The Messy Middle

Consider this: 95% of your marketing "leads" will never buy from you.

Not because you failed.

Because they were never shopping—they were learning. Or killing time. Or avoiding their boss. Or playing a complex game of "what if I had money."

Google calls it the "Messy Middle," that chaotic space between awareness and purchase where people loop endlessly between exploring and evaluating.

We built funnels expecting water to flow downhill.

But consciousness doesn't obey gravity.

The paradox?

Companies desperately optimizing for the 5% who buy while ignoring the 95% who browse.

Like a store that only values customers at the register, forgetting that browsers tell their friends, shape the culture, create the context where buying happens.

What if the 95% aren't waste…

but ecosystem?

What if they're the studio audience that makes the show worth watching?

Marketing's greatest delusion is believing we guide the journey.

We're tour guides in a museum where everyone brought their own map, speaks different languages, and half of them are just here for the air conditioning.

In reality, we're just building spaces where journeys happen.

The question isn't how to convert browsers into buyers.

It's how to make browsing valuable enough that buying becomes inevitable.