The 97% rule says that roughly 97% of the people who visit your site are not ready to purchase. They are researching, comparing, and building confidence rather than rejecting you. This matters most in the Consideration stage of the Marketing Funnel, where customers start asking which solution is right for them. In this stage, you need to have empathy for the 97% of people who aren’t ready to purchase yet. Brands that win in this stage are the ones that demonstrate credibility and proof instead of applying pressure. Optimizing only for the 3% who are ready to buy today produces short-term conversions at the cost of long-term trust.

Three examples show the four content types at work in the real world. Red Bull turned a record-breaking space jump into branded entertainment that reached eight million live viewers and drove $500 million in additional sales. HubSpot built a durable growth engine on education, earning 93% of its website traffic through direct visits and organic search rather than paid ads. And a fractional CMO consultancy launched with just two thousand LinkedIn connections found clients by clarifying a confusing concept instead of pitching services.

Content is any message a company creates to reach, inform, or influence an audience, and content marketing is the deliberate practice of using those messages to build interest over time. The most effective content balances what the customer needs with what the company needs, and falls into four types: entertain, educate, inspire, and convince. Entertaining content captures attention, educational content builds trust, inspirational content creates aspiration, and convincing content removes the friction that stands between interest and purchase. Auditing your existing content against these four categories reveals where you are strong and where there are gaps.

The Value-Price-Cost Model explains the relationship between what a product costs to make, what you charge for it, and what the customer believes it is worth. For a purchase to happen, perceived value must exceed price, and profit is the gap between price and cost of goods sold. Perceived value is made up of three parts: the product's tangible utility, the intangible brand, and the intangible marketing. Because branding and marketing raise perceived value without changing the product itself, they can both convert customers who would not have bought and support higher prices without hurting satisfaction.

Your brand is the summation of how people perceive your company, products, and services. It is far more than a logo or tagline. It is shaped by every touchpoint, from advertising and packaging to product performance, pricing, customer service, employee culture, and social impact. Shaping a brand requires clarity of purpose, a defined market position, consistency across every interaction, and delivering on the promise you make. Storytelling is what brings that foundation to life, and the most effective brand narratives cast the customer as the hero and the brand as the trusted guide.

The MACJ process separates writing into four sequential roles: the Madman generates ideas, the Architect builds structure, the Carpenter drafts, and the Judge refines. Work through them in order, and the blank page stops being intimidating. I've used this for everything from short emails to my first business book, and it changed how much I produce and how good the result is.

There are Five Stages of Customer Awareness: the progression a potential customer makes from not recognizing a problem to becoming deeply familiar with a specific product. The five stages are Problem Unaware, Problem Aware, Solution Aware, Product Aware, and Most Aware. Understanding where a customer sits in this progression is essential, because effective marketing does not just promote a product. It helps people recognize their own challenges, discover that solutions exist, and identify a specific product as the right one for them.

Keeping people interested is not about constant promotion. It is about delivering the right kind of value at each transition in the customer's journey. There are five key moments where interest grows or fades, each tied to a distinct customer need: inspiration, confidence, clarity and ease, satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. Brands that understand and respond to these needs move customers forward sustainably, without losing trust along the way.

The marketing funnel maps the six stages every customer travels through, from Unawareness to Advocacy, giving marketers and business owners a shared language for diagnosing where attention is growing or fading. Critics call it too simple, but a model doesn't need to capture every nuance to be useful. It needs to help you see more clearly, and this one does.

Have you ever encountered a brand that made you feel like a better version of yourself, not just sold you something? Marketing exists on a spectrum. Bad marketing preys on psychological triggers, good marketing motivates by connecting real solutions to real needs, and great marketing inspires by making customers feel capable of becoming a better version of themselves.