Behind-the-scenes of my million-dollar marketing funnel

Hey ,

Ok, so unlike most founders, I love marketing. It didn’t exactly start that way though.

I had to release 2 failed products to truly respect marketing. I then worked my way to actually understanding the art.

Today, I want to uncover my approach and lay out the science behind it.

I will break this into 2 parts:
1. Channels → The place to make an audience a visitor.
2. Destinations → The place where a visitor becomes a user.

Before I start, here’s my Channel/Destination (C/D) framework in a flowchart:

Let me explain.

Destination

I want to start with the “Destination” first. 

Knowing where you want to send your audience helps you craft your channel strategy well.

I have 2 destinations:

1. Personal website
This is karthiksridharan.com.

My target audience for Flexiple is mainly startup founders (& also those who work in them).

I love sharing my experiences & lessons in building my startups. That is what I document on this website.

My goal here is to make the ultimate library for startups with genuinely actionable lessons.

A conversion here is someone signing up for my newsletter (the one you are reading now).

NOTE: This is an intermediate step before I (very subtly) pitch my company.

2. Company website
This is flexiple.com.

Of course, the website talks to those hiring managers.

There are two conversions on the website:
→ Mini-conversion: Downloading e-books
→ Conversion: Signing up to Flexiple

Channel

I broadly categorize my channels into 3 types:
1. Common channels
2. Dedicated channels
3. D2D channels

Let me explain:

1. Common channels
These are channels that drive visits to both my personal and company website. I’ve two such channels.

a. Social
I basically write religiously on Twitter (X) and LinkedIn.

There is some structure to how I write content here, but that’s for a future piece.

But, broadly all my content is targeted at startup enthusiasts in 2 forms: Education and Entertainment.

On most pieces of content, I’m just trying to give value.

Sometimes, I will plug-in the destination. Which destination I link depends on the type of content.

b. Launches
Honestly, it isn’t correct to consider “launches” as a channel.

You are basically “launching” on other channels like social media, Product hunt, etc.

But, thinking of it as a channel ensures that I leverage it regularly vs. sporadically.

The problem is that most think of a launch as a 1-time activity for a product. That’s not smart.

You don’t just launch your product. You launch anything you make worth celebrating.

This could be a small report, newsletters, side projects, and more. Each launch gives you spurts of users.

Again, I do launches for both my personal website and company website.

2. Dedicated channels
These specifically drive visits to convert leads on our company website.

I don’t invest energy in researching specific channels that just give me newsletter subscribers.

I’ve two such channels:

a. SEO
We love SEO and have worked hard to get good at it.

Flexiple gets hundreds of thousands of visitors each month through SEO.

This includes a mix of programmatic SEO and writing specific blogs to reach our target audience.

b. Social ads
This is a very new channel for me. I think organic marketing first.

But, I would also like to leverage the brand I’ve built on social channels.

This is my attempt to do so.

3. D2D channels
Now, these are channels to generate conversions from those who have already converted at some level.

There are 2 such channels:

a. Newsletter
This is the one you are reading right now. It is because you already subscribed to my newsletter on my personal website.

Here, I only subtly share what I am building. My goal is to keep helping you with my experiences.

The bet is that one day you will find Flexiple useful & become my customer.

If not, you’ll tell others about Flexiple.

b. Email marketing
This includes leads who signed up for e-books on the company website.

With such leads, my goal is to build credibility around our hiring expertise.

I do that by sharing 1 tip about hiring engineers each week.

The goal is that whenever they are interested in hiring an engineer, they choose Flexiple.

Overall

To summarize, I have two destinations: my personal website and my company website.

1. Personal website:
→ Visits from Social, Launches
→Conversion as a newsletter subscriber

2. Company website:
→ Visits from channels: SEO, Social, Launches
→ Visits from destinations: Newsletter, Email marketing
→ Mini-conversion by downloading ebooks
→ Conversion as signing up

This is how the destinations and the channels overlay on each other to give great results for Flexiple.

Do learn from this and form your own marketing map :)

Best,
Karthik
Co-founder, Flexiple