I love the idea of reversing the funnel, but once you DO reverse the funnel and have customers and employees and your other constituents telling your story, you also need to allow them somewhere to return to. You need and outbound strategy AND an inbound strategy.
Seth Godin claims we need to think in terms of "earning" more traffic to your website, rather than simply "getting" more traffic, but I would like to extend this. It is not just a matter of earning more traffic (or improving your brand or your reputation or even your customer experience). You also need an internal funnel so that you can make sure that those who DO come to your site are able to find and access what they are looking for. Also, from YOUR business’ point of view, you need to make sure that you convert browsers to buyers.
You need to understand what works and what doesn’t on your site. This is about statistics and about narrative flow. On the one hand you need to know what is of most interest to your site visitors, and on the other you need to remove any blockages that stop your customers from purchasing or engaging with your site. Does this still happen? All the time!
It is the equivalent of a Dear Scott Letter for a web surfer!
S.