2025-09-08 16:15:56
Startups run on speed, iteration, and hustle. But in 2025, agentic AI is stepping in to handle much of the hustle — autonomously managing tasks, learning from feedback, and optimizing workflows in real time. The shift is subtle but seismic: if AI handles the technical, what remains distinctly human?
The answer isn’t code. It’s communication, empathy and imagination. Startups that once scaled by sheer technical brilliance must now lean into soft skills as their differentiator. In an era where everyone has access to the same smart tools, it’s how you lead, relate, and adapt that will set your startup apart.
Agentic AI systems can now ideate, schedule, troubleshoot, and even engage in iterative problem-solving. They’re autonomous enough to complete complex workflows without human nudging. That kind of intelligence is a startup founder’s dream — until it starts raising a bigger question: where do humans fit in?
While AI can write essays, thought leadership pieces and conduct research, what AI can’t do is build trust. It can’t decode subtle interpersonal tension in a strategy meeting or negotiate a partnership that hinges on empathy and persuasion. It can’t tell a compelling origin story that wins hearts. These are the moments where soft skills become irreplaceable.
The teams that will thrive in this new landscape won’t just be technically proficient. They’ll be emotionally attuned, ethically grounded, and endlessly curious. As AI takes over the routine and the logical, it’s the irrationally human stuff that becomes your competitive edge.
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Think of agentic AI as your most efficient team member: it never sleeps, always executes, and doesn’t complain. But it also lacks context, nuance, and the ability to handle ambiguity with grace. That’s where soft skills step in as the connective tissue of modern startup teams.
Suddenly, collaboration is no longer just human-to-human. It’s human-to-agent and agent-to-agent, with humans orchestrating these interactions to stay aligned. Technical communication is important, but emotional clarity is critical. You don’t just need engineers who can prompt an AI; you need communicators who can translate cross-functional needs into workflows the AI can actually support.
Leadership also changes. Managers aren’t just guiding people anymore — they’re designing environments where AI agents and human talent work in tandem. That requires soft skills at a higher resolution: empathy for both burnout and bot limitations, foresight to spot AI bias, and diplomacy when blending synthetic output with human decision-making. In a way, this makes the CTO position even more difficult, as it’s slowly becoming more “agentic orchestrator” than “project manager.”
With AI agents generating ideas, writing drafts, analyzing sentiment, and even crafting product pitches, it might seem like human communication is becoming less relevant. It’s the opposite. The more AI creates, the more humans need to guide, refine, and contextualize its output.
Founders, marketers, and team leads need to become exceptional communicators. Why? Because AI often outputs with technical accuracy but lacks emotional subtlety. It doesn’t understand cultural nuance, tone shifts, or the power of narrative like we do. A pitch deck written by an AI might hit all the points, but it won’t close the deal without human storytelling layered in.
Moreover, cross-functional communication becomes essential as AI takes over low-level coordination and supercharges growth. Teams need to align on high-level goals, intent, and ethics. Miscommunication, once a minor issue, can now cascade when amplified through autonomous systems. The startups that thrive will be the ones where clear, consistent, and empathetic communication is embedded into their culture from day one.
Startups have always prized speed, agility, and technical edge. But as agentic AI levels the playing field for technical execution, soft skills are where differentiation happens. Think about it: if any startup can now access world-class coding, data analysis, or customer segmentation via AI, then what makes your team unique? Your ability to collaborate. To tell a compelling story. To build relationships. To lead with integrity.
Soft skills, in this context, become a strategic superweapon. This also affects the hiring process, putting more emphasis on versatile operators who can show clearly on their resumes they have these kinds of attributes, as well as those with a unique background. Mere certificates and credentials won’t be sufficient soon enough.
Investors are noticing, too. A founder with emotional intelligence and strong interpersonal instincts is increasingly seen as a safer bet than one who only talks tech. Because when things go sideways (and they will), it’s not your AI agent that will talk down a furious customer or inspire a pivot. It’s your team, your leadership, and your ability to navigate ambiguity with grace.
