The Death of Linear Funnels: Why Your Customers Touch Your Business 11+ Times Before Buying
- Scott Cobett
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
For years, we taught the marketing funnel as gospel: Awareness → Consideration → Decision. Seven touchpoints. Maybe eight if you were thorough. Predictable, linear, measurable.
That model is dead.
Today's B2B buyers require 11+ touchpoints before purchase. They're researching on ChatGPT, reading Reddit threads, watching YouTube reviews, and comparing options across platforms you're not even tracking. By the time they contact your sales team, they've already made 80% of their decision—and you probably have no idea how they got there.
Traditional attribution models track 3-4 touchpoints and miss the other 7-8 that actually influenced the sale. Google Analytics shows the last click. Your CRM shows the form fill. Neither shows the Reddit thread, the YouTube review, or the AI chatbot conversation that actually drove the purchase.
If you're still optimizing for a linear funnel, you're measuring the wrong things.
What the New Journey Actually Looks Like
Let me show you a real example - A customer closed a deal after 14 documented touch points over six months:
Discovered brand through ChatGPT query about "AI search optimization"
Visited website (didn't convert)
Read competitor comparison on Reddit
Watched 3 YouTube videos reviewing similar services
Downloaded a white paper (first CRM entry)
Attended a webinar (sales assumed this was "first touch")
Read 4 blog posts over two weeks
Watched founder's LinkedIn video
Joined an industry Slack group, saw brand mentioned
Re-visited website via Google search
Read G2 reviews
Requested demo (sales logged as "inbound lead")
Had 2 sales calls
Closed deal
Traditional attribution would credit the webinar or the demo request. The reality? The decision was heavily influenced by Reddit, YouTube, and ChatGPT—touchpoints that never showed up in any dashboard.
This isn't unique. This is normal now.
The Multi-Platform Research Journey
Customer discovery has exploded across platforms:
AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Perplexity handle research queries that used to go to Google. "What's the best CRM for small businesses?" returns AI-generated recommendations. If your brand isn't cited in the AI response, you're invisible to that buyer.
Social discovery happens on TikTok (6.5B searches/day), Instagram (increasingly used for product research), and LinkedIn (B2B decision-makers researching vendors). These aren't "awareness" touchpoints—they're research tools.
Community research on Reddit, industry forums, and Slack groups carries massive weight. Buyers trust peer recommendations over vendor marketing. A single Reddit thread can make or break consideration.
Video reviews on YouTube aren't optional anymore. Buyers watch 5-10 videos comparing products before shortlisting vendors. If you're not represented in video content, you don't make the shortlist.
Email nurture sequences and remarketing touchpoints keep you visible during the consideration phase, but they're just two pieces of an 11+ touchpoint puzzle.
Finally, direct brand search happens—usually after the buyer has already decided. They're searching your brand name to confirm the decision, not make it.
Why Traditional Attribution Is Broken
Last-click attribution gives all credit to the final touchpoint before conversion. If a buyer searched your brand name and then filled out a form, Google Search gets 100% of the credit.
Never mind the 10 touchpoints before that actually educated and convinced the buyer.
Multi-touch attribution models are breaking under privacy regulations. GDPR, CCPA, and cookie deprecation have made cross-device tracking nearly impossible.
Walled gardens like Meta and Google hide data from each other. You can't track a buyer who researches on their phone, watches a YouTube video on their tablet, and converts on their laptop.
Even when you can track touchpoints, the models are often wrong. We've seen campaigns that "failed" in last-click attribution but were actually critical early touchpoints that drove awareness. Shut them down, and pipeline dries up six months later—but no one connects the dots.
What This Means for Marketing Investment
You can't optimize for conversion points alone anymore. If you're only measuring bottom-of-funnel metrics, you're flying blind.
Visibility across the research journey determines competitive advantage. The brand that shows up in ChatGPT, Reddit, YouTube, and Google wins. The brand that only shows up in Google loses.
Sales cycles are lengthening because buyers are doing more independent research before engaging sales. Your marketing needs to carry the full weight of education and persuasion. Sales is there to confirm and close, not to educate.
Marketing must report on influence, not just conversions. If your CMO can only report "leads generated," they're missing 80% of marketing's impact. The real question is: How is marketing influencing the entire journey?
Budget allocation needs to shift. Awareness and consideration channels deserve more investment, even if they don't show direct conversions. The touchpoint that introduces your brand is just as valuable as the one that closes the deal—maybe more.
How to Actually Measure This
If last-click and multi-touch attribution are broken, what works?
Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is making a comeback. It uses statistical analysis to correlate marketing spend with business outcomes, without relying on tracking individual users. MMM tells you which channels drive incremental revenue, even when you can't track every touchpoint. (Read our full guide: Why CFOs Are Demanding Marketing Mix Modeling)
Unified customer views require integrating data from every platform. CRM, website analytics, social platforms, ad networks, sales calls—everything needs to flow into a single view. It's messy and imperfect, but it's better than siloed data.
Weighted multi-touch attribution gives fractional credit to each touchpoint based on its role in the journey. It's not perfect, but it's more accurate than last-click.
Focus on incremental lift instead of vanity metrics. Did adding a new channel actually increase revenue, or did it just cannibalize existing channels? Incrementality testing tells you what's really working.
Tactical Implementation
Here's how to start mapping and optimizing the full journey:
Map your actual customer journey. Interview 10 recent customers. Ask them: "How did you first hear about us? What did you research? Where did you go for information?" You'll discover touchpoints you didn't know existed.
Identify which touchpoints you're missing. If customers consistently mention Reddit, YouTube, or industry forums, and you're not visible there, that's your gap.
Build content for the research phase, not just the conversion phase. Buyers need education, comparison, and validation long before they're ready to talk to sales. Create content that serves every stage of research.
Integrate online + offline touchpoints. Trade shows, webinars, sales calls, email, social, search—they all matter. Don't treat them as separate channels.
The Bottom Line
If you're only measuring last-click attribution, you're making decisions with 10% of the data. The other 90% of the journey is happening in places you're not tracking, on platforms you're not optimizing, through touchpoints you're not measuring.
The question every marketing leader needs to answer:
Can you articulate how each marketing channel influences the full customer journey—from first awareness through closed deal?
If you can't, you're either under-investing in critical channels or over-investing in channels that get credit without earning it.
The linear funnel is dead. Discovery happens everywhere. Research happens everywhere. Decisions happen everywhere.
Your marketing strategy needs to reflect that reality.
Ready to see how we map and optimize full customer journeys? Let's discuss