Latest / The Marketing Funnel Podcast with Fexingo: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action Stages / How the Marketing Funnel Explains the Rise of ChatGPT
Transcript
- Lucas: So Luna, I want to start with a number that still kind of blows my mind: one hundred million users in two months. Luna: You're talking about ChatGPT. Lucas: Exactly. OpenAI launched ChatGPT at the end of November 2022, and by the end of January 2023, they'd crossed that threshold. To put it in perspective, TikTok took about nine months to hit 100 million. Instagram took two and a half years. ChatGPT did it in two months. Luna: And they didn't spend a dime on advertising — at least not in the traditional sense. Lucas: Right. Zero Super Bowl ads, no billboards, no display campaigns. And that's what makes this such a fascinating marketing-funnel case study. Because when you look at it through the AIDA framework — awareness, interest, decision, action — ChatGPT compressed every stage into something close to instant. Luna: Let's start with awareness. How did hundreds of millions of people even hear about it? Lucas: Largely through what you'd call earned media and organic social. The launch itself was low-key — just a blog post and a free access link. But within days, Twitter and LinkedIn were flooded with screenshots of ChatGPT writing emails, explaining concepts, debugging code. Each of those screenshots was essentially a mini ad. And because it was user-generated, it carried way more credibility than anything OpenAI could have produced. Luna: So word of mouth on steroids. Lucas: Exactly. And it wasn't just volume — it was velocity. The network effects were insane. Every time someone shared a ChatGPT output, they were simultaneously demonstrating the product and inviting others to try it. The awareness stage basically happened in public, in real time, driven by users themselves. Luna: Which brings us to the interest stage. Once you see that screenshot, what makes you actually curious enough to go and open the site? Lucas: I think the key was the sheer breadth of use cases. You'd see one person using it to draft a resignation letter, another using it to plan a vacation itinerary, another using it to write Python scripts. So regardless of who you were, there was something relatable. It wasn't a narrow tool — it felt universally applicable. That breadth created curiosity. Luna: And the fact that it was free. That's a huge part of the interest stage too, right? Lucas: Absolutely. OpenAI made a deliberate choice to launch with a free tier. No credit card required, no trial period, just go and type. That eliminated the single biggest barrier to interest. You didn't have to read a white paper or watch a demo video — you just went and experienced it. The product itself was the marketing. Luna: That's product-led growth in its purest form. The funnel becomes almost frictionless. Lucas: Exactly. And that leads into the decision stage. Normally, the decision stage is where a prospect weighs alternatives, considers price, reads reviews. With ChatGPT, there was almost nothing to decide. It was free, it was web-based, it took ten seconds to sign up. The decision stage collapsed into near-zero friction. Luna: But there was still a small decision: you had to click 'try it', create an account. What made that step feel so easy? Lucas: I think two things. One, the sign-up process required just an email and a phone number — minimal friction. Two, by the time you landed on the site, you'd probably already seen multiple examples of what it could do. So your expectation was anchored. You weren't signing up for a mystery — you were signing up for something you'd already seen work. Luna: So the interest stage and the decision stage were almost happening simultaneously. Lucas: Right. And then the action stage — which in a normal funnel might be a purchase or a subscription — here it's just typing a prompt. The action is using the product. And the first use is so impressive that it often leads to immediate sharing, which feeds back into awareness. The funnel becomes a loop. Luna: It's almost like a reverse funnel — instead of pushing people toward a purchase, you're pushing them toward an experience that creates its own pull. Lucas: That's a great way to put it. And there's another layer here that marketers should pay attention to: timing. ChatGPT launched at a moment when AI had been in the news for years — self-driving cars, dall e, AlphaFold — but the average person hadn't touched it. There was this pent-up curiosity. ChatGPT was the first AI product that felt accessible and immediately useful to a general audience. Luna: So the awareness stage was also primed by years of cultural buildup. Lucas: Exactly. People were ready for something like ChatGPT. OpenAI didn't have to explain why AI mattered — they just had to show that this version of AI actually worked. And because the product was so good, the retention was high. Once you used it, you kept coming back. Luna: But let's not pretend it's all perfect. There's a challenge that comes with that kind of viral growth, especially for the action stage. Lucas: What challenge? Luna: Sustaining engagement. When the novelty wears off, some users inevitably drop off. OpenAI has to keep adding features — GPT-4, plugins, multimodal capabilities — to keep the product fresh and give people reasons to return. That's the action stage evolving from a one-time try to habitual use. Lucas: That's a really important point. The action stage in a product-led funnel isn't a destination — it's a starting point. You need to keep delivering value to maintain the loop. And OpenAI has been aggressive about that. Every few months there's a meaningful update that re-sparks interest and gets shared all over again. Luna: So what's the lesson for a traditional marketer who isn't launching a revolutionary AI product? Lucas: I think the biggest takeaway is: make the product the marketing. If you can remove friction from the decision stage — whether that means a free trial, a no-commitment sample, or a genuinely useful piece of content — the rest of the funnel can accelerate dramatically. ChatGPT didn't invent a new funnel; it just executed the classic one with extreme discipline. Luna: And they didn't skip any stages. They just made each one faster and more organic. Lucas: Right. Awareness was earned through shareability. Interest was sparked by broad utility. Decision was eliminated by free access. Action was the product itself. And then the loop took over. Luna: It's a reminder that the funnel still works — but the way we fill it has changed. It's less about pushing messages and more about creating experiences people want to pull. Lucas: And speaking of experiences people want to pull — if these marketing conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own work or thinking, that's exactly the kind of value we hope this podcast delivers. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a real difference for us to keep this ad-free and focused on the substance. Lucas: Exactly. So back to ChatGPT: one thing that often gets overlooked is how OpenAI handled the interest to decision transition for business users. They launched ChatGPT Plus at twenty dollars a month about a month after the initial release. That created a premium tier that actually reinforced the free tier's value. Luna: How so? Lucas: Because the paid tier offered faster response times and priority access — not fundamentally different features. So free users could see that there was a paid option, but they weren't penalized for staying free. The free product still worked great. That's a smart way to monetize without breaking the trust you built in the decision stage. Luna: It also created an aspirational element — 'if I need more, I can upgrade.' That keeps people in the funnel longer. Lucas: Exactly. And as we look ahead, the question is whether ChatGPT can maintain that loop as competition heats up. Google has Bard, now Gemini. Microsoft is embedding Copilot everywhere. The awareness stage is going to get noisier. Luna: So the burden shifts back to the product. And to retention strategies. The funnel never stops evolving. Lucas: It really doesn't. But for a moment in late 2022 and early 2023, ChatGPT showed us what happens when every stage of the funnel clicks into perfect alignment. It's a case study marketers will be talking about for years.