Written by
Youssef Kholeif
We're living in a world where acquisition costs are climbing and attention spans have shrunk and become fragmented across platforms, meaning brands cannot rely on simplistic funnel models anymore. In this article, we explore how modern marketing approaches balance immediate results with sustainable brand building, examining each stage of today's sophisticated growth marketing funnel and the technology that powers it.
Key takeaways
Modern growth marketing funnels embrace non-linear customer journeys powered by data analytics, and personalization, moving beyond traditional linear progression models to meet evolving consumer behaviors
Successful funnel strategies now balance short-term conversions with long-term brand building, creating emotional connections that foster customer loyalty rather than discount dependency
Contemporary funnels leverage multi-channel integration, advanced personalization, and robust measurement frameworks to deliver seamless experiences that adapt to individual customer preferences
Technology stacks featuring CDPs, automation tools, and comprehensive analytics enable brands to unify customer data and optimize each stage of the modern marketing funnel
Evolution from traditional to modern marketing funnels
The shift from traditional AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) or ACD (Awareness, Consideration, Decision) funnels to modern growth marketing frameworks represents a fundamental reimagining of how brands connect with consumers. Modern marketers now leverage multiple content formats and communication channels to engage audiences. With this evolution, content creation has adapted and become more immediate and authentic.
Where traditional funnels relied on generic messaging and standardized customer journeys, modern approaches pull together huge amounts of customer data to create deeply personalized experiences. This development reflects what we have all come to understand—each customer's path to purchase is unique and deserving of customized attention.
But what does personalization genuinely mean for marketers, beyond being another buzzword? Contemporary growth marketing funnels place heavy emphasis on education, meaningful engagement, and relationship building rather than rushing to convert. Brandon Newkirk, a growth expert, highlights this by saying, "Real buying journeys are messy. They're nonlinear, emotional, influenced by ten things we can't see and another five that change daily. Personalization is seen as the solution to live in tune with the reality of human behavior. The holy grail is to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person."
Yet, Newkirk also cautions against the pitfalls of excessive personalization. The moment marketers can personalize everything, the default temptation is to do just that—resulting in fatigue, overload, and diminishing returns. He advises brands to resist flooding every inbox or using every channel simply because they can. Instead, the smartest brands focus on creating and perfecting micro-loops within the customer journey. These could be:
Post-signup onboarding loops
Referral moments
Retention nudges
Essentially, it's about crafting branded flywheels that deliver clear value, build trust, and continuously learn and improve.
Of course, modern funnels still encourage short-term sales, but it isn't the main focus anymore. Brand building is. So, instead of training customers to wait for discounts, today's approach aims to forge emotional connections that transform one-time buyers into brand advocates, leading to repeat purchases and increased customer lifetime value.
The stages of a modern growth marketing funnel
As you know, the way customers move through the marketing funnel today is messier than it used to be. The old linear path from ad click to purchase has been replaced by chaotic micro-journeys, where multiple channels, overlapping sessions, and layered intent come into play. Buyers arrive with half the journey already done, often primed by third-party validation or creator content, not your brand. To keep up, growth marketers have had to build funnels that operate like adaptive systems, and are reactive to behavior, not linear stages.
Awareness
If people don’t know you exist, nothing else matters. Awareness is where you get your name in front of the right people with paid ads, organic social, SEO, partnerships, PR, or whatever makes sense for where your audience hangs out. You’re not selling yet. You’re just getting noticed and giving people a reason to remember you later.
Consideration
Now they know who you are, but they probably don’t trust you yet. This is the phase where users are gathering mental receipts. Smart brands weaponize this stage with retargeting sequences that escalate credibility, such as running testimonial-heavy content, pushing side-by-side comparison pages, or triggering proof-based ads based on pricing page views. Better yet, many B2B and SaaS companies preload this stage using bottom-up intent capture — collecting emails via lead magnets and nurturing with value-packed onboarding flows before any sales touchpoint even happens.