So, how do you bake soft skills into your startup’s DNA? It starts with redefining what you value. Don’t just hire for technical skills; hire for adaptability, curiosity, and humility. Encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration where developers learn from designers, and marketers learn from engineers. Make space for reflective thinking, not just sprint planning.
Training matters too. Offer workshops not only on prompt engineering and AI ethics but also on conflict resolution, active listening, and inclusive leadership. Give your team the tools to engage with AI critically, but also with each other authentically.
Leadership needs to model this shift. It’s not enough to be AI-literate; founders must be willing to leverage AI to improve the human side of the org, but doing so in an emotionally conscious way. That means giving honest feedback with empathy. Owning mistakes. Encouraging psychological safety so team members feel safe taking risks, even with intelligent systems watching.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to compete with AI — it’s to become the kind of startup where AI enhances what humans do best: care, connect, and create.
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Agentic AI will handle more tasks, faster and more efficiently than ever. But it won’t replace the human spirit that drives great startups. It can’t replace that intuitive moment when a founder connects with a customer. It can’t build camaraderie among a late-night team. It can’t inspire trust in a time of crisis.
As the frontier of AI continues to expand, the startups that succeed won’t just be the most tech-savvy. They’ll be the most human. The ones who see soft skills not as an afterthought, but as the engine of innovation in a world where machines do more of the work.
In the end, it won’t be the AI agent that builds your brand. It’ll be the people who use it with empathy, insight, and bold creativity.
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2025-09-05 17:29:53
Like many other industries, market research relies heavily on data. However, compliance and data security have never been more imperative than now with the large amounts of data collected. Protecting data storage is not merely technical; it’s critical for establishing confidence and safeguarding the integrity of future research undertakings.
What could prove detrimental to a business is if proper care is not taken to safeguard your market research data, which falls prey to multiple security risks. Let’s discuss a few important issues that we hope you are already aware of:
Encryption is one of the measures that ensures that not just anybody can access one’s data. It is imperative to have strong encryption controls for sensitive data at rest (stored) and secure network encryption controls for data in transit (being transmitted).
Restricting data access to a few authenticated users minimizes the risk of exposure. Do not forget to authenticate users using methods like multi-factor authentication (MFA). Make sure to frequently modify user roles to ensure those actively using the account have permission to access the information rather than the account being easily misused.
To maintain data security in the face of hardware failures, cyberattacks, or any other impacts, regular data backups should be made. It is also wise to create a proper disaster recovery plan. Regularly conducted backups ensure that the data is present when there is a need and also checking if the systems backing up data were set up properly is vital.
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Identifying a secure storage solution that can protect sensitive information is tricky. In this section, we analyze key aspects that will help you make an informed decision.
With regards to picking out a solution, some features are absolutely crucial:
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Around the world, 137 of 194 countries have some type of data protection and privacy legislation. A vital part is safeguarding the organization’s data which is the requirement of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding collection, processing, and storage. Businesses that do not follow the laws stand to lose a maximum of 4% of their revenue.
Similarly, the California Consumer Privacy Act ( CCPA ) gives consumers certain rights relative to their personal information helping foster a free culture in the United States.
At the industry level, some laws become more critical. In the United States, the healthcare industry is mandated to follow The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) which protects the privacy of a patient’s health information.
Gaining compliance is a process that requires an action plan with respect to data governance. Here are some actions you may wish to take to get there:
Clients need to be assured of trust and confidentiality, as well as compliance to a myriad of laws that make securing market research data and any sensitive information crucial.
Access control, regular backups, and encryption are some measures that can prevent security breaches or unauthorized access. Such practices go a long way in complying with data protection standards and also enhance trust and market credibility in advanced business research.
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2025-09-03 16:12:51
Email marketing won’t work if your emails don’t land in the inbox. Use these five proven email deliverability tactics to start seeing more clicks … sometimes in just a few days.
