For years, marketers built their strategies around a clear and visible funnel: awareness, consideration, conversion.
It worked well in a web where behaviors were traceable, people clicked links, visited pages, signed up, bought a product, or bounced.
We were able to track almost all of it, and we had attribution models that helped show return on investment (ROI) to specific channels (with varying degrees of accuracy and certainty).
The journey hasn’t disappeared, but it’s harder to detect, and it has become a lot more convoluted.
People are still moving through a decision-making process; they’re just doing it across fragmented platforms, using tools that don’t always leave clear signals behind.
Whether it’s asking ChatGPT, browsing Reddit, scrolling through TikTok, or speaking to a voice assistant, user behavior is fluid, multimodal, and largely invisible to traditional analytics.
We can no longer assume that a user’s next step will be a trackable one.
They might ask an AI model for a summary. They might compare products across 10 different surfaces before ever visiting your site.
They might never fill out a form, but forward the website to a colleague, and they’ll fill out the form as a single session, tracked as “Direct,” having never been on your site before.
That doesn’t mean the funnel is gone; it’s just become almost untrackable.
What The Funnel Actually Is
The traditional marketing funnel breaks down the customer journey into three core stages:
- Top of Funnel (TOFU): Awareness-level content that introduces your brand or product to a broad audience. Think blog posts, social media content, or explainer videos.
- Middle of Funnel (MOFU): Consideration-level content that helps users evaluate options. This includes comparison guides, product demos, and email nurturing sequences.
- Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Conversion-level content aimed at driving action, like purchase pages, pricing breakdowns, or testimonials.
Marketers used to map content to each of these stages, creating clear pathways for users to follow from curiosity to conversion.
That model still applies, but how users move between these stages is now anything but linear.
What Multimodal Search Really Means
Multimodal search isn’t just about the difference between typing a query, speaking it out loud, or snapping a photo.
It’s about the way users fluidly engage across different platforms and media types to explore, evaluate, and decide.
A single purchase journey might involve:
- Googling a general topic.
- Watching explainer videos on TikTok or YouTube.
- Reading niche discussions on Reddit.
- Browsing listings on Amazon.
- Comparing reviews on third-party blogs.
- Asking follow-up questions to an AI assistant.
Even Amazon itself is leaning into AI-led search with Rufus, its generative shopping assistant. This is multimodal search.
Image from author, August 2025
Google is layering AI Overviews and AI Mode into its core search experience, offering summarized insights and altering the sequence of discovery.
Users no longer click 10 blue links. They skim summaries, compare sources at a glance, and dive deeper only if curiosity is triggered and a user acts on it.
Multi-modal means multi-platform, multi-surface, and multi-behavior.
It requires us to plan for nonlinear journeys, where influence happens in places we don’t control, and impact happens without attribution.
This shift demands a change in how we create and distribute content:
- We must think beyond a single persona or journey and instead design for overlapping intent signals.
- We must publish in formats that match user behavior across channels: text, video, audio, structured data, and conversational prompts.
- We must recognize that old attribution models, based on last click or visible touchpoints, no longer reflect reality.
If we design content around one channel, one format, or one assumed path, we’re missing the majority of how people actually search, explore, and decide.
The challenge now is to understand user intent without seeing every step. To stay present in invisible paths. To meet people in the middle of journeys we can’t fully track.
The funnel still matters. But, reaching people inside it requires a different mindset, one that’s built for anticipation, not just observation and end goal metrics.
Multimodal As The Gateway For The Next Generation
For the next generation of internet users, multimodal isn’t just a feature; it’s the foundation.
Gen Z is growing up with tools that let them search the world visually, conversationally, and socially.
They don’t see these modes as alternatives to traditional search; they see them as default behaviors.
Google’s data reflects this shift. Gen Z (18-24 year olds) is currently the fastest-growing demographic using Google Search.
And among that cohort, 1 in 10 searches now begin with a visual interaction, and using tools like Google Lens or Circle to Search.
Image from author, August 2025
Instead of typing a query, users highlight parts of an image, scan real-world objects, or interact directly with on-screen content.
This visual-first, intent-rich behavior is a window into how the next generation navigates information. It blends curiosity with immediacy – and it bypasses traditional keyword-driven journeys entirely.
Marketers need to understand this shift not as a niche use case, but as a sign of things to come.
If we’re not building content and experiences that match these native behaviors, we risk being invisible in the very spaces where influence now begins.
What This Means For SEOs And Marketers
Speak To The Whole Persona
Personas and audience segmentation still matter, maybe more than ever, but we can’t speak to people at just one stage or in one format.
Mental availability now has to be a core part of any digital marketing strategy.
It’s not about being everywhere for everyone, but about being present across enough moments and modes that your brand is part of the conversation when decisions are being made.
The old way of choosing a format, identifying a single funnel stage, and publishing content to fit is no longer enough.
We need to create for complexity. That means producing content that reaches both the 1% and the 99% of your target persona, ranging from niche, problem-aware research queries to broad, ambient brand mentions in trending content.
Think Beyond The Visible Funnel
Every digital touchpoint is a chance to build familiarity and relevance.
And in a landscape where visibility is often obscured, casting a wider, more thoughtful net across intent types, platforms, and formats is how you maximize your odds of being chosen, even if you never see the full journey play out.
Rethink Distribution And Domain Dependence
Content distribution now plays a critical role in both SEO and broader brand strategy.
We want our messaging to be present wherever users are searching, reading, watching, or asking questions. That means treating our website as one, but not the only, SEO and AI optimization asset.
In my opinion, content and SEO strategies that focus only on the owned domain are limiting their effectiveness.
Search engines and AI models are increasingly drawing context, citations, and understanding from a wide range of sources across the open web.
If your brand only shows up on your own site, you reduce your discoverability, authority, and influence.
To compete in the AI-shaped web, marketers need to distribute content intentionally across partner sites, third-party platforms, social channels, structured formats, and multimedia content ecosystems.
Visibility is earned across surfaces, not confined to a single domain.
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Featured Image: DETHAL/Shutterstock