Acquisition
Once they’ve seen you, the next step is getting them to actually do something. That could be visiting your site, signing up for your list, downloading your app, or whatever you've chosen as the action you want consumers to take. However, if it takes too long or feels even slightly confusing, they’re gone. Good landing pages, clear CTAs, and fast signup flows are what makes the difference here. But remember, you're still not trying to sweep people off their feet here. You're nudging them toward feeling like saying yes is the easiest thing in the world.
Activation
Congratulations, you've got a sign up. But, modern marketing funnels suggest you haven't won anything yet. Now, you've got to deliver on that value that you promised. Activation could be someone making their first purchase, sending their first message, uploading a file, or any other moment that proves to you a consumer thinks the thing you're offering is worth their time.
This is where high-performing teams obsess over time-to-value (TTV) and build onboarding ramps that reduce friction to first success. In product-led environments, this often means running reverse trials (start on premium, downgrade after X days), pre-filled demo environments, or usage-triggered nudges that surface the “aha” moment before drop-off.
Retention
If people stop using your product after a week, growth is not going to happen... no matter how many new leads you pour in. Retention is where you build something truly sustainable. Many brands use smart lifecycle emails, loyalty programs that are actually rewarding, and product updates make customers' lives easier. You have to keep giving people more reasons to continue showing up. Otherwise, you're constantly chasing new customers, who are guaranteed to dry up at some point.
Once you've continually delivered, customers trust you and love the experience, it’s easier to introduce new products and upsells, such as subscriptions and bundles. These things feel like a natural next step to people who have been long admirers of what you do. If you tried to do this at the activation stage, it would seem like a money grab. You don’t grow by squeezing users harder. You grow by giving them better options that feel like a no-brainer.
Key differences between traditional and modern funnel approaches
When you think about it, modern marketing funnels are fascinatingly fluid. Customers can enter the buying journey at any point, moving back and forth between stages based on their needs and circumstances. This flexibility is quite the opposite to traditional models that assumed a rigid progression from awareness to purchase.
On top of this, the integration of sophisticated data analytics allows modern funnels to continuously evolve based on real customer behavior rather than assumptions. Unlike traditional approaches that relied heavily on marketing intuition, today's funnels leverage precise data to optimize each stage of the customer journey. What once was a rigid journey for every prospect can now become a personalized and customized experience based on their behavior.
Source: LinkedIn
As we touched upon, traditional funnels focused primarily on driving individual transactions without much thought of brand perception. Now, we see brands using modern approaches prioritizing building lasting relationships that generate value over time. A shift that reflects a deeper understanding that sustainable growth comes from cultivating loyal customers rather than constantly chasing new ones.
Essentially, modern marketing funnels had to adapt because audiences are everywhere. To factor this in, marketing funnels had to become less rigid and successfully integrate multiple channels and touchpoints, allowing for the creation of consistent experiences regardless of how customers interact with the brand.
Top-of-funnel strategies: earning trust, not attention
As we covered earlier, the top of the funnel aims to give people a reason to notice you and trust you enough to stick around. That’s why brands leading the way at this stage are creating content that feels native to the platforms, valuable to the audience, and connected to the brand without being obvious.
Take Water2, for example, they use educational videos about clean water that blend into social feeds without feeling disruptive, putting their core values and mission as a brand at center stage, not the product.
Then, you have Hagley West Watches who grew their brand with founder-driven content, showing Tim Hayden’s raw, transparent journey building a company from scratch, and by giving away free watches in Find Tim Challenges.
Put simply, top-of-funnel marketing works best when it feels less like marketing and more like something people would actually choose to spend time with.
Middle-of-funnel engagement tactics that convert
As we learned, once you've captured attention, the next job is to turn casual interest into a belief that your product is actually worth investing in.
Canva gets this right from the first interaction. They ask users about their goals, then personalize the whole experience to match, making it feel like the platform’s built just for them.
Monday.com does it too, with deep landing pages tailored to specific use cases like CRM, marketing, and HR. Instead of pitching one generic solution, they show prospects exactly how their needs are understood and how their solutions solves them.
Then, you've got brands like Headspace taking a different angle, leading with content that explains the science behind mindfulness, building authority and trust before asking for a signup.
