Chapter 3: The Basics of Fan Funneling

Well you’ve made it to Chapter 3.

Which means you survived the initial impulse to immediately fall off the wagon and quit.

Acknowledging (and politely ignoring) that very impulse is truly the most defining characteristic of someone who achieves their goals and someone who spends their life asking “what if?”

So congratulations and remain vigilant, for that impulse shall rear its ugly head again soon…

…….

…. BUT UNTIL THEN, we soldier on.

At this point you should’ve completed your Artist Compass (if you didn’t, please do so here). The Artist Compass is going to be crucial to building your funnel in the coming weeks, but today we’re going to start with a broad overview of how fan funneling actually works.

You probably hear the word “funnel” a lot… probably from coked-up hustle bros who are trying to sell you a business course.

But I am NOT that. I NEVER did coke.

Anyways, you’re probably wondering WHAT IS a funnel? So let’s open up our Michael Gilbride Dictionary of Unquestioned Truth that we all received last week and take a look!

Funnel (fuhn-uhl): A marketing term for a strategy that takes new audiences and warms them up to your offer, eventually resulting in them taking a desired action or making a purchase.

How enlightening.

If you notice, a “funnel” is a super vague term with lots of room for interpretation (which we’ll start working on in just a minute), but there is one important component that we need to understand first.

The reason it’s called a funnel is because the shape is incredibly important.

A funnel starts off wide at the top and gets narrower as it gets closer to the bottom. Sounds simple, but the implications are incredibly important.

Only a small percentage of your total audience will actually reach the bottom of your funnel…. but these are the people we need to build our entire marketing strategy around.

Most artists are obsessed with making the top of their funnel as wide as humanly possible… and never actually learn what to do with the audience once they have their attention.

This isn’t a funnel… it’s just a dancing monkey routine. It’s cool, but it’s not an actual business.

So with this in mind, hop into my safari jeep and let’s go for a ride through the dry, deeply depressing world of music funneling.

First stop, the top-of-the-funnel.