What Is Circular Marketing? A Smarter Alternative to Funnels
If your audience still moves neatly from awareness to purchase, congratulations – you’re selling to 2005.
The traditional marketing funnel assumes predictable, linear motion: generate leads, nurture them, convert, repeat. But today’s audiences don’t walk. They loop, spiral, skip steps, revisit, and most dangerously, they disappear without a reson.
That’s not a failure of your execution. It’s a failure of the model.
Enter: Circular Marketing: a model built for the modern reality, not abstract theory.
What Is Circular Marketing?
Circular Marketing is a trust-driven model that reflects how people actually make decisions in the real world — unpredictably, non-linearly, and with far more autonomy than most funnel diagrams account for.
Rather than forcing audiences through rigid stages, Circular Marketing creates a continuous cycle of engagement, powered by three interlocking pillars:
- Performance Marketing – Data-driven acquisition that respects the audience’s intelligence.
2. Content Marketing – Substance over spin, building trust long before the sale.
3. Event Marketing – Real-world connection that transforms attention into affiliation.
The result goes further than just more conversions. It creates more commitment.
Why the Funnel Model No Longer Works?
The funnel is a relic of a time when brands controlled the conversation. Today:
• Buyers do their own research.
• Loyalty is fluid.
• The “awareness → interest → decision” journey has morphed into a chaotic, back-and-forth dance.
Trying to control this chaos with a funnel is like trying to sketch a whirlwind using a ruler.
Circular Marketing accepts complexity. It doesn’t try to simplify it, it organises it.
The Core Philosophy:
Trust Over Transaction
In Circular Marketing, the primary goal is not the sale. It’s trust. Why?
Because trust is what makes people stay, not just buy. And staying is far more valuable than converting.
You don’t need to extract value from people. You need to become valuable to them — consistently, across every touchpoint.
How Circular Marketing Works in Practice
Let’s say you host a branded event. A speaker shares insights that get quoted on LinkedIn. Someone who wasn’t there clicks through to your blog. They read a content piece that leads them to your newsletter. Two months later, they see a retargeting ad and finally download your report.
Is that a conversion?
It’s a cycle. And you didn’t chase it. You architected it.
This is the power of Circular Marketing, it creates a self-sustaining system of trust-led engagement where entry points are infinite and exit points are rare.
Key Benefits of Circular Marketing
Scalable Trust: Content and events build long-term familiarity without requiring constant ad spend.
Flexible Entry: Audiences can join your brand narrative at any point, not just at the top of a funnel.
Lower Churn: Nurtured trust makes you harder to replace when competitors come calling.
Efficient Growth: When your content ecosystem does the heavy lifting, sales becomes a conversation, not a pitch.
Who Is Circular Marketing for?
• B2B/B2C brands with complex sales cycles.
• Startups tired of leaky funnels and “growth hacks”.
• CMOs seeking clarity across fragmented marketing efforts.
• NGOs or public organisations trying to make lasting impact on broad audiences
• Founders who value reputation and sustainable growth over vanity metrics.
In short: it’s for anyone building something meant to last.
Final Thought: Circularity is a Mindset.
Circular Marketing isn’t about tactics. It’s about respecting the modern audience, their intelligence, their unpredictability, their power and freedom of choice.
It’s not “awareness, interest, decision.” It’s: engage, earn trust, stay valuable.
Ready to stop forcing your audience down a path they didn’t choose?
Iskren Lilov
iskren@lilov.com
Marketing and communications expert specialising in strategic consultancy and sustainable brand building. Author of the Circular Marketing Model™ that offers a paradigm shift for marketers in the age of AI, replacing the classic understanding of the funnel with a sustainable circular model.
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