At the middle of the funnel, the brands that win are those that listen and act. It's one thing knowing what your users need, but showing them how you can deliver is what makes the difference.
Bottom-of-funnel conversion optimization strategies
At the bottom of the funnel, the focus is on reducing friction and making the purchase decision feel effortless. Frictionless upselling plays a major role in increasing order value without disrupting momentum. McDonald’s kiosks suggest relevant add-ons based on real-time orders, presented as a natural extension of the original choice rather than a new decision. By putting more options in front of the customer, McDonald's saw an increase of 11% in order value.
On average, around 70% of carts are abandoned at checkout. This could be down to having to sign up, too many form fields, slow loading, limited payment options, and so on. However, brands like Gymshark have combined fast, mobile-first checkout flows with transparent stock alerts to drive action without damaging trust. If you can simplify the final steps by clearing obvious obstacles, you'll turn intent into more completed transactions.
Post-purchase retention and growth strategies
Although retention sits at the bottom of the funnel, the work starts immediately after the first purchase. Strengthening the relationship at this stage drives higher lifetime value, deeper loyalty, and lowers future acquisition costs.
There are plenty of ways brands encourage retention, but here are just a few examples you could take inspiration from:
Building personalized follow-up sequences based on real purchase behavior, like HelloFresh tailoring recipe suggestions based on previous orders to keep recommendations relevant and increase repeat engagement.
Implementing loyalty programs that reward both repeat purchases and advocacy, creating a clear path from first-time customer to long-term brand advocate.
Streamlining post-purchase communication to focus on value — such as product education, onboarding, or usage tips — rather than jumping straight to upsells.
Developing community engagement initiatives that connect customers through shared habits and interests, like Peloton using regular challenges, class milestones, and group rides to build emotional loyalty beyond the product itself.
Source: Apollo
How to measure the success of modern growth funnels
Tracking the full customer journey
Frequently, old funnels gave all the credit to the last click (the most basic of all the attribution models). It made reporting simple, but it missed everything that contributed earlier in the customer journey. First impressions, nurture emails, and retargeting ads all got ignored, even if they were the real reason someone bought. This made life difficult for marketers because they never really knew what was working.
Thankfully, modern attribution models came along and fixed that. Now, marketers can track how different touchpoints work together across the journey, giving a clearer picture of what is actually moving people toward conversion. It means budget decisions are finally based on real influence, not just the final click.
Stage-specific funnel metrics
Funnels are no longer judged by one conversion number. Whatever funnel you use, whether you adopt the basic Awareness, Consideration, Decision, or you go for one of the more advanced modern marketing funnels like we presented above, each stage can have its own KPIs now.
Awareness: impressions, reach, branded search volume, social engagement rate
Consideration: time on site, product page views, repeat visits, demo requests
Acquisition: sign-up conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), click-through rate on CTAs
Activation: % of users who complete key onboarding steps, first purchase rate, time-to-value
Retention: customer churn rate, repeat purchase rate, product usage frequency, NPS
By tracking these metrics, you can quickly identify where your funnel is working — and where it’s leaking. It helps you focus optimization efforts on the stages that are actually underperforming, rather than wasting time tweaking areas that are already converting well. This kind of clarity means you can make smarter improvements, faster, without having to tear down the whole system just to fix one weak link.
Linking lifetime value to acquisition costs
It’s easy to get caught up in short-term wins, but if a customer costs more to acquire than they’re worth over time, growth falls apart fast. That’s why you need to track customer lifetime value (LTV) alongside acquisition costs (CAC), not just one or the other.
The LTV:CAC ratio gives you a clear check on whether your growth strategy is sustainable. If customers aren’t sticking around long enough (or spending enough) to cover what it costs to bring them in, the numbers will catch up with you, no matter how good top-line acquisition looks.
Agreeing on what success looks like
None of this works if marketing and analytics teams work off different definitions. If you can't agree on basic things, like what counts as a lead, how funnel stages are defined, or how long attribution windows are, you're going to spend more time arguing over numbers than actually improving them. Modern measurement frameworks depend on shared language. If teams aren't aligned early, every report will tell a different story, and no one will know which numbers to trust. You can't fix funnel performance if you can't even agree where the funnel's breaking.
