The Propaganda
Funnel.
A 4-phase system for compounding B2B SaaS growth — grounded in behavioral science, refined across $9.7M+ in client revenue.
Most growth frameworks are charts agencies put in pitch decks. The Propaganda Funnel is the operating system we run for every client — Whop, Mailmend, the NDA accounts. It's the same four phases in the same order, every single time.
Each phase is built around a specific behavioral science principle that explains why the tactics work. Not because principles are clever marketing — but because if you don't know why something works, you can't reproduce it when the channel changes, the platform changes, or the buyer changes.
What follows is the entire system, in order, with the psychology underneath each phase. Same framework Dylan reads from on every kickoff call.
Build distribution
before you need it.
"At-bats are upstream of everything."
Most B2B SaaS founders die from lack of at-bats, not lack of ideas. Phase 01 is about volume — putting your offer in front of 10× more qualified eyeballs than you are today, on one channel, with relentless creative cadence. Most agencies skip this and dive into "optimization." We don't optimize anything until the at-bats are real.
People develop preference for things they've encountered repeatedly, even without conscious recall. Familiarity breeds preference. In B2B SaaS, this means buyers who see your brand 7+ times before they have a need are dramatically more likely to choose you when the need arises. Phase 01 is buying that exposure cheaply, before your competitors do.
- Pick one dominant channel Not five. One. Meta for consumer SaaS, LinkedIn for enterprise. Depth beats breadth.
- Ship 20+ creative variants per week Founder POV, Number Shock, Receipts. Test at volume — not in batches of 3.
- Set a 90-day spend floor Paid acquisition doesn't work in 30 days. Commit a budget you can sustain through the learning curve.
- Audience segmentation by ICP, not demographics Job title + company stage + tech stack > age + gender + location for B2B.
Fix the leak
before you scale.
"Throwing budget at a broken funnel just amplifies the leak."
Phase 02 is the most ignored phase in growth marketing. Most agencies skip from "more spend" straight to "more spend." We refuse. Until your funnel converts at the unit-economic level it needs to, scaling just burns money faster. Phase 02 is the engineering pass — landing pages, hooks, qualification, and CTAs — before we're allowed to push the budget button.
Humans feel losses roughly 2× as strongly as equivalent gains. In conversion copy, this means "don't lose your spot" beats "gain access to features" by a wide margin in cold traffic. Scarcity intensifies loss aversion by making the loss feel imminent. We test scarcity-led copy on every cold campaign because the principle is consistent across 47+ Propaganda Inc experiments.
- Audit the first 60 seconds What does the visitor see? What do they feel? Fix the hero before touching anything else.
- Swap features for outcomes Stop explaining what the product does. Start showing what happens after they buy.
- Raise CTA friction deliberately "Book a 15-min call" filters for higher intent than "Get demo." Fewer leads, dramatically higher close rate.
- Test scarcity vs. feature framing Scarcity-led copy outperforms feature-led copy in cold traffic by a median of 47%.
Close the people
already deciding.
"Retargeting is a closer, not a prospecter."
Most agencies use retargeting to find new buyers. That's the wrong job. Retargeting audiences are already deciding — they've visited your site, watched your videos, downloaded your magnet. They don't need awareness. They need permission to act. Phase 03 reroutes the entire retargeting budget from "find" to "convert" — case studies, receipts, founder testimonials, objection handlers. The deciding cohort is the highest-LTV cohort in your funnel.
When humans are uncertain, they look to others for cues — especially others who resemble them or hold authority. In Phase 03, the audience is uncertain (they're hesitating), warm (they've engaged), and ready to be nudged. The right proof — a logo, a quote, a number — at the right moment in the decision is worth more than 10× the awareness budget that brought them there.
- Case studies, not awareness Replace top-of-funnel ads with mid-funnel proof. Real numbers, real outcomes.
- Receipts > brand Screenshots of Slack threads, closed-won notifications, dashboards. Not polished testimonials.
- Objection handlers per ICP Different objections by stage. "Too expensive" for early. "Too complicated" for enterprise.
- Founder testimonials at the close Founder POV at the end of the funnel converts at 2.4× polished video.
LTV is the new
acquisition channel.
"Onboarding compounds harder than acquisition."
Phase 04 is where most growth agencies hand the keys back and disappear. We don't. Onboarding is where your CAC turns into LTV — or doesn't. A new customer who hits their activation moment in the first 10 minutes retains at 3× the rate of one who doesn't. That difference compounds across the entire customer base. Phase 04 instruments activation, fixes leaky onboarding, and turns your existing customers into your highest-leverage growth channel.
People disproportionately value things they've helped create, and they overvalue things they already own. In Phase 04, this means customers who customize, configure, or invest effort into your product during onboarding retain at dramatically higher rates than passive users — because they perceive the product as partially "theirs." We design activation flows that require small acts of creation in the first 10 minutes.
- Define the activation event The single action that predicts 90-day retention. We instrument it before optimizing anything else.
- Talk to 10 churned customers Not a survey. Actual 20-minute video calls. Surfaces patterns no analytics tool can.
- Instrument before optimizing If you can't measure activation rate by week 1, you don't have a retention strategy.
- Onboarding as the new acquisition channel Referrals + expansion revenue from activated users dwarf paid acquisition by month 6.
Four Phases. One Loop.
Build distribution
Mere exposure. 10× at-bats on one channel. Volume before optimization.
Fix the leak
Loss aversion + scarcity. Lander rewrites, hook tests, CTA friction tuning.
Close the deciding
Social proof + authority. Receipts > brand. Reroute budget to mid-funnel.
Compound LTV
IKEA effect + endowment. Activation events, churn calls, expansion loops.
Want Us To Run It On Your Account?
The Propaganda Funnel is the system. The execution is what makes it work. Book a 30-minute strategy call and we'll walk through which phase you're stuck in, what the next move is, and whether we have capacity to take it on. Two spots open right now on the active roster.