Your customers don't march in orderly lines from top to bottom. They jump in at the middle. They circle back. They research after purchasing. They become aware of your brand after they've already bought from you through a referral.
The Reality of Modern Buyer Behavior
Today's customers interact with brands across an average of 8-12 touchpoints before making a purchase decision. But these touchpoints don't follow a predictable sequence. A prospect might:
Download your lead magnet, then disappear for six months
Attend your webinar before ever visiting your website
Make a purchase, then follow you on social media
Read your blog post, ignore your emails, then call you directly
This isn't a funnel. It's a series of messy loops where customers enter, exit, and re-enter at unpredictable points.
Why This Matters for Your Marketing Strategy
When you design marketing around a linear funnel, you optimize for a customer journey that doesn't exist. You create "top of funnel" content that prospects never see because they entered through a referral. You nurture leads through email sequences they've already outgrown.
The businesses winning today understand that customer journeys are actually interconnected loops. They design flexible touchpoints that work regardless of when or where a customer encounters them.
Four Strategies for Loop-Based Marketing
Make Every Touchpoint a Potential: Entry Point Your LinkedIn post should work for someone who's never heard of you. Your case study should convert without requiring someone to have read your blog first. Design each piece of content as a standalone asset that provides value and creates momentum toward the next step.
Build Bridges, Not Sequences: Instead of rigid email sequences that assume prospects start at message one, create content libraries that customers can access based on where they are right now. Educational resources, comparison guides, and implementation tools should all be available on-demand.
Embrace Retroactive Awareness: Some customers become truly "aware" of your value after they've purchased. Create post-purchase content that deepens their understanding of what they've bought and why it matters. This turns customers into advocates who finally understand what they should tell others.
Track Patterns, Not Paths: Stop trying to map individual customer journeys. Instead, identify which combinations of touchpoints correlate with conversions. Maybe webinar attendees who also read your case studies convert at 3x the rate of those who only do one. Focus on creating more of those high-impact touchpoints.
The Bottom Line
The marketing funnel isn't just outdated—it's actively harmful when it causes you to design experiences for a customer journey that doesn't exist. Real customers loop, circle back, jump around, and enter from unexpected directions.
Your marketing should be designed for the messy reality of how people actually buy, not the clean fiction of how we wish they would.
Ready to build marketing that works with real customer behavior instead of against it? Let's talk about creating flexible touchpoints that convert regardless of where customers enter your ecosystem.
