Forget Funnels: Embrace the Power of AI-Driven, Nonlinear Customer Journeys with Signal-Based Marketing!

Today’s customer journeys are more like messy art than neat funnels, with many touch points across different channels.

Digital transformation has made these journeys unpredictable and not linear. This is according to research by the Boston Consulting Group. AI is speeding up this complexity.

The key takeaway is this: The real opportunity lies in being available consistently. You should genuinely be where your customers already are. It’s not about trying to control the journey.

Customers Flow Freely – They Move Everywhere!

The traditional marketing funnel suggests that customers go through a clear path. They notice a product, consider it, and then finally buy it. This idea makes it easier to organize presentations and understand where sales come from. Yet, it doesn’t match how people really shop.

An analysis by MarTech revealed that 73% of retail shoppers now use different channels at the same time. Shoppers increasingly combine channels during their shopping journey.

For example, customers look up products on TikTok while heading to a competitor’s store. They read reviews on G2 while a salesperson is talking. Alternatively, they ask ChatGPT for advice while waiting for your webpage to load.

This behavior is linked to something called “cognitive offloading.” When faced with difficult choices, people break their research into smaller parts using various sources to make things easier. Your customers aren’t being hard to deal with; they’re just acting like normal human beings.

The result? A wider variety of ways for customers to discover and research products.

Is Social Media the New Search Engine?

The lines between different channels are becoming less clear. Social media has mainly been a way for brands to connect with people. It is now important for searching as well.

46% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials prefer finding information on social media instead of using search engines. This is a big change because social media suggests content before users even realize they want it. It’s like going to a library for a specific book. It’s also akin to walking into a store and finding a book you didn’t know about.

This is connected to a concept called “peripheral route processing.” When we browse, like when scrolling through TikTok, we are more influenced by things like what’s popular. We are swayed by visuals and emotions rather than carefully examining facts.

Additionally, social media platforms like LinkedIn or YouTube help improve how brands are seen in AI searches.

All these factors explain why a 15-second TikTok can lead to more purchases than a lengthy 3,000-word research article. This shows we need to change the way we think about different channels.

Every Touchpoint: A Chance to Build or Destroy Trust

The average customer can come across your brand in various ways in a single day. They see a comment on Reddit or watch a TikTok video. An AI chatbot or a targeted ad also introduces them to your brand.

Research from MarTech says that today’s communication channels are “layered” instead of just one after the other. Each layer gives a chance to connect but also a chance to lose that connection.

The key to success is being consistent.

It’s not just about having the same logo everywhere (though that helps). It means ensuring consistency in communication. Whether a customer interacts with you in a ChatGPT reply, the main message must stay the same. It must also stay the same when they watch you on an X thread. The primary message must stay consistent. The way you express it differ. The values and facts should also stay the same.

Consistency builds trust, and trust is what matters most when you can’t control what people say about you.

Take Apple as an example of consistency across many points of contact. Whether you’re in an Apple Store or watching a YouTube review of an iPhone, the message is always clear. If you ask Siri about features, expect simplicity, high quality, and seamless integration.

They can’t control every conversation about their products, but their consistent message makes it hard for others to misrepresent them.

Uncovering the 5 Shocking Signals That Reveal True Customer Behavior

While everyone else is trying to patch their broken funnel back together, the smartest brands are abandoning it entirely. They’re replacing linear thinking with something radically different. They use a unified signal system. This system treats every customer interaction as intelligence, not just another touch point to improve.

The framework is deceptively simple. Instead of forcing teams to think in stages, you organize around five core signals that actually reflect how customers behave in 2025:

• Search signals tell you what customers want before they know your brand exists. This isn’t just SEO data. It includes AI search queries, voice assistant requests, and the questions people ask their favored platform at 2 a.m., whether it happens on Google, Perplexity, or TikTok.
• Traffic signals reveal how people actually move through digital spaces. Forget last-click attribution. This is about understanding the full journey – including the 70% of touches that happen on platforms you don’t control. It’s knowing that a Reddit thread can drive as much qualified traffic as your PPC campaign.
• Behavior signals show what people do, not what they say. Cart abandonment is a behavior signal. So is spending 12 minutes on your pricing page before moving directly to a competitor. Traditional analytics miss most meaningful behaviors because they only measure what happens on your domain.
• Social signals capture the conversations you’re not part of. Every sub-tweet, every LinkedIn comment, every Discord discussion about your category is data. As Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan explained, 40% of young people avoid using Google Maps or Search. They don’t use them when they’re looking for a place for lunch. Yet many companies treat social listening as a vanity metric exercise.
• Brand signals measure perception velocity, or how quickly sentiment shifts, spreads, and sticks. This includes everything from branded search volume to the tone of AI-generated summaries about your company. When ChatGPT describes your competitor as “innovative” but calls you “established,” that’s a brand signal that influences future market share.

Why This Shift Could Change Everything

Funnel-based thinking creates organizational blindness:

• Your SEO team optimizes for search without knowing what your social team sees. 
• Your brand team launches campaigns without understanding behavior patterns. 
• Everyone’s optimizing their slice while the whole pie shrinks.

Signal-based organizations see more. 

When search signals show rising interest in a competitor’s feature, traffic signals confirm people are researching alternatives. Behavior signals reveal they’re comparing prices. Social signals suggest frustration with your product. Brand signals show sentiment declining. You don’t need six meetings to figure out you have a problem. The signals tell a unified story that demands immediate action.

The operational impact is profound. It directly addresses what Adweek’s 2025 CMO Summit identified as marketing’s top pain point: “managing fragmented customer experiences.”

From Chaos to Clarity: The Action Plan That Changes Everything

Ready to rise above the chaos? Here’s your action plan:

1. Audit your AI presence: Search for your brand on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI tools. What comes up? What citations are being used? Spend an hour this week understanding how AI now shows you.
2. Create platform-native content: Stop re-purposing. Your TikTok strategy shouldn’t be your Instagram strategy with different dimensions. Each platform has unique discovery mechanisms, audience expectations, and content formats. Respect them.
3. Build a single source of truth: Create a comprehensive and structured content hub. This hub serves as the definitive source for all product information. It includes FAQs and brand messaging. This isn’t just for customers. It’s for your own teams and the AI systems that inform customers.
4. Implement cross-channel analytics: Traditional attribution is over. You need tools that can track influence across fragmented touch points. Look into unified marketing intelligence platforms, like Semrush Enterprise that can connect signals across search, traffic, behavior, social, and brand. 
5. Target strategic gaps: Your social media manager needs to have visibility of SEO. Your SEO team needs to understand AI improvement. Your content team needs to be a part of all of it. Break down the silos before they break you.

The promise is straightforward: 

• Fewer silos because everyone’s watching the same signals. 
• Clearer actions because signals tell stories, not just statistics. 
• Faster answers because you’re not waiting for monthly reports. 
• Earlier risk detection because signals shift before sales do.

Are You Prepared to Embrace the Signal-Based Thinking Revolution?

The funnel suggests that customers move in a straight line. However, signals show that customers can move in different directions at the same time.

The brands that will succeed will use every opportunity wisely. They won’t just focus on attractive social media posts or solely depend on high search rankings.

The key now is to always be present where customers are. This should be done in whichever way they like, and the messages should connect with them in that format.