The Marketing Funnel is Dead: Why Google’s Messy Middle is the Future

I'm going to start this with something I heard recently within our team, and it actually triggered my attention to write about it. 

I was on a strategy call with a client recently when a question came up that got me thinking:

"How do we make sure our paid campaigns cover all stages of the marketing funnel? 🤔"

The answer was brutal (but that's what we do) :

"The marketing funnel is dead. The faster you let it go, the better.

But then comes the real panic:

"If I can’t use the funnel, how do I prove my results? How do I justify my role as CMO?’

If your entire value rests on funnel metrics, yup, you're in danger 🤓.

Of course, we don’t drop that kind of truth bomb without some context, we sugarcoat a bit, but I felt like a cool way to start the email. You certainly don't get this intros out for ChatGPT's oven :)

Let's talk about the dead marketing funnel.

In the past, the marketing funnel was a beloved concept. It was!!!

Neat, organized, and had a satisfying simplicity to it. Prospects would move from the top of the funnel (awareness), down to consideration, and finally make the decision to buy something. It felt like a natural, predictable process, and as marketers, we could control and quantify every step. But the truth is, the funnel is no longer an accurate representation of how buyers behave today. 

The marketing funnel is dead claim,  isn't a dramatic statement aimed at making headlines but a reflection of the changing ways customers engage with brands. The proliferation of touchpoints, the rise of self-education, and the overwhelming influence of search engines have all contributed to the collapse of the old, linear funnel model. Instead, what we see today is something far messier, more fragmented, and much harder to predict: Google's Messy Middle.

In this post, we'll explore why the traditional funnel no longer serves the needs of B2B SaaS marketers. We'll dive into Google's Messy Middle, discuss the 95-5% rule, and the  Dark Social as an approach that flips conventional thinking on its head and focuses on the long-term, indirect engagement. 

Why the Traditional Funnel Doesn’t Work Anymore

The traditional funnel was designed for a different time, a time when buyers had fewer touchpoints and less access to information. But today?

Everything has changed.

The buyer's journey isn’t linear. In fact, it’s never been more unpredictable. You can’t simply push prospects through a step-by-step funnel anymore. B2B buyers are juggling multiple touchpoints and consuming information at their own pace. Some will skip entire steps, while others will come back months later when they’re ready to make a decision. There’s no clear progression from awareness to decision. The funnel assumes a clean, straight line that just doesn’t exist anymore.

Now, before we go further, let’s be honest: most of the B2B SaaS marketers reading this probably still rely on the funnel for reporting and justification. But that's ok.  You want a clear path so you can prove your efforts are driving results, and the funnel seemed like a safe way to do that. The problem is, you can’t justify your performance based on old models anymore. The world has changed, and your approach should too. Let's as an LLM:

Think about how a typical buyer in a B2B SaaS company moves through their journey. First, they may see a paid ad or sponsored post on LinkedIn. This introduces them to your product, and they may visit your website to learn more. But they don’t convert right away. They might download a whitepaper, read a blog post, and then leave your site for weeks.  Eventually, they return after seeing a competitor’s ad or receiving a referral from a colleague, or read something about you in a Reddit thread. Or they might never interact with your brand again. Who knows, right?!

The key takeaway here is that the buyer doesn’t follow a linear path. They may skip consideration or even decision-making stages, revisit content multiple times, or even abandon their initial interest entirely. The funnel assumes that every lead progresses from top to bottom, but in the real world, many prospects remain in a constant state of exploration and evaluation, bouncing in and out of stages.

A Shift in Consumer Behavior

The shift in buyer behavior is supported by research. According to DemandGen Report, 80% of the B2B buyer’s journey now takes place independently, without the involvement of a salesperson, ups sorry SDRs and BDRs. Buyers spend more time researching, reading reviews, and comparing options before making a final decision. This new reality calls for a completely different marketing approach, one that meets buyers where they are in their journey, not just where you expect them to be... in your funnel.

For SaaS and tech marketers, this is a wake-up call. The traditional funnel doesn’t accurately capture the complexity of modern decision-making. Your prospects are exploring, evaluating, and revisiting options across a wide variety of touchpoints, so you must rethink your strategies to accommodate this new, non-linear reality.

The 95-5% Rule: Why Most Leads Will Never Convert

Here’s a hard pill to swallow: most of your leads were never meant to convert. That's not a critique of your marketing efforts but a reflection of the reality in B2B SaaS and tech.

The 95-5% rule is a harsh but necessary truth. In simple terms, it means that 95% of the leads you generate will either be too early in their buying process, completely out of your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), or simply shopping around. Only 5% of your leads are ever truly “ready” to convert. But those 5%? They don’t stay that way forever. They’ll eventually enter the Messy Middle, and when they do, you need to be there to help them make a decision when the time comes.

