The way people make buying decisions has changed fundamentally over the last decade, and most businesses haven’t fully caught up to what that means for their marketing. The instinct is still to run an ad, get a click, and make a sale. But that linear path describes almost nobody’s actual buying experience anymore. Today’s customer takes a longer, less predictable route before they ever reach out, and understanding that route is one of the most important things a business can do to grow.
Today’s Buying Journey Looks Different
Today’s buyers have endless ways to research before making a decision. They’re comparing websites, reading reviews, checking social media, and looking for businesses that feel trustworthy. By the time they contact you, they’ve often already decided whether you’re worth talking to.
According to Google’s research on the “Zero Moment of Truth,” consumers now engage with an average of ten or more sources of information before making a purchase decision, a number that has roughly doubled over the past several years. For service businesses, especially, where the stakes feel personal, and the purchase isn’t easily returned, that research phase can be extensive. People are not reaching out to gather information anymore. They are reaching out after they have already gathered it, which means by the time someone contacts your business, your marketing has either already earned their trust, or it hasn’t.
How many touchpoints does it actually take?
The commonly cited benchmark in marketing research is between six and eight touchpoints before a prospect converts, though for higher-consideration purchases, that number climbs significantly higher. What matters as much as the number is the nature of those touchpoints and where they fall in the journey.
Research from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute has found that buyers spend the majority of their decision-making time in what researchers call the “buying journey” before ever engaging with a sales process. During that time, they are consuming content, reading reviews, checking social media, and forming opinions about which businesses seem credible and which don’t. The touchpoints that carry the most weight at this stage tend to be the ones that feel least like marketing: an honest review from a real customer, a piece of genuinely useful content, a website that answers the questions they were already asking.
Paid advertising plays an important role in this ecosystem, but rarely as the sole driver of conversion. Its strongest function is introducing your business to people who didn’t know you existed and re-engaging people who already have. The conversion itself is usually the result of everything that comes after that first impression.
Why a strong marketing mix matters more than ads alone
There is a version of marketing that treats paid advertising as the whole strategy. Run the ads, get the leads, measure the return, repeat. For some businesses in some markets, this works reasonably well in the short term. But it leaves the business entirely dependent on paid traffic, with no organic presence building underneath it, no content establishing authority, and no trust infrastructure to support the conversion once someone clicks through.
A strong marketing mix works differently. Each channel has a specific job to do, and those jobs are not interchangeable. Paid ads are excellent at creating awareness and capturing intent. SEO builds long-term visibility that compounds over time and captures people who are actively searching for what you offer. Content establishes expertise and answers the questions buyers are already asking before they reach out. Reviews provide social proof at the exact moment someone is deciding whether to trust you. Email maintains a relationship with people who are interested but not yet ready to act. Social media keeps your brand present and human across the months it might take for a prospect to move from awareness to decision.
When these channels work together, each one reinforces the others. Someone sees your ad, visits your website, reads a blog post, checks your reviews, follows you on Instagram, and then, weeks or months later, receives an email that arrives at exactly the right moment. That sequence is not accidental. It is the result of a marketing mix built around how people actually buy.
The role of each channel in the modern journey
Social media operates at the top of the funnel, where its primary job is creating familiarity. People are not typically on Instagram or Facebook looking to make a purchase decision. They are scrolling, and your content is either worth pausing for, or it isn’t. Over time, consistent social media presence builds the kind of low-stakes familiarity that makes a prospect feel like they already know you when they eventually need what you offer.
SEO works differently, capturing people at the moment they are actively looking. When someone searches “physical therapists near me” or “how to choose a financial advisor,” they have already identified a need. Showing up well in those results and providing genuinely useful content when they land on your page positions your business as the credible answer to a question they were already asking.
Your website is where trust is either built or lost. After a prospect has found you through any channel, the website is almost always the next stop, and it does significant work in determining whether they continue. A site that loads quickly, communicates clearly, and makes the next step obvious supports conversion. One that is slow, confusing, or outdated quietly loses people who might otherwise have been strong leads.
Reviews carry a disproportionate amount of weight relative to how much attention most businesses pay to them. According to BrightLocal’s Consumer Review Survey, 98% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, and the majority trust them as much as a personal recommendation. At the comparison and trust-building stages of the journey, reviews are often the deciding factor between two otherwise similar options.
Email is the channel that keeps your business present for the people who are not ready yet. Most prospects who encounter your business for the first time are not in buying mode. They may be researching, comparing, or simply not be at the stage where a purchase makes sense. A well-maintained email list gives you a way to stay in touch with that audience over time, so that when they are ready, your business is the one they think of first.
How consistent marketing supports every stage
The common thread running through all of this is consistency. A single great ad does not build the kind of trust that converts a cautious buyer. A single blog post does not establish authority. A handful of reviews from three years ago does not reassure someone who is making a decision today. What builds trust, authority, and familiarity is sustained presence across multiple channels over time.
Businesses that market consistently create a compounding advantage. Each piece of content adds to their search visibility. Each review adds to their social proof. Each social post adds to their brand familiarity. Each email maintains a relationship that might convert months from now. None of these things happens overnight, but together they build a marketing infrastructure that supports conversion at every stage of the journey, not just the moment someone clicks an ad.
The businesses that grow most reliably are not always the ones with the biggest budgets or the most creative campaigns. They are the ones that show up consistently enough, across enough of the right channels, that by the time a prospect is ready to buy, the choice feels obvious.
Building a marketing mix that works
Understanding the modern customer journey is one thing. Building the marketing infrastructure to support it is another. Most businesses know they should be doing more with content, reviews, and email, but between running the actual business and managing day-to-day demands, those channels are the first to get deprioritized.
That is where having a partner rather than a collection of vendors makes a real difference. When strategy, content, paid media, and SEO are managed together under a unified approach, the channels reinforce each other the way they are supposed to. When they are siloed across different providers or handled reactively, the compounding effect never fully develops.
The modern customer journey is longer and more self-directed than it used to be. Meeting buyers where they are, across every stage of that journey, is not optional for businesses that want to grow consistently. It is work.
If your marketing feels more reactive than strategic, or if you are investing in some channels but not seeing them connect into something larger, that is a good place to start a conversation. McLeod partners with businesses to build marketing that works across the full journey, not just the moment someone clicks.
