Your Customer Journey Isn’t Linear. Here’s What to Do About It.
May 2025
Insights
For decades, marketing strategy was built around a tidy model:
Attention → Interest → Desire → Action.
AIDA. Four stages, one direction, simple logic. You run an ad, someone sees it, wants what you’re offering, and takes action.
But that’s not how people behave anymore.
The moment someone discovers your business today, they’re probably already mid-scroll. They might hear about you in a story. Then forget. Then see a photo on Instagram, recognize your name from a friend’s recommendation, or catch a glimpse of your building in a travel vlog. None of this happens in order. And most of it doesn’t happen on your timeline.
In short:
The journey is messier, loopier, and more emotionally-driven than ever.
And that’s exactly why your brand and marketing need to be cohesive—because people are constantly assembling a picture of who you are, based on what they see, feel, and hear across a dozen different channels.
The funnel might not be linear, but the underlying stages still exist.
People still:
What’s changed is how and where these moments happen and how fragmented they are.
Your job as a business is to show up coherently across that journey so your presence adds up to something memorable.
That means not just showing up more but showing up with intention.
When the journey is this scattered, consistency becomes one of your biggest competitive advantages.
This isn’t about being polished. It’s about being recognizable.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls this distinctive brand assets—the sensory and verbal cues that help people remember who you are and associate you with a specific need or experience (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2016).
The more cohesive your brand feels, the easier it is to trust.
And trust is what turns curiosity into bookings.
Let’s say someone is planning a trip to your region. Maybe they find you on Instagram but don’t follow. Later, they see a TripAdvisor listing that matches your business name. Then a local guidebook. Then they land on your website.
If your name, photos, tone, and offer feel aligned every time, the brain does this:
“Ah, yes. I’ve seen this before. Feels familiar. Looks legit.”
But if it feels disjointed, i.e. different colors, different tone, no clear hook—they think:
“Wait, is this the same place? Or just one that kind of looks similar?”
You’ve already lost them.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about copying and pasting the same post across channels.
It’s about building a recognizable pattern of presence.
Your voice can adapt between platforms without sounding like a different business.
Your visuals can be dynamic without being random.
Your offers can shift with the season without changing your entire personality.
Cohesion means recognizable, not repetitive.
Intentional, not rigid.
The funnel isn’t just about facts and logic. It’s about emotion and energy.
These emotional checkpoints matter more than we think. According to Daniel Kahneman, our decisions are largely driven by system 1 thinking—intuitive, fast, emotional processing (Kahneman, 2011).
Your job is to guide that journey. Not with pressure, but with clarity.
Yes, personalization matters.
But it’s not about creepy tracking or hyper-specific ads.
It’s about being context-aware.
Knowing when to say “Here’s a limited-time offer” vs “Here’s what makes us different.”
It’s about feeding the right content to the right people at the right time.
Start with broad storytelling. Then tighten the message as they show more interest.
Blast → Retarget → Convert
But all wrapped in your brand voice, not a sales funnel voice.
1. Map your brand touchpoints. Website, Instagram, emails, signage, booking platforms. Do they feel like the same business?
2. Write down 3 tone words. Use them to guide your voice across every piece of communication.
3. Revisit your discovery experience. If someone brand new stumbled upon you today, what would they see? Would they understand what you offer and why it matters?
4. Build a mini funnel. Not for the algorithm—for yourself. Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Experience → Advocacy. Then check: are you doing anything in each of those stages?
5. Tighten before expanding. Don’t launch five new campaigns. Tighten what’s already in place. Make your existing presence more consistent.
Your customer’s journey might be messy but your presence doesn’t have to be.
You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be recognizable somewhere, consistently.
And when you show up with clarity, people don’t just notice you, they remember you.
And then, eventually, they book.