Email is still a powerful marketing tool: more than half of the world’s population uses it. And unlike social media, email doesn’t throttle your reach based on an algorithm update and bury your message under trending posts. When you hit “send,” you’re speaking directly to your people.
But here’s the catch: email has its own set of rules. You build a sender reputation with mailbox providers – Google, Yahoo, or Outlook. With every email you send, that reputation grows or gets tarnished, depending on how you play the game.
It’s in your power to improve email deliverability
The good news? Building trust with mailbox providers is completely in your power. Email deliverability – the number of emails that reach the inbox – doesn’t depend on a mysterious force you can’t control. It’s driven by your behavior as a sender. From the quality of your list to how often you hit send, every choice you make leaves a mark on your email reputation.
Want to land in the inbox and make email work for you? Start with these five good habits to increase your email deliverability.
A high bounce rate is one of the worst stains on your sender reputation. If more than 2% of your emails bounce, mailbox providers take notice – could this be someone spamming random email addresses? You lose trust, so your future emails could end up in the spam folder.
Unfortunately, bounces are easy to rack up. People change their email addresses all the time, and professional contacts are even more likely to bounce. The average email list decays by 28% every year. On top of that, you have subscribers who’ve stopped engaging with your emails.
To keep your bounce rate low and help your emails reach the inbox, scrub those outdated and inactive contacts. An email verification service does it quickly and accurately – and with automation, you can validate your list regularly without much effort.
If you send mass emails every day, you must authenticate them. Major mailbox providers – like Google and Yahoo – now require email authentication to accept your emails.
What is email authentication? It’s a set of protocols – DKIM, SPF, and DMARC – that verify whether an email comes, indeed, from your company and not an impersonator. Adding this extra check helps your messages make it past spam filters.
Once you set it up, email authentication requires little ongoing maintenance. If you’re unsure where to start, your email platform or IT team can help. There’s also no shortage of services that can make authentication easy for you – and protect your email deliverability.
Another way to build or improve your reputation is by warming up your sending IP and domain – especially if you’re just starting out or took a break and resumed emailing. Instead of sending thousands of emails at once, try to increase your volume gradually. This helps you build positive engagement, which means you slowly start earning your place in people’s inboxes.
You can warm up your domain manually by sending emails to small groups of engaged subscribers. If you want more control in ramping up your email volume, you can use an email warmup tool that automates the process.
Keep sending emails regularly. Not only does it keep your IP address and domain warm, it also makes it easy for people to remember you.
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Few things hurt your email deliverability more than getting reported as spam. For mailbox providers, it’s one of the biggest red flags – a clear signal that people don’t want your emails. To maintain trust, keep your spam complaint rate under 0.3% (that’s no more than three reports for every 100 emails you send).
Staying under the 0.3% threshold is easy if you send emails responsibly:
Also, don’t bombard your subscribers with emails – some will mark your message as spam just to stop hearing from you.
Of course, you want engagement for your emails – the more people click through, the higher your conversion rate. But healthy engagement rates also play a role in your email deliverability. Opens, clicks, replies, and forwards are all positive signals. They tell mailbox providers your content is worthy, so your chances of landing in the inbox go up.
To get those clicks, segment your list and send each group hyper-relevant emails. Think behavior-based triggers and personalized emails that speak to what they most care about. And don’t ghost your list. Sending emails regularly helps maintain a strong reputation and enhances brand awareness.
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Bonus email deliverability tips to keep your business in the inbox
Once you’ve nailed the basics – keeping your list healthy, authenticating your emails, warming up your domain, and setting up a sending schedule – here are a few more tips that can give your email deliverability a boost:
They say the money’s in the list. However, your list won’t earn you anything if your emails end up in the spam folder. To set yourself up for success, adopt these habits and continue to send emails people love and engage with.
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The post 5 Email Deliverability Tips to Help You Land More Sales appeared first on StartupNation.
2025-09-03 13:45:36
The next $10,000 grant period from Verizon Small Business Digital Ready awaits around the corner, but the real value of Digital Ready lies in play right here and now.
