Meet Joy. She is an accountant. And before you click away (stick with me), she’s not the kind who wears beige and talks about depreciation at dinner parties.
She’s sharp, a little sarcastic, genuinely obsessed with helping her clients stop bleeding money they don’t even know they’re losing. She’s built a solid business. She knows her stuff. But her marketing? A disaster – YIKES.
Not because she’s bad at it. But because no one ever told her that marketing isn’t a list of tasks, oh no, it’s actually a system. And right now, Joy’s system has some serious holes in it.
Here’s the thing: Joy’s business has a customer journey whether she realises it or not. Every single person who finds her, whether they stumble across her LinkedIn post at 11pm or get referred by a friend, takes a path. From “huh, this is interesting” to “okay, I need her in my life.” And that path either works for Joy, or it works against her.
Most businesses are unknowingly making it work against them.
The traditional marketing funnel (that classic upside-down triangle) tells you to get attention, nurture, convert. And then… nothing. Customer acquired, job done, start again from scratch tomorrow.
But the businesses quietly printing money (cha-ching, baby)? They’re not starting from scratch. They’ve got three customer journey types running at the same time, feeding each other, building momentum. And that’s exactly what we’re going to break down today.
THE TRADITIONAL FUNNEL (and the problem)
Let’s talk about where most businesses are putting their energy and why it’s keeping them stuck on a hamster wheel.
The traditional marketing funnel has one job: get strangers to buy. You cast a wide net at the top with ads, social content, SEO, referrals and you try to funnel people down toward a purchase. The path is: awareness to consideration to conversion. Seems simple enough.
The problem isn’t the sales funnel. The problem is what happens after the purchase: absolutely nothing.
The traditional model treats a sale like a finish line. Customer acquired, invoice paid, back to the top you go. More content, more ads, more dancing for the algorithm, more budget handed over to Zuckerberg and all this just to replace the customers you already worked hard to win.
Joy knows this feeling intimately. She’s been creating LinkedIn content consistently for eight months. Some posts land, some don’t. She gets a few new enquiries here and there. But every single month feels like starting from scratch and sadly it kind of is.
And here’s what stings: the effort it takes to get a brand new person to trust you enough to hand over their money? It’s significantly more expensive than keeping someone who already loves you coming back.
The businesses that are genuinely growing (and not just looking busy) have figured out that the sales funnel isn’t a straight line ending at checkout. It’s a loop. And when you build it right, every new customer you bring in makes the whole system stronger.
That’s what the Growth Lever System is built on. Three customer journey types, working together, creating momentum that compounds over time.
Let’s get into it.
The 3 customer journey types and how they work together to make your business profitable
LEAD GENERATION — Customer Journey #1
Every business needs new people to discover them. That part isn’t revolutionary advice. But here’s where most business owners go wrong: they treat attention like the goal, when really, attention is just the beginning.
Getting someone to watch your Reel, read your LinkedIn post, or land on your website is great. But if they leave without giving you a way to stay in touch? That’s it. They’re gone. And the algorithm certainly isn’t going to make sure they find you again.
The real goal of lead generation isn’t views or followers. It’s permission. Permission to keep the conversation going through a DM, a phone number, or better yet, an email address.
Joy learned this the hard way. Eight months of LinkedIn content, a growing audience of people who genuinely liked her work and almost no way to reach them directly. When she launched a new service, she was essentially shouting into the void and hoping the right people happened to be scrolling that day.
Smart lead generation builds a bridge between “I found you” and “I want to hear more from you.” It’s clear on who it’s talking to, what problem it solves, and what someone should do next. It turns strangers into warm leads you can actually nurture and you can do it on your terms, not the algorithm’s.
When this lead generation funnel is broken, you’ll feel it. Your content gets engagement but not enquiries. People visit your website and disappear. You attract interest from people who aren’t quite right. Your audience grows slowly, inconsistently, or not at all.
But when it works (yeahhh, baby!)? You stop feeling like you’re starting from zero every month.
SALES — Customer Journey #2
Getting someone’s attention is one thing. Getting them to actually open their wallet is a whole different conversation.
