.png)
Growth is no longer created through targeted advertising and clever messaging. Successful advertising has shifted from messages that interrupt the purchase journey to experiences that ignite the journey.
Questus |
Brand Champions White Paper 01
JOURNEY-BASED MARKETING SOLVES THE INDUSTRY’S BIGGEST PROBLEM
It’s well-documented that the average person is exposed to up to 5,000 branded messages per day.¹ Less well known—but more important—is that 85% of those ads are ignored or forgotten.²
Leading brands understand that the old playbook of shouting for attention at the top of the funnel or pushing for the hard sell at the bottom no longer works. Consumers have tuned out the noise. What’s needed now is a smarter blend of advertising and content: not content that interrupts, but content that guides. Content that adds value at every stage of the journey, evolving with the audience instead of repeating the same message on loop.
The truth is, in many categories, 99% of the decision-making doesn’t happen at the top or bottom—it happens in between.³ But calling it the “mid-funnel” oversimplifies what’s really a complex, multi-step process shaped by emotional and functional needs.
Winning brands are mapping that journey, identifying unmet moments, and creating empowering content that fulfills those unmet needs. Not by repeating the same message, but by unfolding a narrative: one that builds trust, earns attention, acquires customers and builds brand champions.
It’s well-documented that the average person is exposed to up to 5,000 branded messages per day. Less well known—but more important—is that 85% of those ads are ignored or forgotten.
JOURNEYS ENABLE BRANDS TO SHOW UP AT THE MOMENTS THAT MATTER
Today’s audiences no longer interact with brands through one or two key touchpoints. Especially for high-consideration purchases, the journey can stretch across 10 to 20 hours for consumers, or even hundreds of hours in B2B. Throughout the journey, there are critical moments that matter—moments where the prospective customers have specific unmet emotional and functional needs.
Consider the automotive industry, which is emblematic of high consideration categories. On average, car buyers spend 13 hours researching a vehicle over six months. A manufacturer investing heavily in traditional advertising may reach a prospective customer with twelve 30-second messages across television, social media, streaming and podcasts.
I think we can all agree that twelve interruptions is past the point of diminishing returns. It’s downright annoying. The bigger point is that even if the ads are great, those twelve repetitive interruptions only equal six minutes of engagement in the 13-hour journey. That leaves 99% of the purchase journey without direct brand influence!
Almost the entire journey is available for brands to make a truly meaningful connection and it’s often where the competition isn’t even showing up. Interruptive advertising might be enough to get people into the consideration set funnel but not through the purchase journey.
99% of the decision-making doesn’t happen at the top or bottom of the funnel. But calling it the “mid-funnel” oversimplifies what’s really a complex, multi-step process shaped by emotional and functional needs.
JOURNEYS CREATE MATHEMATICAL LEVERAGE FOR DRIVING GROWTH
Journey maps are the single most powerful tool for enabling brands to finally deliver upon the simple promise of sharing the right content to the right person at the right time. They enable brands to unlock mathematical leverage for generating unparalleled ROI by investing in content and experiences that meet customer needs, often in places where competitors aren’t investing at all.
Traditional marketing funnels typically include three stages: awareness, interest, and conversion. But real-world consumer journey maps often reveal a dozen or more discrete stages, each shaped by specific need states, messages, channels and measurement.
Journey maps solve this by synthesizing the full spectrum of available data—both quantitative and qualitative. This can include paid media, social analytics, website analytics, behavioral data, third-party data, brand tracking studies, attitudinal surveys, qualitative research, and secondary research.
JOURNEYS REQUIRE HUMAN CREATIVITY FUELED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Virtually no organization has access to all of this data, so journey mapping is a human-powered initiative that requires synthesizing disparate and missing data into cohesive findings. Even in an era of AI-driven insights, journey mapping remains both an art and a science. AI can accelerate data collection and surface patterns, but it still takes human intelligence to translate that data into actionable insights.