The program is humming in September with a long list of benefits. Many of Digital Ready’s tools and resources, like online courses, are available immediately, on demand.
Digital Ready virtual events and community networking gatherings, meanwhile, take place on a regular schedule. See this month’s lineup below.
The program is free and easy to join. So, register here to get started.
5 ways to increase your online visibility
Charge what you are worth
Building genuine business relationships
Power in partnership: Winning contract opportunities through strategic business alliances
Website usability review
To register for the program, click this link.
To find an online event, click this link.
To find an online course, click this link.
Small business chat: Communication and Culture, LLC, Hortiki Plants
What can a CRM do for your business?
Using SWOT analysis to find your sweet spot
Profit selling
The negotiator’s edge: Winning across personality types
Founder SWOT
From creating personas to using them
Peer to peer check-in: Two sessions in one day
AI and automations for the win
Small business chat: Beauty Box Philly, Anghelo’s Suit and Tux
Simplifying small business cybersecurity: Easy habits to protect your business
E.L.E.V.A.T.E. from burnout to optimal well-being
To register for the program, click this link.
To find an online event, click this link.
To find an online course, click this link.
Peer to Peer Check-in Series: A dynamic interactive on-going series, designed to help small businesses stay on track and break through roadblocks. Connect with a community of like-minded individuals bi-weekly in either the morning and/or the evening sessions to share your goals, receive guidance and encouragement from your fellow Digital Ready small business peers.
What can you expect to take away from a peer to peer review?
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2025-09-02 13:14:00
Every day, startups chase clicks, likes, and email opens, but face-to-face connection still counts. Offline touchpoints help small businesses stand out where digital noise drowns out most messages.
Real-world interaction boosts loyalty, makes your brand more memorable, and lets you nurture customers in a way digital alone can’t match. Studies show that 57% of consumers still prefer in-store shopping for the tactile experience, while 76% expect personalisation.
In this piece, we’ll walk through six down-to-earth, actionable tips for real-world engagement. These are moves you can put into practice today, no marketing degree required.
Scripts can make team members sound rigid. When you memorize lines, you miss real customer cues.
Research shows structured frameworks work, but forcing a script often feels robotic and stalls natural conversation.
Instead, coach presence. Focus on tone, posture, and curiosity. Have your team practice standing or sitting tall, speaking clearly, and letting their voice reflect authentic interest. Posture, even when talking on the phone, shapes tone. An upright stance opens your voice, makes speech clearer, and boosts energy, even over the line.
Remember that over 70% of communication is nonverbal, so posture and attention matter as much as words.
Try this at your next team meeting:
This “presence drill” helps your team stay real, flexible, and engaging in unscripted moments. That kind of connection builds trust, and trust grows loyalty.
You don’t talk to a stranger the same way you talk to a neighbor. That applies when explaining your company, too.
Avoid using one generic line everywhere. Your pitch should shift depending on where you are, whether you’re at a networking mixer, standing at a conference booth, or sipping coffee in a casual chat.
Here are three one-sentence “brand snapshots” for different scenarios:
Tailoring your message increases connection. One study shows that people form impressions instantly, so adapting your tone and details matters even when time is short.
Contextual personalization builds relevance and trust, which small businesses need more than marketing hype.
So, draft two or three brand snapshots. Then test them in real moments. After that, ask teammates for feedback after a random chat or booth interaction.
With practice, your message stays sharp and natural, wherever you are.
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People forget bullet-point features quickly, but they remember a story with a pulse. Research at Harvard Business School shows that information wrapped in a story sticks longer than cold numbers or stats.
Another study from Stanford found that 63% of people remember stories, while only about 5% recall a standalone statistic.
That’s why it’s smart to train your team to lean into customer success stories. Ask them to share brief tales that show a real win (preferably emotional and relatable), rather than rattling off specs.
Use this simple framework for crafting bite-sized narratives:
Encourage your team to rotate through that format (scene, action, result) until it feels natural. To gather stories, bake “story sourcing” into weekly routines: ask teammates to note one small win or customer reaction and share it at the next huddle.