This is where a lot of businesses quietly lose sales they should have won. Not because their offer isn’t good enough (it almost always is) but because the path to buying is confusing, clunky, or just… missing.
Think about it from your customer’s perspective. They’ve found you, they like you, they’re interested. And then they hit friction. The checkout process is a maze. It’s not clear what they’re actually getting. There’s no follow up after they enquire. The price is buried three clicks deep. So they close the tab, tell themselves they’ll come back later, and never do.
Joy had this exact problem. People would reach out, she’d have a great initial conversation, and then… silence. She’d follow up once, maybe twice, then feel weird about it and let it go. What she didn’t realise was that the gap wasn’t about interest, it was actually about trust. Her potential clients needed a little more reassurance, a clearer picture of what working with her looked like, and someone to make the “yes” feel like an obvious decision rather than a leap of faith.
That’s what a strong sales funnel does. It removes friction, builds the final layer of trust, answers the unspoken questions, and makes buying feel easy. Not pushy but easy. There’s a difference.
When this conversion funnel is broken you’ll know it too. Leads go cold after initial interest. People buy through long DM threads because your process isn’t clear. Great conversations don’t convert. You feel like you’re constantly chasing.
And when it works, your sales funnel stages start to feel less like convincing and more like a natural next step.
RETENTION — Customer Journey #3
Okay, this is the part where I need you to actually pay attention, because this is where the real money is, and the part that almost no one is doing well.
Customer retention isn’t a nice-to-have. It isn’t the “when I have more time” part of your marketing strategy. It’s the difference between a business that’s constantly exhausted from chasing new clients, and one that has a warm, loyal base of people who come back, spend more, and bring their friends.
Here’s the number that should make you sit up straight: according to Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer costs anywhere from 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one. Five to twenty-five times. And yet most businesses (including Joy’s, until recently) put 90% of their marketing energy into finding new clients, while their existing ones quietly drift away between tax seasons.
Joy wasn’t doing anything wrong. She was doing exactly what most accountants do, which is nail the work, send the final documents, and wait for clients to book again next year. No proactive check-ins. No “hey, here’s what you should be thinking about before EOFY.” No conversation about the other ways she could help them grow. Just good work, delivered in silence, and a hope they’d remember her name twelve months later.
She wasn’t being neglectful. She just didn’t have a system for what came after.
That’s what customer retention is: a system for the after. The welcome experience when someone first becomes a client. The touchpoints that make them feel like they made the right decision. The moments that remind them you exist, that you care, and that there’s more you can help them with.
When this customer retention journey is broken, clients disappear after one purchase. Referrals are rare and random. You have no idea why some people come back and others don’t. Growth feels like constantly filling a leaky bucket.
And when it works, then your existing clients become your best marketing. Every customer you’ve ever served starts working for you, through referrals, repeat purchases, and reviews that do the selling before you even open your mouth.
That’s when things get really interesting. Which brings us to what happens when all three journeys start working together.
The Flywheel (Aka Growth Lever System)
Here’s what makes this different from the traditional marketing funnel: these three customer journey types don’t just run alongside each other. They actually feed each other.
Every lead you generate becomes a potential sale. Every sale becomes a customer retention opportunity. Every retained client refers new leads, leaves reviews that warm up cold audiences, and buys from you again with a fraction of the effort it took to win them the first time. That’s the flywheel. And once it’s moving, it builds momentum on its own.
Joy’s not starting from scratch every month anymore. Her lead generation funnel is growing a list of warm prospects she can actually reach. Her sales funnel makes the “yes” feel easy. And her customer retention system means the clients she worked so hard to win? They’re staying, spending more, and sending their friends.
That’s what a profitable marketing strategy looks like. Not more content, not a bigger ad budget, but three connected customer journeys working together so that every bit of effort you put in compounds over time.
So where do you start? That’s the question I get asked most. And the honest answer is: it depends on where your biggest leak is right now.
But I can tell you from 14 years of marketing experience, most businesses need to start with a better lead generation strategy so they can bring in better-fit, more qualified leads at volume. And I made you a custom-gpt just for THAT.
LEADE is a free AI-powered lead generation strategist who helps you build hype, build your email list, and nurture your audience closer to a sale even when you’re not “on”… all in just 10-minute!
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