easily prevailing thoughts influence individual behavior.  ...

Most of the leading AI companies tell us how wonderful their technology will make our lives.  In a recent post put out by OpenAI's head, Sam Altman called The Gentle Singularity, he says "We will figure out new things to do and new things to want...Expectations will go up, but capabilities will go up equally quickly, and we'll all get better stuff. We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each...