In my last post, I explained to readers how Internet customer journeys changed from the more clean, reliable funnel model on the internet into something that looks like a ball that bounces around a pinball machine. Modern buyer journeys move between content and channels in ways that cannot be easily modeled or accurately attributable (despite the information your analytics tool is telling you).

However, this isn’t the only issue that our industry has to face due to these pinball-slapping paths. This week’s update covers the seven biggest issues I’ve witnessed marketers (at strategic, tactical, as well as management levels) confronting in the current buyer journey.

The transcript

The last episode was of pinball users journeys and the way that customers whether B2B or not, move around in the world of browsing blogs and news articles and chatting with friends, and then going to chat rooms and YouTube as well as Reddit along with Google as well as reading papers and whitepapers, all that information and how different it differs from funnel marketers have to navigate. This can also have knock-on effects on what we need to consider and resolve for marketers, and not only determining your customers’ locations. That’s the number one issue, and we also need to determine who that customer is.

Sometimes, we are targeting the wrong individuals and drawing the wrong conclusions. It is essential to get people in appropriate locations. We need to understand which areas to go to and what their pinball journeys appear like as you bounce. We also have to send the correct message.

We need to create content that states, “Hey, our brand has been a solution to the problem in this manner for people like these. If you’re in the profile, if you’re one of the people trying to resolve this issue, we’re there for you and not too much. If you attempt to solve everything, then you’re not successful in your messaging. However, there are a myriad of issues that the traditional funnel doesn’t have to think about as much as a pinball customer’s journey.

These are the cases of product over-marketing. I’m not able to express the magnitude of this issue.

I’m not sure. I’d like to take each CEO off the table and say, as if, whatever marketing issue you think you’re dealing with is, in the majority, often an issue with your product. You believe that the issue is, in our last week’s example with your bank for citizens, and your thought is that we have to inform the world about our savings accounts with high returns. However, the problem really is that your High Yield Savings Account doesn’t offer profitability as the 10 banks, ten individuals that your clients are looking to when they log onto Google or ChatGPT or Bankrate and Reddit, and all these other sites.

There’s also this siloed divisions problem, which is primarily because SEO is a separate department, the SEO team is performing different things than those on the PPC team, they are doing different things than those of the team for social media, which is performing different tasks in the public relations team.

They don’t communicate that uniform message. They don’t say we’re the best bank for people who are looking at high-yielding savings accounts or, we’re the bank for people who require many tools and features or that we’re the one to go to for those seeking an alternative of their bank since they aren’t able to cash out at all of these locations or don’t have a effective promotion plan for their credit card regardless of the reason. You have to make yourself the best product, but the message must be consistent across social, in print, and across all of PR. Otherwise, you’ll be lost in these areas, and the departments must collaborate to say”We’ve an asset that has this worth. It’s time to promote this across all channels. It is important to promote this in these ways. We should ensure that we do not have conflicts.

Take a look around the funnel world. Are you not sure? Of about twenty-ten, the areas you were only looking at the at the top of the funnelweres blogs and social. The mid-point of your funnel was Google and bringing people onto your mailing list, and bringing them involved in your content marketing. You then have the conversion phase at the bottom of the funnel. In this world, you could meet many customers without creating a brand. There were plenty of companies that could do this and managed to do it quite successfully.

However, today, the majority of the money Google and ChatGPT and Reddit, as well as YouTube, and any other of them will provide comes from building an image first.

Marketing is basically an incentive for you to do a good job at marketing for brands, and creating a brand people want to talk about, are attracted to discuss, and whom they know they like and trust, the click-through rate, which isn’t it? That’s because knowing about the brand is huge. So, it is important to invest in your brand, and not just the demand.

Sometimes, they’ll find marketers not paying attention to, or completely disregarding, the importance of a channel. They’re like, they’re looking out, and they’re thinking, Gosh,h what’s wrong with people not selecting our bank? It’s like, we, ll it turns out that a lot of people are using the likes of Red, di t or they’re locating data from numerous podcasts that have become well-known in the area of personal finance, or they’re checking out S stack, and it seems like ndy is on Substack is talking about you or mentioning your name. This means that missing the most important channels can be a big aspect of this. If you’ve not noticed one of those features with the pinballs, it’s as if you’re not able to flip, isn’t it? Then you aren’t able to bounce the ball into play.

Attribution addiction. I’ve been talking about this subject a few times, but the notion that you could attribute every user’s journey in a perfect way is utterly impossible. It’s almost impossible. Podcasts have mentions in them, ninety-nine percent of PR, the most mentions on YouTube, as well as the highest number of mentions on social media, particularly such as video, TikTok, and Instagram reels. You’re not going to get it. It’s not going to be easy, regardless of what you try. The ability to attribute this and know the user who saw these things before making a conversion, and then forget about it. If you’re doing attribution, it will be a huge over-weight to paid and branded search results in Google, and will overlook almost everything else.

Another issue I’ve noticed is house obsession. The idea that”hey, we’re skilled” in these three strategies, we’ll cover all three elements in our channel.

Therefore, we’re not ready to outsource. We’re not going to reach out to someone who is an expert in Reddit marketing to tell them that we’re really required to be active in, say, the subreddit for personal finance as well as the Philadelphia subreddit. Do you have staff members who are willing to contribute to Reddit frequently? They can kind of upvote good items and downvote wrong items and post comments in a manner that’s not fake and plain marketing, but instead genuine and helpful, so that the users will see an increase in votes and will be prominent in the subreddit.

If you decide to accomplish it all from the comfort of your home, you could be a good fit on Reddit. Perhaps you already have a core skill there, but I’m certain that there are channels in the realm of pinball that you’re good at. Another one that I’ve observed is the sabotage of surveys. The CEO, CMO, CF, or anyone else at the top of the hierarchy saysHeyey I’d like to conduct surveys and find out where our customers come from.

If you are only able to poll your current customers, there are two issues. A bias in the survey is caused by people not being able to remember what they actually received information about you, since people believe they can recall, but they can’t. This can be proven in a myriad of ways. However, if you only poll the people you’ve already spoken to,o you won’t know any information about those whom you do not reach, and therefore cannot conduct a survey.

This is a natural result. Another issue in surveys I observe is that people tend to focus on the channel that was attributed last or what they believe is the most valuable one; however, they do not focus on the factor that was actually part of the consideration phase. Therefore, I can’t advocate this enough. You must incorporate real-time behavior of your audience on a larger scale using the click stream provider, or, if you are a smaller-sized business, SparkToro can be helpful in this regard.

You might want to consider conducting some massive-scale market research, too. It’s costly, I know. I’m aware that it’s a long process; however, it could be worth you’re noton’t likely to make a mistake on this. Once you have figured these out, you’re ready to take on Pinball Marketing.