The math was simple.
I'd approach 100 people on the street. 70 walked past. 20 stopped. 12 came to the entrance. 6 went inside.
I did this for 200+ nights. At the time, I thought I was just doing a job. Years later I learned this was a textbook marketing funnel.
The Numbers I Tracked Without Knowing Why
After about a month, I started keeping mental stats.
Awareness (walking past): 100%
Interest (stopped to listen): 20%
Consideration (walked to the entrance): 12%
Conversion (went inside): 6%
When my conversion rate dropped from 6% to 3% over two weeks, I knew something was wrong — I just couldn't name what.
I changed my opening line. Tested two versions over a week. One performed 2x better. I didn't know I was doing A/B testing.
What Broke the Funnel
The gap that hurt most wasn't the 70 who walked past. It was the 12 who came to the entrance but didn't go inside.
These people had stopped, listened, walked with me. They were interested. And then they left.
What killed them: uncertainty. They didn't know what was waiting on the other side of the door.
The fix was simple: I started describing what they'd see before they saw it.
"Third floor, 8 rooms, mix of groups and couples, pretty lively right now."
Consideration-to-conversion went from 50% to 70%.
Why Most Small Business Marketing Fails Here
Most businesses optimize for awareness. They post on Instagram, run ads, get seen.
But the biggest leak in their funnel isn't awareness. It's the gap between interest and conversion — people who checked their profile, clicked the website, looked at the menu — and left.
The question isn't "how do I get more people to see me?" It's "what happens to the people who already found me?"
How Growl Addresses This
When I built Growl, I built it around the funnel gap.
The 3 weekly actions aren't random. They're designed for where you actually are:
- No regulars yet? Awareness actions (Instagram content to attract new people)
- People coming once but not returning? Retention actions (Google review replies, LINE follow-up)
- Regulars but no word-of-mouth? Loyalty actions (UGC prompts, referral nudges)
Same tool. Different outputs based on where your funnel is leaking.
Free to try — no signup: growl-app.vercel.app
Built solo, Kanagawa, Japan. Day 366.
Top comments (0)