Aarif Meghani

The marketing funnel is the most misleading model in business. To be fair to it, it’s useful. As British statistician George Box said, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” I think about this statement a lot. The funnel is wrong in one specific way, and that one assumption decides how most coaches, consultants and agency owners spend their time. The standard marketing funnel assumes gravity. You pour attention in the top, it trickles down, and a few people drop out of the bottom as clients. If you believe that, the logical move is to pour in more. More content and more ads. Challenge that one assumption and you spend your time and resources differently. Gravity is NOT a factor in hiring you. Nobody’s money FALLS into your wallet. It’s more like this: People climb towards hiring you, one small yes at a time. And every yes is a choice they could just as easily skip. 1. Content earns the first yes. They read it, watch it, react to it. 2. A reply earns the next. They comment or send a DM. 3. Then they follow you. 4. A lead magnet earns a bigger yes. They swap an email for something worth having. 5. The booking is the biggest yet. This is where most people stop asking for the yes. A coach books a discovery call for Thursday and sends nothing until Thursday. A consultant has a scoping call next week, and the prospect gets no reason to think about it before then. An agency owner has a pitch in the diary, and the client hears nothing until the deck lands. In each case, the person who said yes on Monday is a stranger again by the time of the call. Some of them don’t turn up. After the call it’s the same. “Let me think about it” or “send me a proposal” gets one follow-up, maybe, then silence. A resource that answers the doubt they raised would earn another yes. Most people never send one. So the work ends up relying on gravity again: pour more into the top of the funnel. The better move is to spend that effort making each next step easy to say yes to. The climb to yes is a model too, so it’s wrong somewhere. It’s useful because it points at the gaps where people drop off. Count the yeses between someone finding you and paying you. Which one are you leaving to gravity?

Here’s a video of the exact Instagram DM funnel we set up for clients to turn a single IG Story tag into Digital Word-of-Mouth Marketing. - Reach to warm audiences for 24 hours. - Review requests sent automatically. - VIP list invitation signups, too. Let's walk through it. 1/8

Great article about UGC by Forbes. BUT it had one MASSIVE blind-spot. This thread breaks it down. What Forbes got wrong about UGC: 1/10 (I’ll link the article at the end)

10 Reasons why UGC won’t work for you. (and how to fix each one) UGC is User Generated Content. It’s when your customers post about you online — esp. good for local businesses, like restaurants or cafes. Like word-of-mouth, but digital. But here’s why it won’t work for you 👇 1/9

Hot Take: Ads and influencers aren't the only options for marketing your business. For local businesses like restaurants, they can be a waste of money. The truth? Your customers are better marketers than both. Here’s the proof 👇 WARNING: There is maths in this thread. 1/10

Wild AI fact: A tiny Caribbean island now makes 25% of its national revenue from just two letters: “.ai” Back in the 1980s, Anguilla was handed the domain extension “.ai.” Nobody cared. Fast forward to 2025: AI is everywhere. And Anguilla is sitting on a goldmine. • “You.ai” recently sold for $700,000. • Domain registrations jumped from 50,000 in 2020 to over 850,000 today. • In 2024, domain sales brought Anguilla $39M — nearly a quarter of its revenue, second only to tourism. All from two tiny letters. Here’s the lesson: It’s not always the big campaigns or budgets that change the game. Sometimes it’s the small digital assets you already have. ➡️ For Anguilla, it was “.ai.” ➡️ For you, it might be leveraging your skills online. ➡️ For physical businesses (like restaurants), it could be a single IG Story tag from a customer... ...that with the right automation system (humble self-promo: like my UGC system for IG Stories), becomes a repeatable source of reach, reviews, and long-term revenue with a private VIP list. Sometimes the smallest things create the biggest leverage.

Most businesses are sitting on a goldmine they never use: Their customers’ birthdays 🎁 The great thing about birthdays: EVERYONE has one 🎁 Most people celebrate. Celebrating means spending money. Let them spend it with you. Here's how. 1/9

Consent isn’t just for relationships. It’s for marketing, too. Consent builds trust. Digital marketing has destroyed it. Here’s why, and how to fix it 🧵 1/9

The restaurant owner’s phone rang. Again. Third time in 10 minutes. We were sitting at a table in the back of his restaurant, talking about how automation could help him. He asked. But he couldn’t hear the answer. 1/10

Influencer marketing is a gamble. This San Francisco restaurant lost. Here’s a wild story from last week — and a smarter way to do digital word-of-mouth👇 1/10

Most restaurants spend $1,000/month on content creation… While 50+ customers take food pics for free — every single day. But almost none of that content helps the restaurant. Here’s why — and how to turn it into a powerful marketing system. 🧵 1/10

Meta just paid out billions of dollars. For stealing YOUR data. But smart businesses can get data for free — just by asking nicely. Let’s break down what they did wrong. And how small businesses can do it better. By using zero-party data. 1/11

Automation is like a domino chain. The power isn’t in the first tile — it’s in how it’s set up to trigger the next five. It's how I designed my restaurant UGC automation system — to use one action to trigger multiple results. 1/9 🧵

Swag. One word. One billboard. Zero ad spend. Justin Bieber just gave a masterclass in user-generated content marketing. Let’s break it down — and what your business can steal from it 🧵 1/10

Most business owners treat their social media strategy like a slot machine in Vegas. Pull the lever. Post the content. Pray for a jackpot of reach. The problem isn’t your content. You’re playing the same game everyone plays. So here’s a new strategy for you. 1/9

We all learn different lessons. We all have much to share. But the number one lesson out there. Is showing that you care 🎶🎵🎼

This was the tweet that changed everything for me. By Alex Hormozi == Only two people can let strangers know about the stuff you sell: 1) You 2) Other people There are more of them than you. == teapawt.net/AlexHormozi/status/157… Here’s why: 1/x 🧵👇

Most restaurants rely on ads or daily posting. But this 3-step system is FREE, and it: - grows your social media audience - gets you more Google reviews - builds you a private VIP list Let me show you how 👇 (1/12)

What’s the moment your business idea clicked for you? I’ll go first. For me, it happened in a restaurant. Right before I took the first bite of a pizza. A short story about indecision, clarity — and a marketing system born from mozzarella. 🧵 1/9