These stories let your brand feel human and grounded. Customers remember how you made them feel, not how many features you listed.
Most high-impact conversations aren’t planned. They happen in quick interactions, such as in the hallway, during a cup of coffee, at a networking break, or even when someone just answers the phone.
These micro-moments can feel small, but they shape how people remember your brand.
Start by picking two or three consistent talking points your team can drop naturally. For example:
Then, train them to answer the phone professionally using a simple, consistent greeting. For example: “Hello. [Company Name]. This is [Name].” said warmly and within three rings. That sets the tone right away.
Run quick role plays during team huddles. Someone pretends to interrupt mid-task – a hallway drop-by or unexpected call. The team responds using one of the set talking points, then debriefs: Did it feel natural? Was it clear? Did they trust your message?
These micro-moment drills build readiness, not scripts. They boost responsiveness without sounding rehearsed. When your team handles unplanned touches confidently, your business feels consistent, human, and professional.
Emotion and clarity in brief moments help create loyalty worth more than any polished slideshow.
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When you connect with someone in person (at events, markets, or meetups), it counts only if you follow through. A surprising number of small businesses let these opportunities slip.
In fact, 27% of SMBs never reach out again after an initial visit or interaction, even though 81% of customers are open to hearing from them afterward. That missed follow-up often costs trust and future sales.
Your goal is to make follow-up feel personal, not automatic. Skip the generic “just touching base.” Instead, reference something specific, like a challenge they shared or a goal they mentioned. When you mirror their own words, it shows you listened. For example: “You mentioned that building a repeatable outreach process is your top concern. Here’s a quick resource that’s helped others tackle that.”
Aim to send your note within 24 hours of meeting. That quick response keeps the momentum and shows you value the connection.
Here’s how to make it feel human:
Try this: after an event, spend 10 minutes drafting one follow-up using their own words. Send it within the next day and track the replies you get.
When your follow-up comes across as thoughtful and timely, people feel valued. That lays a foundation for real relationships, not just contact lists.
Your real-world efforts matter only if you measure them. That starts with the right metrics: count leads generated, deals closed, and repeat engagements. Simple tracking gives you clarity and fuel for more smart investment in offline initiatives.
Here are our recommendations:
When you capture outcomes from offline interactions in your CRM, you build evidence. You’ll know, for example, that a local pop-up led to three solid leads, one closed deal, and two repeat visits.
That data shows real ROI, not guesses. When numbers are clear, you can double down on successful tactics instead of guessing what to cut.
After each offline event, log basic data into your CRM – new contacts, follow-ups, and conversions. Over time, this creates a reliable picture of how offline actions turn into results.
With consistent tracking, your offline efforts stop being “nice to have” and become strategic tools for growth.
Offline nurture isn’t “extra” but an accelerant for every other marketing effort you run. One of the biggest pros of offline marketing is face-to-face interaction, and that human connection amplifies your digital campaigns, referral programs, and content marketing.
When someone meets you in person before seeing your social media ads, those ads hit differently. When they hear your voice before reading your emails, your messages carry more weight.
If your startup neglects offline impressions, you’re leaving trust and revenue on the table. Your competitors might have bigger budgets for Facebook ads, but they probably won’t invest the time to show up, shake hands, and have real conversations.
This week, take a hard look at every offline touchpoint your startup has – events, phone calls, walk-ins, casual chats. Then, run a short team training session to tighten skills in presence, personalization, and follow-up. Small changes in real-world interactions compound fast, and the return goes beyond any single campaign.
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The post Offline Nurture: 6 Tips to Boost Real-World Customer Engagement appeared first on StartupNation.
2025-08-31 17:15:00
The typical notion of marketing assumes a simple path. A consumer feels a need, searches for a solution, immediately finds and clicks your ad, and converts. But that’s only the tip of the funnel. The visible part. What actually drives acquisition happens long before that click ever occurs.