The need for multi-channel integration
It's become apparent that modern customer journeys don't stick to one platform. People switch between devices, apps, and channels without thinking about it, and expect brands to keep up.
Tom Livingstone mentions how
"Consistent exposure to your brand is vital if you want to build a connection with your audience. Think about how many different brands we are exposed to daily, and how much you'd have to see a new brand for it to break through for you."
He continues:
"Studies suggest it takes an average of 8 marketing touch points before a sale, so don't assume one ad on one platform will do the trick. Meet your audience where they are, on 6 or 7 different social platforms (on average), as well as on email and out in the real world."
Multi-channel integration makes sure the customer journey feels continuous. Messaging stays consistent, follow-ups make sense based on previous interactions, and conversations pick up where they left off. When channels are disconnected, the experience breaks down. Prospects get hit with repeated ads or different tones depending on where they are, leading to mixed messages and a lot of confusion.
If you can:
Adapt messaging to fit the behavior and expectations of each platform, without losing the core brand voice.
Retarget based on real interactions, so follow-up messaging feels natural, not random.
Make sure customer support teams can see the full history, so customers do not have to explain themselves twice.
Then you'll find your brand connects across the board.
Examples of successful growth marketing funnels
Every high-growth company builds its funnel a little differently. While the stages may look familiar on paper, the way businesses move people through them depends entirely on their goals, product, and audience behavior.
Some optimize for habit, others for virality. Some invest in top-of-funnel awareness, while others double down on referral and product-led expansion. That’s the point: there’s no single funnel template that guarantees results.
What matters is understanding how your audience moves, and building a system that meets them where they are, then nudges them forward with the right trigger at the right time. Here are three brands that show just how flexible, creative, and effective modern growth funnels can be.
Slack
Slack’s funnel was designed for scale from the start, not through spend, but through love. Awareness came from organic buzz, early adopters, and tech press. No splashy ad campaigns. Just a tool people genuinely wanted to tell others about.
Acquisition was low-friction and viral by design. A single user could spin up a free workspace and, within minutes, invite their entire team. The product handled growth for them.
What mattered most was usage. Slack discovered that once a team sent 2,000+ messages, retention soared to 93%. So that became the activation goal — get users there fast.
Conversion followed naturally once teams were hooked
30% of free users upgraded, far above typical SaaS rates
Built-in integrations and team-wide expansion drove retention
Referrals weren’t incentivized, the product did it for them
By optimizing for deep engagement instead of short-term revenue, Slack proved that even in B2B, loyalty beats lead gen.
Duolingo
Duolingo’s growth funnel is built around behavior, not just acquisition. The app grew fast through free access, viral brand moments, and word-of-mouth from teachers and students, but hit a wall when early users dropped off after just a few days.
That changed when the team restructured the funnel around one goal: building a learning habit. The breakthrough was identifying a key activation milestone, users who hit a 10-day streak were dramatically more likely to stick around.
So they gamified everything:
Streak counters and XP goals to drive daily use
Leaderboards and badges to boost social competition
Streak insurance to keep users invested
Shareable achievements to fuel organic referral
It worked. Retention improved, engagement surged, and their core product became inherently sticky. Even though only about 5% of users upgrade, that's enough to sustain revenue at scale. Duolingo’s funnel proves daily use beats deep pockets, and if users are having fun, growth takes care of itself.
Gymshark
In the early days, Gymshark grew without using paid TV or retail, they relied on community. This played a huge role in them becoming the global $1.3B company they are today. Originally, all awareness came from early partnerships with fitness YouTubers and viral social challenges like #Gymshark66.
Acquisition followed through influencer content, mobile-optimized drops, and retargeted ads. Their marketing funnel mirrors how fitness communities operate — fast, social, and visually led.
Conversion came through urgency with limited collections, influencer discount codes, and high-converting product pages featuring customer content. Buying was designed to feel like joining a movement, not just getting a T-shirt.
Gymshark has 8–10% site conversion rates, way above the fashion e-commerce average of 2.9-3.3%.
