If you are still planning marketing campaigns around a perfectly linear funnel, you are already losing attention, trust, and revenue. Video has quietly become the backbone of a new, multidirectional customer journey—one that jumps from YouTube to TikTok to search to your landing page and back again in minutes. For founders, creators, and marketers who think like Neil Patel or Gary Vee, the winners are not the brands with the biggest ad budgets, but the ones who turn video and community into a hub they fully own. ​This article breaks down how video really drives purchase decisions today, why hub‑centric communities outperform “rented” audiences, and how to architect an SEO‑friendly strategy that compounds results over time.

From Funnel Fantasy to Real Consumer Journeys

For years, marketing teams built their strategies on the classic funnel: awareness at the top, consideration in the middle, conversion at the bottom. It looked neat in presentations, but it never truly matched how people actually made decisions. Research from Boston Consulting Group for Google shows that modern customer journeys are anything but linear and are better described by four overlapping behaviors: streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping.​ Here is what that looks like in practice: Someone discovers your brand in a YouTube Short or TikTok clip while scrolling in bed. ​Later that day, they search for reviews, how‑tos, and comparisons on YouTube and Google. ​They see a retargeting ad, click through to a landing page, and maybe sign up for a webinar or newsletter.​ Days or weeks later, a community video or testimonial finally pushes them over the line to buy.​ In a Google‑commissioned BCG study, shoppers who said digital video played a role in their purchase journey reported that video: ​sparked interest in brands (43%) drove brand awareness (50%) helped them decide what to buy (45%) directly triggered a final purchase action (34%) Influence is no longer confined to “top of funnel” or “bottom of funnel.” It is happening everywhere, all the time, across many touchpoints.​

Why Video Is the 'New' Trust Engine

Founders like Gary Vee have been hammering on one truth: attention is the asset. But attention alone is not enough in a saturated market; trust is what converts. Video has a unique ability to compress awareness, education, and trust‑building into a single experience. ​Here is why video is such a powerful engine of influence: Depth and nuance: Long‑form and mid‑form videos let you explain complex ideas, show behind‑the‑scenes, and demonstrate real outcomes in a way static posts cannot. ​

Human connection: Seeing a face, hearing a voice, and watching real interactions triggers emotional connection and perceived authenticity.​Social proof in motion: Reviews, case studies, and testimonials in video format feel more genuine than written quotes on a landing page.​YouTube in particular has emerged as a high‑trust environment for research and decision‑making. In BCG’s analysis, people report that they are more likely to pay attention to YouTube content, find it relevant, and trust what they see compared with other social and streaming platforms. That is exactly why brands that behave like educators rather than advertisers win disproportionate influence.​

The Power of a Decentralised, Hub‑Centric Model

Now comes the strategic shift: it is not enough to “do more video.” The real unlock is building a decentralised, hub‑centric ecosystem around that content. ​A hub‑centric model means: You use major platforms (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn) for reach and discovery.​ You intentionally pull your best viewers, subscribers, and customers into a central hub you control—your own community, membership, or platform (like ESTAGE or a Dubliving‑style hub). ​Inside that hub, video is not just content; it is the interface for education, onboarding, events, and community interaction. ​Platforms such as ESTAGE are built around this idea: one central “command center” where you can host live and on‑demand video, run events, manage communities, and sell products or memberships without sending people off to third‑party feeds and recommendations.

Instead of scattering attention across multiple walled gardens, you bring it back home.​ Advantages of a hub‑centric approach include: Data ownership: You control the audience data, not an algorithm.​

Consistent experience: You can design the journey from first view to repeat purchase without competing content stealing a​ttention MOFU-Middle of the Funnel.

Compounding community: Every new member strengthens the hub, adds content, and increases the value for everyone else. ​For SEO, this structure is powerful: high‑intent search traffic lands on your own properties, video embeds increase dwell time, internal links distribute authority, and community content creates a long‑tail of queries your brand can rank for.​

Fragmentation as an SEO and Growth Advantage

Fragmentation feels chaotic if you are optimising around a single attribution model, but if you think like Neil Patel—using SEO, content, and experiments as compounding levers—it becomes a huge advantage.​ Here is how to turn fragmented journeys into SEO and growth upside:

• Map query clusters to journey stages

  - “What is X” and “how to” keywords map well to educational videos and blog posts.

  - “Best tools for X” and “X vs Y” keywords are perfect for comparison content and reviews.​

  - “Pricing,” “demo,” and “case study” keywords align with the bottom‑of‑funnel assets.​

• Turn every key video into an SEO asset

  - Publish a full blog post version of each hero video and optimise it for a specific keyword cluster.