Before anyone lands on your site, they’ve been silently researching, comparing, asking around, and forming opinions. They’re reading forums, scanning reviews, lurking in comment sections, and watching how your brand (and your competitors) show up when no one’s actively selling.
This is the hidden part of the iceberg funnel, and optimizing for it can help you earn trust earlier and position your brand as the natural choice when users are finally ready to act.
Let’s see how the iceberg concept works and how you can maximize it.
The iceberg funnel is a marketing and sales metaphor used to describe how only a small portion of user actions and surface metrics are visible, while the majority of their behavior before taking those actions remains hidden behind the scenes.
For instance, Skyle, a 22-year-old college student, is in huge credit card debt.
Late at night, she’s scrolling Reddit threads on student finance, reading anonymous stories, surfing Quora for advice, and watching YouTube videos about “how she can bypass, reduce, or scale her debt.”
This is where acquisition begins.
And she expects you to show up.
Stanislav Khilobochenko, VP of Customer Services at Clario, says, “Unsurprisingly, most marketers take a back seat here. Some set a lead trap—where you simply wait for a lead to click before going full thrust into the conversion process. You don’t care about what she has done before so long as she ends up in your funnel.”
“The disadvantage of this is that you’re not the only one setting up these so-called lead traps. It’s a competition of who has the most ad budget and can achieve the greatest reach. In the end, out of a hundred leads, you might end up with only two or less than a dozen, or maybe nothing,” Stanislav adds.
Smart brands, on the other hand, win Skyle’s trust even before she’s ready, or while the funnel is still submerged.
This continues until she’s ready to make a decision. And by then, she’s likely to lean towards the name that helped even when she wasn’t looking to “pay.”
Victor Iryniuk, Communication Manager for NetHunt CRM, answers Quora questions
AI + Data + CRM = more sales and happier customers.
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In the iceberg concept, only 10-20% of your funnel is visible. The remaining 80-90% is hidden and often untapped. Let’s divide the hidden funnel into four sections to understand better:
This is where people realize they have a problem, start researching the severity of the issue, and seek out others who face similar challenges. They ask their friends and family and go to social media platforms to discuss their needs. These actions subtly remain at the base level of your iceberg funnel.
Here, they start looking for solutions through peer recommendations and engaging in community discussions. At some point, they may come across your brand multiple times, perhaps on search engines, social media, or through a reference by ChatGPT, and this gradually shapes their perception.
Your potential customers sift through reviews, YouTube videos, external blog posts mentioning your brand, online forums, product comparisons, and testimonials. These touchpoints are outside your tracking capacity, and that makes it difficult to leverage them effectively.
After multiple untracked exposures and subtle trust-building moments, they are finally ready to engage. They’ve formed a mental list of suitable solutions, containing you and a few other competitors if you’re lucky. Their final decision to click or not hinges on several factors, but the vital one involves the relationship they’ve formed with your brand. If none, you’re likely out.
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Just as we explained before, most of the decision-making process for every user is subconscious. Your ideal customer is going silo with their research and desperately looking for solutions. They end up exploring several options along the way, and their decision-making process becomes even more complicated.
When you step in at this moment, you become their knight in shiny armor. Even before they reach the buying stage of a typical marketing funnel, your brand floats at the top of their mind, and they’ve made a decision already. When the need arises, they find it easier to choose you over competitors.
At a glance, if you take advantage of the whole funnel, you’ll be able to:
And if you don’t, you’ll have to:
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Most marketers and sales teams optimize their funnel post-click. What you’re doing is the reverse. You start right from the submerged part of the funnel—the moment your audience has a problem, and even before they start looking for solutions or click.
Chasing high-volume keywords without context is a losing game. Instead, find the why behind each query. Are they confused, just browsing, or ready to take action? To do that, you need to start with exploring first, not SEO tools.
Hang out on Reddit, Quora, niche Facebook groups, Twitter threads, and forums where your target audience congregates. Look for how people talk about their problems. Pay attention to emotion, confusion, and phrasing. Those are signals for intent. Tailor your content and keywords to address them.
