- They see your ad while doom-scrolling Instagram. They click.
- Something distracts them away from their phone.
- They remember later in the evening (or 3 weeks later) thanks to a Trigger Event.
- They Google your company name.
- They visit your homepage, not the conversion-focused landing page you intended them to hit.
The modern consumer journey according to DemandCurve:
Between screenshots and post save buttons, everything is a bookmarking app now.
Marketing is like gardening. You plant a bunch of seeds and sometimes the best plant comes from the compost heap.
Everything Is Billboards Now
Kieran Flanagan posted on LinkedIn:
SEO isn’t dying. It’s evolving into TV ads.
Everyone sees your Ad, and no one clicks it. AI assistants turn search into a billboard.
To which I added:
Getting a click or a sale isn’t the purpose of each individual ad or touchpoint. It’s about the aggregate impact.
Each exposure is a seed planted in the mind of the audience member. A field of flowers makes a bigger impact than a solitary bloom.
This can be an uncomfortable shift for performance marketers that have been mainlining real-time data and ROAS numbers for years. It’s harder to measure the impact of exposure and reach but we don’t want to stop at counting impressions or mistaking correlation for causation.
But I’ve been giving my Google Ads ecommerce team member a hard time for years that my social ads work with unimpressive ROAS numbers has been driving easy sales to his high performing channel. I put in the work, he reaps the glory. (It is a joke, but the best jokes are rooted in the truth (or complete absurdity, but that’s not relevant here).)
But now even a Google Search isn’t the obvious end point.
Our role as marketers is to tell a story across the channels we operate on for a brand to establish familiarity so that when a customer is about to make a decision we come to mind. Whether that happens via them actively seeking us out or anchoring on our name in a consideration set.
Make an impression. Provide value. Play the long game.
Yesterday I asked if Amazon leaving Google Shopping is “temporary or a sign that the channel wasn’t worth the money?”
Google’s dominance in product discovery is under pressure as consumer behavioral shifts and genAI tools reshape how people search, shop, and buy.
The Year of the Splinter is now on year 3 and the era of the mega platform is over.
Google could become this cycle’s Microsoft.
via EMARKETER
Amazon has turned off Google Shopping (ads and free from the sound of it).
Auction pressure has reduced dramatically between this and the Temu and Shein pullbacks. Should mean a lot more opportunity.
Now the big question, is this temporary or a sign that the channel wasn’t worth the money?
This is interesting
In a recent update, Google has started indexing and sourcing Instagram content.
Now posts and reels function like blog posts from an SEO perspective.
For professional accounts this could mean approaching it more like Pinterest than TikTok.
attached screenshot from IG announcing the update found online