  - ​Embed the video high on the page to increase watch time and dwell time, both positive engagement signals.

  - ​Add timestamps, schema markup (where relevant), and internal links to related guides and offers.

• ​Use your hub as the SEO anchor

  - Host evergreen content, playbooks, and community resources on your own domain, not just on rented platforms.

  - ​Let user‑generated content (UGC) and discussions surface long‑tail terms you might not have targeted manually.​

  In short: think like a search strategist, publish like a creator, and architect like a community‑first founder.

Influence Replaces the Funnel

Instead of obsessing over whether a user is in “awareness” or “consideration,” leading brands now optimise for influence at every meaningful touchpoint.​ Video is where this new influence model comes alive: A single product walkthrough can build awareness, educate, and answer objections.​ A candid founder video can humanise the brand and generate direct conversions from loyal followers. ​A live Q&A can generate leads, nurture them, and close sales in the same session.​ If you look at how Gary Vee structures his content machine, every long‑form piece spawns dozens of short clips, quotes, and hooks that live across platforms and feed back into his core ecosystem. Neil Patel’s content engine pairs videos with in‑depth written guides, tools, and checklists that rank for thousands of keywords and continuously drive leads. Both models revolve around one idea: build influence at scale through consistent, helpful content that lives in multiple formats.​

Metrics That Actually Matter in a Video‑Led Strategy

If your dashboard is still dominated by impressions and basic click‑through rate, you are missing the real levers of a video‑driven, hub‑centric strategy. To operate at the level of modern performance marketing and community‑led growth, prioritise metrics that reflect attention, relevance, and trust.​ Key metrics to track:

• Attention

  - Average view duration and percentage viewed (view-through rate) for your key videos.​

  - Session duration and pages per session on content that embeds those videos.

• ​Relevance

  - Search queries and suggested video sources that consistently send you qualified traffic.​

  - Topic clusters where your brand appears multiple times (e.g., Search Engine Results Page listings plus YouTube results).

  • Trust and intent

  - Comment quality, saves, shares, and community replies—not just vanity likes.​

  - Sign‑ups, demo requests, or purchases directly attributed to content or community events. ​

  AI‑driven analytics can help here by identifying which videos, topics, and community actions correlate most strongly with high‑value outcomes, so you can double down on what actually moves revenue.​

Action Blueprint for Founders and Creators

To make this concrete, here is a practical blueprint you can follow:

1. Clarify your positioning and core audience

   - Define who your hub is for: early‑stage founders, marketing teams, creators, or a specific niche.​

   - Build simple personas that include search behaviors, favorite platforms, and content preferences.

2. ​Design your video and SEO content spine

   - Choose 5–10 core problems your audience searches for and cares about.​

   - Create a long‑form “pillar” video for each, then repurpose into:

   2.1. a detailed blog article optimised around a primary keyword

   2.2. short clips for social and YouTube Shorts

   2.3. a lead magnet or resource hosted inside your hub

3. Build and optimise your hub

   - Use a hub‑centric platform (for example, ESTAGE) or a community stack that lets you host video, run events, and manage members in one place.​

   - Set up SEO‑friendly URLs, structured content categories, and clear navigation so search visitors can quickly find key resources.​

4. Connect external channels back to your “island”

   - Add CTAs in your videos that invite people to join your community, register for live events, or access bonus content on your domain.​

   - Pin hub links in YouTube descriptions, social bios, and email signatures.​

5. Iterate with data and community feedback

   - Review performance monthly: which videos and articles generate the most sign‑ups or revenue, not just views.​

   - Ask your community what topics, formats, and channels they want more of, then ship quickly.

   ​This is exactly the kind of cycle that both performance marketers and community builders can buy into: test, learn, refine, and scale.

Owning Your “Island” in an Algorithm‑Driven Ocean

Think of major platforms as the ocean: full of opportunity, but ultimately outside your control. Algorithms change, ad costs spike, reach gets throttled. If your entire business lives there, you are always at risk. Your hub—the community, content library, and products you host on your own land—is the island.​

Video is the bridge that carries people from the ocean to your island: SEO‑optimised videos and articles bring strangers into your orbit.​Consistent, authentic content builds trust and positions you as the go‑to authority in your niche. ​A well‑designed hub converts that attention into members, customers, and advocates who stay with you regardless of what happens to the algorithms. ​If you are serious about building a “bulletproof” community and brand in the marketing and advertising sector, the path forward is clear: treat video as the central driver of multidirectional purchase decisions, architect a hub‑centric ecosystem around it, and back everything with smart SEO and data‑driven iteration.​