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It’s gotten harder for marketers to understand how an ocean of digital touchpoints informs consumer purchase decisions. Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group Derek Rodenhausen discusses the firm’s new framework that maps influence according to four behavior types and how AI can help put it to work.
Knowing how your customer found their way to you is harder than it used to be. The old formula is now complicated by new streaming services, online shopping experiences, generative AI, social media, and more. But that complexity also offers more chances to connect.
New research from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that an effective approach doesn’t visualize the journey as linear, but as a state of constant activity: streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping. These four behaviors define today’s customer experience.
To that end, BCG has developed a framework, called “influence maps,” that can help marketers think differently about how people arrive at purchase decisions.
Success with influence maps will require a scaled approach to AI. BCG believes that only by leaning into AI can marketers effectively map the four behavior types and begin to execute media and creative campaigns against them.
In this conversation with Think with Google, Managing Director and Partner at BCG Derek Rodenhausen tees up the challenge and opportunity.
What do you see as the limits of traditional approaches marketers have used to understand their customers’ purchase journeys?
Digital transformation has fractured consumer journeys into new patterns that are unpredictable, nonlinear, and often quite different from one person to the next. While the traditional marketing funnel relegates certain types of media to specific parts of the funnel, today’s reality is that channels can play multiple roles throughout the journey. We need a more nuanced approach that accounts for this complexity. For example, the personalized nature of streaming means that ads can now support awareness, consideration, and even conversion. Knowing this, we can improve relevance, identify opportunities, and be more efficient.
Modern consumer journeys require a more flexible approach — one that values influence in addition to reach.
In reality, there are simply too many permutations of the journey to shoehorn into a neat linear path. Modern consumer journeys require a more flexible approach — one that values influence in addition to reach.
How do you define influence, and why should it take precedence over reach?
Influence is the ability to meaningfully impact decisions by earning consumer attention. That attention can be earned in a bunch of ways, including through relevance, trust and yes, reach too. While reach still matters greatly, we know that some high-reach media touchpoints come with less influence than others.
Marketers increasingly need to select touchpoints that drive both reach and influence.
Let’s talk about influence maps. What are they, and what advantages do they offer?
The influence map is a freshly imagined tool that reflects how consumer journeys have changed. Rather than require channels and specific media opportunities to conform to a specific stage of the customer journey, it focuses on these four behaviors — streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping — that occur at all stages of the journey. These four behaviors, encompassing the vast majority of digital-media activities, are charted on a vertical axis.
The horizontal axis echoes the classic marketing funnel by depicting phases of the consumer journey — from awareness to consideration to purchase — on a time horizon. There are three main differences between the linear funnel and the influence map: First, touchpoints extend across each stage of the consumer journey. Second, marketers maximize the degree of influence people experience at each stage, not just the number reached. Finally, the relative importance of each stage, or height, varies across the journey.
One advantage of influence maps is that they can visualize the brand’s ability to meaningfully impact decisions and tailor strategies for each unique consumer journey. This offers certain advantages over a rigid, sequential framework. I recently learned that on average, consumers interact with over 130 mobile touchpoints a day.1 That’s wild. And, when you add those to everything else they see, it’s clear that no two journeys look alike.
Source: Based on BCG analysis.
Could you explain how marketers use influence maps?
Absolutely. Marketers can define influence maps for the consumer segments they are most focused on, and then use them to prioritize investments across the four behavior types. Using consumer research and AI, marketers can create maps that reveal which behaviors carry the greatest influence when a message reaches the consumer at each stage of their journey.
To illustrate this, let’s consider the journeys of two different consumers. One is a digitally savvy consumer who discovers a product via a YouTube ad, reads online reviews, sees an in-store display, and finally converts online using a digital coupon. The second is a budget-minded shopper who finds out about a product, which leads to a search.
Source: Based on BCG analysis.
For a long time, it was hard to move beyond the linear funnel; it was a simple planning tool that worked well. But with AI we can be more nuanced in how we approach media planning and buying going forward.
Especially as we now know that 63% of consumers are open to purchasing brands they’ve never heard of before.2
Exactly. Ignoring these degrees of influence means leaving money on the table.
How can AI help marketers turn influence maps into action?
AI can help marketers evolve to an influence-map model by ensuring spend is directed to high-impact touchpoints at important moments and fine-tuning media placements and content for each consumer.
To drill down a bit, marketers can use AI to meet consumers where they are across streaming, shopping, scrolling, or searching, across the various stages of the journey. AI can then support media workflows, creating plans that maximize influence across channels and optimizing those campaigns once live. Finally, generative AI can also support creative content execution, testing creative ideas optimized for influence maps and helping to build thousands of assets necessary for success.
Speaking more broadly, what does success look like for AI adoption in marketing?
In our study with Google, involving more than 2,000 marketers, we learned that AI leaders account for almost one-fifth of companies.3 These organizations report 60% higher revenue growth than their peers and benefit from a more integrated view of the customer, meaning they bring together data from disparate sources. They also exhibit faster execution, greater budgeting agility, and other capabilities.4
The future belongs to marketers who master the interplay of reach and influence. Brands that embrace the influence-map framework and leverage AI can evolve from broad exposure to targeted, high-impact engagement that drives growth.