This dynamic explains the need to rethink how we measure success. For too long, marketers have been obsessed with conversion rates—how many MQLs became SQLs, how many demos were booked, how many deals closed. But in the world of the Messy Middle, those conversion metrics are just the tip of the iceberg. The real question is: how are you nurturing that 95%?

You’ll often hear the phrase "Not every lead is a qualified lead." That’s the essence of the 95-5% rule. It’s a reminder that, as a B2B SaaS marketer, you shouldn’t burn your resources on the bottom-of-the-funnel metrics alone. Instead, you need to engage with the other 95%—whether that means educating them over time, creating valuable content that they can consume at their own pace, or positioning your product as a long-term solution they may only need later.

The Dark Social: The Unseen Path to Conversion

There’s a side of the buyer journey that’s hard to track, but it’s often where the most impactful interactions happen. This is the Dark Social — the private, unmeasurable part of the journey where people share content through emails, private messages, or within closed communities. These interactions are completely off the radar of traditional marketing tools, and they heavily affect the buyer journey, furthermore breaking the measurable marketing funnel.

Let’s say you release a new blog post, or a whitepaper and share it on social media. You track the engagement, but what you don’t see is that it gets passed around privately. One person shares it via email, another sends it through Slack, and yet another shares it in a private LinkedIn group. These private shares lead to more downloads and engagement, but none of it shows up in your analytics. 

What Falls into the Dark Social

The Dark Social consists of content shared through private channels — places that can't be tracked by traditional marketing tools. Some examples:

• Private Messaging Apps: WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook Messenger — when a person shares a link with a colleague, it doesn’t show up in your analytics.

• Email Sharing: Someone copies a link to your content and sends it to a group of people via email. You won’t see these shares in your data.

• Word of Mouth: Conversations that happen in person or over the phone, where people recommend your product or content, but never publicly share it.
• Closed Communities: Private Slack groups, niche forums, or groups on LinkedIn, where recommendations are made and content is shared behind closed doors.

What is Google’s Messy Middle Theory

Google’s Messy Middle represents the new reality: a chaotic, unpredictable space between initial awareness and the final purchase decision. It’s not just a vague concept—it’s a framework that highlights how buyers engage in a much more fragmented manner than traditional funnels suggest.

In this middle stage, prospects are neither actively searching nor completely ignoring your product. Instead, they’re somewhere in between—re-evaluating, exploring options, and comparing features. This is where most buyers spend a significant amount of time, bouncing between information, reviews, competitors, and industry reports. Unlike the classic funnel, which suggests a tidy progression from one stage to the next, the Messy Middle is about buyers constantly fluctuating between discovery and evaluation.

The Messy Middle is essentially where the real buyer behavior plays out. Google’s research into this space emphasizes that buyers go through two key phases during this stage: exploring options and evaluating those options. The Exploration phase is where buyers are gathering information, considering different options, and forming opinions. The Evaluation phase is where buyers start narrowing down their options, comparing features, prices, and ultimately deciding which product or service to choose.

For B2B SaaS companies, this means that the marketing strategies we’ve relied on for years—driving leads through top-of-funnel ads and pushing for conversions—no longer match the current reality. Instead, businesses need to provide continuous, targeted engagement through content and channels that remain relevant as prospects move back and forth through these stages.

What makes the Messy Middle particularly challenging for SaaS marketers is that decision-makers often spend months or even years in this space, particularly in industries where long sales cycles and multiple stakeholders are the norm. A study by Forrester Research (2021) shows that 55% of B2B buyers say they won’t engage with sales until they’ve done a significant amount of independent research. This means that by the time prospects are ready to speak with your sales team, they may already be on the verge of making a decision.

This new way of thinking about buyer behavior isn’t just academic—it has real-world consequences for your marketing strategy. If you’re still focusing on the old funnel, you’re missing opportunities to engage your prospects as they explore, evaluate, and deliberate during the Messy Middle. It’s time to rethink the way we approach lead generation, nurture, and conversion.

Psychological Triggers at Play

Buyers are driven by psychological triggers throughout their decision-making journey. These triggers often push them to evaluate options in ways that aren’t entirely rational, causing them to make emotional decisions as they gather information and weigh their options. Here are some of the most impactful psychological triggers that influence buyers, pushing them through various stages of their journey.

1. Social Proof

People tend to follow the crowd. The opinions, behaviors, and experiences of others can strongly influence one's decision. Positive reviews, user-generated content, testimonials, or high ratings from customers can push buyers toward a purchase. For example, reading positive software reviews on platforms like G2 can convince a potential customer that the product is reliable and trustworthy.

2. Scarcity

The fear of missing out (FOMO) plays a huge role in decision-making. When consumers see that an item is in limited supply or a promotion is time-sensitive, it triggers urgency. For instance, a website might display a message like “Limited time offer,” encouraging customers to act quickly. This mostly happens with low-ticket SaaS.

