It amazes me how many marketers still cling to the image of a linear funnel for the customer journey. Do you know of anyone whose path to purchase just proceeded smoothly from awareness to consideration to conversion. Real life just isn't like that.
A much more apt visualization of the customer journey is a Rube Goldberg machine designed to propel a single marble (representing your targeted customer) to a designated endpoint, which in the case of businesses would represent the conversion of purchase. A Rube Goldberg machine is not typically designed for a direct, linear path.
Aiming to visualize your customer journeys? Are you picturing funnels? Forget about it! Funnels are wholly inadequate to represent a journey that is far from linear without a lot of recursive steps along the way.
A much more apt visualization of the customer journey is a Rube Goldberg machine designed to propel a single marble (representing your targeted customer) to a designated endpoint. In this case, that's , the conversion to purchase.
A Rube Goldberg machine is not typically designed for a direct, linear path.In fact, the setup for such machines lead the marble on a merry dance in which it moves in multiple directions as it comes into contact with different objects that push, pull, spin, and redirect it.
Set it up
In the same way, a customer's journey may begin with a single push. But it can only continue if the framework to keep up the momentum is planned and put into place by someone who understands where an email is needed, where a case study would drive one forward, and also when to give the marble some time to just roll a bit until it hits your next lever.
You don't just build the frames on the fly once the journey begins, which would be tantamount to leaving everything in the hands of your sales rep. Instead, you plan them out ahead of time, so the sales rep is only one of the levers in the whole machine.
See the video below for one such example, and keep your eye on the blue marble.
The same channel has multiple variations of a blue marble's journey from start to endpoint with different touchpoints pushing it along. That's also a great reminder that not every customer should be directed on the same path. Some will be ready sooner and some only later. You need to have several different maps available to suit your different customers. So think segmentation if not fully tailored personalization.
You won't always succeed
One final lesson to derive from Rube Goldberg machines as customer journeys is the fact that a lot of careful planning and setup can go into it without arriving at the desired result of a marble landing in the cup. This happens with the best-laid plans for purchase journeys, as well.
Various things can come up in life that alter the path you were counting on. All builders of Rube Goldberg machines encounter setbacks and failures along the way when things don't go according to plan. You have to be prepared to accept that possibility and work through it.
For example, your prospect's business might have taken a major hit that makes it necessary for him to put off the purchase. That's a setback, but it can be merely a temporary one if you take note of the situation and get a sense of when your customer will be ready to resume the journey.
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