Retention is driven by emotional connection, such as meetups, reposts, founder transparency
Referrals are natural because fans wear the brand proudly, becoming walking ads
Rather than pushing discounts or hard sells, Gymshark built a funnel powered by identity.
How to build your own high-performance growth marketing funnel (step-by-step)
Map the customer journey across all touchpoints, recognizing that progress is non-linear and interactions happen across multiple channels and devices.
Create awareness through valuable, education-driven content, focusing on relevance rather than interruption.
Personalize experiences based on real data, adapting messaging, offers, and recommendations to individual customer behaviors and preferences.
Balance short-term conversion tactics with long-term brand building, ensuring that immediate wins do not come at the expense of customer trust or retention.
Implement robust measurement frameworks, moving beyond last-click attribution to track meaningful metrics at every funnel stage.
Identify and remove friction at each stage, using behavioral analytics to find where momentum stalls and refining the journey to reduce drop-offs.
Unify customer data across channels, using an integrated tech stack that allows for consistent messaging, personalized engagement, and accurate reporting.
Build post-purchase strategies that drive retention and loyalty, turning first-time buyers into long-term advocates through ongoing value and community connection.
Ok, this step-by-step makes it sound like building your own growth marketing funnel is incredibly simple, and with the right people and tools, it can be.
But, if it all sounds a little overwhelming, then calling on some expert help is the best thing to do. If you get in touch with our Growth Marketing Experts today, we can discuss how we can help you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is a modern growth marketing funnel?
A modern growth marketing funnel is a dynamic, non-linear customer journey that uses data, personalization, and multi-channel engagement to guide prospects from awareness to retention. Unlike traditional funnels, it adapts to customer behavior in real time and focuses equally on acquisition and long-term loyalty.
2. How is a modern funnel different from a traditional one like AIDA or ACD?
Traditional funnels assume a linear path (awareness → consideration → decision), often relying on mass messaging and single-channel efforts. Modern funnels are fluid and behavior-based, with personalized touchpoints, looping micro-journeys, and real-time optimization across multiple platforms.
3. Why is personalization so important in growth marketing funnels today?
Personalization helps brands cut through the noise by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. It improves engagement, builds trust, and boosts conversions—especially as consumers expect brands to understand and anticipate their needs.
4. What are the main stages of a modern growth funnel?
The main stages are:
Awareness
Consideration
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Each stage is powered by data and designed to adapt to customer behavior, rather than follow a fixed progression.
5. What tools or technologies power a modern growth funnel?
Key tools include customer data platforms (CDPs), CRM systems, marketing automation platforms, behavioral analytics, and attribution software. These tools help unify data, personalize messaging, and optimize every funnel stage.
6. How do brands like Slack, Duolingo, and Gymshark use modern funnels differently?
Slack prioritizes product-led growth and user engagement as the primary driver of acquisition and conversion.
Duolingo focuses on habit formation and gamification to improve retention.
Gymshark builds emotional connection through community, influencers, and identity-driven content.
7. What metrics should I track at each funnel stage?
Here are some key examples:
Awareness: impressions, reach, brand search volume
Consideration: product page views, return visits
Acquisition: signup rate, CPL, CTA click-throughs
Activation: first purchase rate, time-to-value
Retention: repeat purchase rate, churn, NPS
8. How do I reduce friction in my marketing funnel?
Audit each stage for drop-offs. Simplify signups, shorten forms, speed up load times, and make CTAs clear. Use behavioral analytics to uncover where users lose interest and test solutions like onboarding flows, retargeting, or in-product nudges.
9. Is brand building or conversion more important in modern growth funnels?
Both matter, but brand building is often the overlooked long game. While conversion drives short-term results, emotional connection and trust are what drive repeat purchases, referrals, and sustainable growth.
10. How can I start building a modern growth funnel for my business?
Begin by mapping your customer journey, identifying key behaviors and pain points. Use data to personalize each stage, invest in the right tech stack, and balance performance marketing with long-term brand strategy. If you need help, a growth marketing expert can guide you through it.