3. Framing

These three triggers can create irrational decision-making, making consumers loop back between exploration and evaluation stages as they get pulled by emotional triggers.

Integrating the Messy Middle, 95-5% Rule, and Dark Social into a New Marketing Framework

The Messy Middle forces us to move away from the old sales funnel model. Instead, we need to focus on the behaviors of the buyer—engaging with them at every touchpoint, across every stage. It means understanding that a lead’s decision-making process isn’t linear, and that you can’t rush them from stage to stage. Your job as a marketer is to be present in that messy space, offering support, insight, and guidance along the way.

The 95-5% rule reminds us to stop chasing after every lead. Focus your resources on the 5% who are ready to convert right now, but don’t neglect the other 95%. They’ll become customers later, if you build a relationship that’s meaningful and valuable. 

In terms of Dark Social, your content has to be something people want to share. If your content isn’t valuable, they’re not going to forward it to their team or colleagues. But if it resonates with them, if it speaks to their pain points or provides solutions, they will share it. And this matters.

You might not see the analytics showing all the shares, but you can feel it when the referrals start rolling in. When a potential client reaches out because someone recommended your case study or video, you know Dark Social has worked its magic.

For B2B SaaS companies, it’s time to start thinking differently about content sharing. It’s not just about getting likes or shares on Twitter. It’s about creating content that people will be compelled to pass along in private conversations. That could mean creating shareable whitepapers, insightful blog posts, or videos that explain how your product solves real-world problems. The more shareable and valuable your content, the more likely your customers will act as organic evangelists for your brand, especially in those private, trusted spaces. To improve attribution and analytics for Dark Social, you also might want to consider Hybrid-Attribution Model, we have a comprehensive post on it here.

Why You Need to Adjust Your KPIs for This New World

The traditional metrics are outdated. If you’re still obsessed with MQLs and SQLs, you’re missing the point. The Messy Middle doesn’t care about how quickly someone converts—it cares about how much value you’ve provided along the way. How much have you engaged them? How much have you educated them? How much have you built trust?

You might be thinking, “Alright, I get it. But what exactly should I be tracking now?”

Let’s start with engagement.

Forget the obsession with conversion rates for a second. Yes, conversions are great, but they don’t tell you the whole story. Engagement is where the real action happens. Are your prospects reading your blogs? Watching your videos? Coming back to your site after downloading a whitepaper? These behaviors are the signs that someone is invested in your brand.

In the Messy Middle, the journey is long, and there’s no straight path from awareness to purchase. Prospects are exploring, comparing, evaluating. So, your goal should be to track how engaged they are with your content, how often they return to check out more of what you have to offer, and how they interact with your brand across multiple channels. These are the metrics that matter. If you can keep them engaged, you’re building trust and a relationship that will eventually pay off.

But engagement goes beyond just clicks and views. It's about building relationships.

In B2B SaaS, the buyer’s journey is rarely a quick one. Buyers are deliberate. They want to understand the full value of your product, and they will do their research before taking the next step. That means you’re not just nurturing them to buy now; you're cultivating a relationship that lasts.

The new KPIs should focus on Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), not just immediate sales. If you’re measuring success by how many demo requests you get, you’re missing the mark. Focus on how you’re nurturing those prospects for the long-term. Are they coming back for more information? Are they engaging with multiple pieces of content? These are signals of a relationship, and relationships are where true value lies.

And then there’s the real secret weapon: behavioral insights over demographic profiling.

In the past, it was all about knowing the who—the title, the industry, the company size. While these still matter to an extent, they don’t tell you much about the how and why. What really matters today is how your prospects behave. What pages are they visiting? What questions are they asking? Are they revisiting a product demo? These behavioral signals are far more telling than just knowing someone's job title or where they work.

Conclusion

If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s this: The marketing funnel is dead. The world of B2B SaaS marketing has changed, and it’s time to rethink how we engage with our leads.

The Messy Middle is where the real magic happens. Buyers are no longer following a neat, linear path from awareness to decision—they’re bouncing between stages, revisiting content, evaluating, and re-evaluating their options. Your job is to stay present, relevant, and engaged throughout this process.

The 95-5% rule is a harsh reality we all need to accept. Most leads aren’t ready to buy right now, but that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable. By focusing on engagement, relationship-building, and brand affinity, you’ll be setting yourself up for success when they’re ready to make a decision. It’s about nurturing those 95% who may not convert today but will come back later.

And then there’s Dark Social. If you’re not tapping into the power of private, off-the-record conversations, you’re missing a massive opportunity. People don’t always talk about your product in public forums—they’re sharing it privately with colleagues and peers. That’s where real influence happens, and that’s how trust is built.