Marketing is often described as a pipeline, but in practice it behaves more like a concert. Buyers rarely move in a straight line from awareness to purchase; they drift in and out, paying attention when a need arises and ignoring you when it doesn’t.

One of the crucial roles of marketing therefore is to keep attracting people (to our version of a ‘concert’), keep them engaged, and stay relevant until timing and intent align.

In the digital world, platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Meta act as venues where these concerts take place, which is why the most resilient businesses use platforms for discovery while gradually building direct relationships with their audience.

This Story99 framework helps distinguishes between venues, concerts, audiences, and products, and tries to offer a unique but useful lens to view marketing.

Story99.com is a Branding & Storytelling Consultancy for B2B, Tech & Deeptech

The pipeline approach has a problem

A lot of people think marketing is a pipeline.

People enter at the top, move through a sequence of stages, and eventually buy. The model is useful because it helps companies measure conversion rates, forecast revenue, and understand where prospects are dropping off.

The problem is that buyers rarely move through markets in such an orderly way.

Someone may discover your company today and do nothing. They may come across your content months later, attend a webinar after that, ignore several emails, hear your name in a conversation, and finally reach out a year after first encountering you.

In most cases, the buying signal is not clear.

Only 5% of those who are being marketed, are going to buy from us today. But many more might buy from us tomorrow. How do we deal with this reality when marketing?

At Story99, we find the concert analogy more useful in addressing this problem.

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Concert > Pipeline

You keep bringing people in. You keep giving them reasons to stay (not buy). You keep creating value. And every now and then, you offer something for sale (plus the occasional inbound will anyway happen).

The concert consists of everything a company does to remain visible and relevant over time: newsletters, webinars, founder perspectives on Linkedin, customer stories, podcasts, educational content, videos, research reports, events, and recurring communication. They all serve the same purpose. They create familiarity. They build trust. They help people remember you when a problem eventually becomes important enough to solve.

Inside the concert, you cannot be selling all the time

Most of the activity revolves around creating value for the audience. Sometimes that value comes through education. Sometimes it comes through entertainment. Sometimes it comes through insight, perspective, or practical advice. The exact mix depends on the business, but most successful marketing programs spend far more time earning attention than trying to cash it in.

A pipeline measures movement toward a sale.
A concert creates the sustained conditions that make the sale possible.

Not every business requires the same kind of concert

Some companies operate in markets where buying intent is obvious.

A vendor targeting contract renewal cycles often knows when buyers are evaluating options. A pharmacy located next to a clinic benefits from immediate demand. In situations like these, timing and sales execution do much of the work.

It’s just that many businesses do not enjoy that level of visibility (definitely true for many Story99 clients). Customers buy infrequently, delay decisions, or spend months researching before they ever reveal their intent. In these cases, the concert becomes far more important because it keeps the company present during a long and unpredictable buying journey.

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When the Audience Becomes the Asset

Most companies begin by running the concert to support something else.

A consulting firm publishes content to attract clients. A software company hosts webinars to generate leads. A training business builds a community to recruit participants.

Sometimes, however, the audience itself becomes valuable.

The company discovers that it has gathered a specific group of people whose attention is difficult to earn and difficult to access. At that point, the audience stops being merely a means to an end and starts becoming an asset in its own right. Other businesses begin wanting access to the same people.

Instead of earning revenue only by selling its own products, the company can also monetize access to the audience it has assembled.

This pattern appears repeatedly across industries. Media companies sell advertising. Conferences sell sponsorships. Communities charge partners for access. Marketplaces connect buyers and sellers while taking a percentage of transactions. Platforms monetize the interactions occurring within their ecosystem.

Instead of just performing on stage, the company is now also renting out space around the venue. And the underlying reason is straightforward. Attention is scarce. If you have built a place where the right people consistently gather, that gathering has economic value whether or not they purchase directly from you.

Many businesses eventually operate both models simultaneously. They continue selling their own products while also helping other companies reach the audience they have built. Think of Google.

An interesting misconception emerges at this stage.

People sometimes assume that once the audience becomes the product, marketing becomes less important. The opposite is often true.

A conference still needs attendees. A media company still needs readers. A creator still needs subscribers. A community still needs members. A marketplace still needs buyers and sellers.

The concert itself now needs marketing.

The object being marketed may have changed, but the challenge remains the same. Someone still has to discover the concert, decide it is worth attending, and keep returning.

Platforms, Venues, and Audience Ownership

There is another layer to this analogy that becomes increasingly important in digital markets - most concerts do not happen on land they own, but inside larger venues.

Platforms such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, industry conferences, and professional associations are all venues in this model.

They provide infrastructure, distribution, traffic, and discovery. They already have crowds, which is why businesses go there in the first place.

When a founder starts posting on LinkedIn, they are entering someone else’s venue. When a creator launches a YouTube channel, they are operating inside a venue. When a company runs Meta ads, it is renting access to a venue’s audience.

Most businesses begin this way because it is the fastest route to attention.

The challenge is that the same dynamics still apply. Only a small percentage of people inside that venue are ready to buy at any given moment. Most are browsing, learning, comparing options, or simply spending time there.

As a result, businesses often end up creating their own recurring experiences within larger platforms. The newsletter becomes a concert. The podcast becomes a concert. The YouTube channel becomes a concert. The community becomes a concert.

The goal is not simply to appear in front of people once. The goal is to create a reason for them to return.

Over time, many businesses try to move some of those relationships into channels they control more directly. Email lists, memberships, events, communities, customer databases, and subscriber networks all reduce dependence on the venue.

This is partly because the relationship between venues and concerts is not always stable.

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A successful concert benefits the venue

It attracts visitors, increases engagement, and gives people reasons to spend time there. Sometimes successful concerts become so important that venues actively support them because they strengthen the ecosystem.

The reverse can happen too.

The venue controls distribution, algorithms, monetization mechanisms, and discovery. It can change the rules. It can prioritize different formats. It can introduce competing products. It can build its own version of what made a concert successful in the first place.

History is full of examples where platforms copied successful formats, shifted incentives, or redirected attention elsewhere.

Renting attention is often how businesses start.
Owning attention is how many of them become durable.

That is one reason audience ownership matters so much. The strongest companies use venues for discovery but gradually build direct relationships that survive beyond any single platform.

Story99.com is a Branding & Storytelling Consultancy for B2B, Tech & Deeptech