You should also conduct competitor analysis to identify ways in which other sites are targeting customers and what search engines are deeming to be most applicable to the search intent of each query. Then, modify your content front with your research insights.
According to a study conducted by GWI, the number of internet users participating in online communities increased from 72% to 76% between 2017 and 2019. The figure has surely grown higher, indicating that people are more comfortable sharing personal things online and forming authentic connections.
This also means your potential customers will be there to share problems, complain about a product or service, request help, and so on. When you show up with relevant answers at this stage, your acquisition process is half done.
To do that, find public and private online groups your audience is more likely to be on and join. For instance, early-stage SaaS founders may be active in communities such as Indie Hackers, the SaaS Growth Hacks Facebook group, or niche Slack channels like Traffic Think Tank or RevGenius.
Network, answer questions, provide solutions, and offer valuable guidance to establish yourself as an authority. No need to pitch at this stage, at least until you’re seen as a reliable source. By the side, your profile should talk about your product or brand—that’s enough cue for them to know what you do.
Over time, you can gradually blend each guide with a pitch.
Just like groups, forums are a ground to mine user behavior, position your brand as a guide, and be as useful as possible to your audience. The most important is user behavior and intent. With typical audience research, you’ll only scratch the surface, getting demographics, roles, or interests.
But in forums, you see what they actually say, what they struggle with, how they ask for help, and what solutions they trust. You can use this insight to optimize your campaigns and content, while also contributing to these forums to ensure our brand stays at the top of their minds.
Popular examples of forums to leverage include Reddit threads, Quora, and Stack Overflow, which are particularly useful for developers.
Review sites are also magic. They often contain users’ unfiltered concerns and worries. So, look up your competitors on review platforms like G2, Capterra, or industry-specific review sites and see what perplexes their audiences.
The iceberg funnel is not synonymous with the typical marketing funnel, but they work hand in hand. Top of the funnel (TOFU) and Middle of the funnel (MOFU) address the submerged part of your iceberg funnel, whereas Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) focuses on the visible aspect.
You should ensure to build content for each stage, especially for the TOFU stage. TOFU educates and informs, which is perfect for guiding your audience when they need instructional and suggestive guidance.
To maximize content visibility, share excerpts of these posts on your forums, groups, online communities, and social feeds.
A few years ago, Google and Bing were the go-to options for finding answers. However, that has changed since the emergence of ChatGPT. As of Q1 in 2025, ChatGPT had over 367 million users and more than 5.2 billion monthly visits. A significant portion of these visits involves queries about why, how, when, and where.
The best part is that some of these generative tools now have direct internet access. So, when users ask questions like, “What is the most suitable B2B software to use?”, it comes with a real-time list of suitable brands or solutions. And this is part of the hidden iceberg funnel, the untracked touchpoints.
Now imagine being able to slot your brand into that list and appear whenever a user is looking for answers or solutions.
Not just for tool recommendations. ChatGPT now provides references to source websites when asked a question. Users can click these references to visit the website and confirm more details directly. So, if your website ends up becoming a reference, that’s traffic and leads for you.
The process of positioning your brand for these AI tools is called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). To do it:
Lastly, monitor how your content appears in AI-generated answers and update it regularly to stay relevant and visible.
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90% of acquisitions occur before consumers click. They’ve made up their mind on which brand to purchase from. That means brands focusing on post-click before turning their conversion wheel risk missing out. If you take advantage of the hidden funnel, you end up becoming your potential customers’ first go-to.
To do that, map real search intent, not just keywords. Embed your brand in communities, network, interact, and provide helpful solutions. Position yourself as a guide, not a pitch, on forums like Quora and Reddit.
Leverage review sites to see what consumers think about your competitors. The insights will help you tailor your campaign to target leads in the submerged funnel. Build content for every stage of your marketing, especially TOFU. Lastly, utilize GEO to capture a share of GenAI traffic and leads.
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