1The whole journey, stage by stage
Select a stage to see what the buyer is doing there, and what marketing operations and engineering builds to make it work.
2The math: why every stage matters
The bowtie is a chain of multiplication. Each stage passes a share of people to the next, so a small improvement at every stage compounds into a big one overall. Move the sliders to try it with your own numbers.
What if each ticked stage got a little better?
3One layer under every stage
Most teams own one or two stages. Marketing operations and engineering owns the capabilities that run across all of them, which is why it can improve the whole chain at once.
The bowtie model was created by Winning by Design. This page is my own take on where marketing operations and engineering fits within it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the revenue bowtie model?
The revenue bowtie, created by Winning by Design, shows the whole customer journey as two funnels joined at the point of commitment: acquisition on the left (awareness, education and selection) and retention and growth on the right (onboarding, adoption and expansion).
Why do small improvements compound in the bowtie?
Each stage passes a share of people to the next, so revenue is the product of every conversion rate in the chain. In this page's default example, improving six stages by 10% each produces 63% more revenue from the same number of leads.
Where does marketing operations fit in the bowtie?
Marketing operations and engineering is the layer under every stage: the data model, tracking, enrichment, scoring, routing, lifecycle automation, attribution and AI agents. It leads at awareness and education, co-owns selection, adoption and expansion, and supports the commit and onboarding stages.
Want the layer under your bowtie built properly?
I design the data, systems and automation that connect every stage.
“Fix what’s underneath, and the rest gets easier.”Michael Morgan