Why great creative won’t save you from a broken journey. You don’t have a lead gen problem; you have a funnel problem. Before you pour more budget into the top, fix the holes in the middle and bottom where your best prospects quietly disappear.
At Evolve, multiple speakers echoed the same warning: don’t be fooled by a strong campaign if the results never show up in revenue. A leaky funnel can undo even the most effective marketing.
Kassian Goukassian, CEO of falkemedia, emphasized the importance of looking at the entire subscriber journey, not just the starting line.
“It’s not just about getting people in the door. It’s about what happens after they arrive. If you don’t guide them well through every touchpoint, they won’t stick around long enough to matter.”
Too many marketing teams obsess over top-of-funnel metrics, clicks, form fills, campaign reach, not realizing their acquisition dollars are falling through the cracks.
Renée Doegar, Publisher at the London Review of Books, spoke to this issue from the lens of retention and user experience:
“Every time a potential subscriber hits a roadblock—unclear messaging, friction in checkout, irrelevant follow-ups—you risk losing them. Not later. Right then.”
Signs of funnel leakage include:
And as Abi Spooner pointed out, even good conversion rates can be misleading:
“If you’re optimizing the middle of the funnel in a way that hurts the top or bottom—like filtering out too many leads or overwhelming users with onboarding steps—you’re still losing.”
Metrics in isolation lie. You need full-funnel visibility to diagnose what’s really happening.
Before launching your next campaign, ask yourself:
“If I double the traffic tomorrow, is my funnel ready—or will it just leak faster?”
A single source of real-time customer insights, campaign management, fulfillment, financial reporting, and more.