Presentation of results is equally important. At the executive level, journey maps need to succinctly identify and prioritize the opportunities with minimal cognitive load. For the hands-on practitioners, journey maps are much more in-depth, enabling brands to map out years’ worth of content needs and become a foundational element for prioritizing investments in owned, earned and paid media.
Journey mapping is not a one-time exercise. It’s an ongoing process. Once maps are developed and new content and experiences are launched based on those insights, fresh data should be continuously collected and fed back into the system. This feedback loop allows brands to refine, adapt, and optimize the journey over time.
Journey maps create a strategic framework that guides decisive, ROI-driven investments in content and experience design. Done right, journey mapping is more than just a planning tool; it serves as a foundational capability, embedded into the operations and P&L of every successful modern brand.
Winning brands map the journey, identify unmet needs, and create empowering content that fulfills upon those needs.
JOURNEYS LEVERAGE THREE FORMS OF CONNECTED CONTENT
It’s not enough to simply map the journey and use it as a targeting tool. It requires a long-term commitment to creating content that is inspirational, educational, and functional—three distinct but interconnected pillars that form the foundation of modern, journey-based marketing.
It’s about enabling people to envision a better version of themselves (inspirational content), providing the tools to fulfill the vision (educational) and showing the unique value provided by the brand (functional).
Journey-based marketing is not simply about storytelling, it’s about story creation. Great brands are no longer built simply by telling stories about heroes. The combination of inspirational, educational and functional content enables people to become the heroes of their own journeys.
Unlike previous generations, this requires more than a few great ads and a bunch of social content and direct response ads that beg for attention. It’s about using data, analytics and creativity to connect inspirational, educational and functional content at each stage of the journey, not just repeating one big message over and over again.
JOURNEYS REQUIRE BRANDS OVERCOME CORPORATE MUSCLE MEMORY
Modern marketing isn’t about grabbing attention for 30 seconds. It’s about earning trust across 30 touchpoints. Even today, it’s astonishing how many marketers behave as if consumers are still patiently watching TV commercials, admiring banner ads, or attentively waiting through YouTube pre-rolls. This kind of muscle memory persists in corporate America, anchored in blind faith in the decades-old reach-and-frequency model.
This archaic methodology is based in a world that no longer exists. The leaders of our industry were trained to use tools that worked brilliantly for 100 years—up until they didn’t.
For complex categories—in which purchase journeys are long, detailed, and emotional—there are far more efficient, empowering ways to connect. Brands need to stop doubling down on disruption and start building systems that guide, support, and inspire across the entire journey.
Our beloved industry is growing up. It’s no longer about shouting louder; it’s about showing up better. Today’s consumers don’t want to be hunted. They want to be helped. They’re curating their own experiences, actively seeking information, and filtering out anything that doesn’t serve them. The brands that win aren’t the ones that break through with force; they’re the ones that show up with relevance, at the right moment, at the right time.
¹ Louise Story, “Anywhere the Eye Can See, It’s Likely to See an Ad,” The New York Times, 2007.
² “Over 80% of ads fail to reach ‘attention threshold,’” Warc, 2022.
³' ⁴ “Cox Automotive’s Car Buyer Journey Study Shows Growing Frustration with Car Buying Process,“ Cox Automotive, 2023.
Explore More from Brand Champions
.png)
Great Brands Empower Humankind
As power moves from brands to consumers, companies focusing on authenticity and purpose, create lasting impact—one life at a time.
WATCH
.png)
Driving Unstoppable Growth by Leveraging the Purchase Journey
Uncover how journey-based marketing builds trust, drives action, and delivers results.
WATCH
The Massive Opportunity for Financial Services Marketing
Jeff Rosenblum and Jordan Berg address the challenge of standing out in the undifferentiated world of financial services.
WATCH
San Francisco, California
Inquiries: hello@questus.com
New business inquiries:
sales@questus.com
Press inquiries:
Copyright 2025 Questus, Inc. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy
Copyright 2025 Questus, Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy