Most photographers have heard about the marketing funnel. It’s that classic model where prospects enter at the top, move to consideration in the middle, then convert at the bottom. But here’s the blunt truth: that tidy funnel doesn’t match how people actually discover, evaluate, and choose creative services today.
Today’s customer journey looks more like a pinball machine than a straight funnel – and that has big implications for how you grow your photography business online.
What the “Pinball Customer Journey” Really Is
In the old funnel model, a potential client goes from awareness to interest to decision in a predictable sequence. That was neat, but it’s no longer how real human brains behave.
Now:
- Prospects bounce between platforms: Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, Google search, AI tools, newsletters, reviews… and often back again.
- They move non-linearly – jumping from discovery to deep research to peer talk to comparison shopping many times before deciding.
- Even right before conversion they might bounce back to social proof, search, or community forums to validate what they’re thinking.
It’s exactly like a pinball machine: buyers are the ball, marketing channels are bumpers and flippers, and your job is to light up the board so prospects don’t fall out of play before they become clients.
Why Funnels Still Sound Good but Don’t Work in Practice
Funnels feel intuitive because they promise structure. But they hinge on a key assumption: prospects all enter at roughly the same place and proceed through phases in order. That’s simply not true anymore.
Instead, people:
- Start with friends’ recommendations, community forums, or niche newsletters.
- Jump to search engines when they want specific answers.
- Then scroll social feeds, watch video content, ask ChatGPT, and revisit prior sources.
- They may repeat this loop many times before ever visiting your website or contacting you.
This reality makes measuring attribution almost impossible with old-school models, and traps creative businesses into thinking that only clicks or sessions matter.
The Rise of Pinball Search Behavior Too
It’s not just the journey that’s pinball-shaped – individual search behavior itself has changed.
Studies show modern SERPs (search engine results pages) are packed with different elements like knowledge panels, featured snippets, videos, map packs, and AI summaries. Users’ eyes bounce around these varied elements in a nonlinear pattern, which shifts what gets seen and clicked.
That means SEO isn’t just about ranking #1 anymore. It’s about being visible across the spaces where people find answers, whether that’s direct search results, AI summaries, or related resources they encounter elsewhere.
7 Real Problems the Pinball Journey Creates
When you think in terms of pinball instead of a funnel, a bunch of practical marketing problems crop up that the old model never helped you solve. According to Rand Fishkin’s SparkToro follow-up, common issues include:
- Targeting the wrong audience or misunderstanding where they bounce.
- Messaging that isn’t consistent across channels and content.
- “Demand only” marketing without brand building.
- Missing key channels entirely, leaving holes in your visibility.
- Obsession with last-click attribution that ignores the full journey.
- Internal team silos that fragment your message rather than unify it.
- False confidence in surveys that ask customers to recall how they found you (people don’t remember reliably).
Each of these is a subtle but real leak in your conversion machine – the site, social profiles, content, and reputation you’re trying to build.
What This Means for Your Content Strategy
If the classic funnel is obsolete, what should you replace it with?
1. Think multi-touch, not linear
Your audience won’t read one blog post then fill out a contact form. They’ll see you on a social platform, then in search results, maybe in a newsletter, and perhaps in a community conversation before taking action. Being present at multiple touchpoints matters far more than dominating just one.
2. Focus on helpfulness over persuasion
People don’t want generic marketing anymore; they want relevance and clarity. Whether it’s a blog post that teaches them something, a video that answers common questions, or a social story that showcases your personality – useful content wins.
3. Build brand trust early
Because prospects bounce around so much, the first place they encounter you doesn’t need to be on your website. It could be a community post, an AI answer that references your content, or a podcast interview. What matters is that they start to recognize and trust you.
4. Measure what matters
Clicks and sessions are nice, but they aren’t the whole story. Look at engagement quality:
- email newsletter signups
- time on key pages
- repeat visits
- social engagement
- and especially inquiries and booked jobs.
This aligns with your own advice that traffic alone won’t save your photography business – trust, clarity, and conversion do.
How This Integrates With Your Photography Business Funnel
Your older article on photography business funnels still holds valuable lessons about clarity and friction, even if the shape of the journey has changed. Here’s how to integrate pinball thinking with the things you already teach:
- Define your niche and ideal audience so you know where they actually hang out online.
- Remove friction on your website by fixing leaky pages (like confusing navigation or weak CTAs) so that when people do arrive, they convert.
- Use your website as the destination of a broader journey, not the only path. The site still converts, but discovery might happen on platforms you don’t control.
Think of your site as part of your brand’s home base, not the only place prospects can engage with you.
Bottom Line: Be Strategic, Not Linear
Here’s the take-away for photographers:
The world has moved past the clean funnel. Buyers bounce around. They discover you in unpredictable ways. And they decide based on trust built over time across multiple touchpoints.
That means your marketing has to be:
- Visible across channels
- Consistent in message
- Helpful instead of salesy
- Measured on conversion metrics that matter
And it means letting go of the idea that there’s one “right” path from discovery to booking.
Because today, that path isn’t a straight line, it’s a pinball machine.
If you want help applying this to your photography business (from refining your SEO to creating the right content mix or rebuilding your website so it actually converts in this messy journey), just let me know – I’ve helped hundreds of photographers make this real profitably.
