OCALA, FL (352today.com) – For years, small businesses have been encouraged to chase the click—the instant metrics from Meta and Google that promise quick conversions and fast ROI. But when you compare that mindset to the actual consumer buying journey, a clear truth emerges: Consumer buying habits don’t begin with the click, and your marketing shouldn’t either.
The buying journey follows a familiar path:
Awareness → Consideration → Engagement → Conversion → Loyalty
Yet platform-driven dashboards only measure the last two stages, where the click happens. That narrow view hides the real impact of upper- and mid-funnel marketing—the channels that create demand long before a consumer visits a website or clicks on an ad.
Executives at Ad Results Media warn advertisers: Meta and Google operate closed systems defined by their audiences, set their own measurement rules, and then validate their results. As Gretchen Dubois notes, “When you’re optimizing inside a closed system, every lever you pull reinforces the illusion that the platform is performing.” In other words, the platforms take credit for being both the cause and the result.
Their campaigns show why marketers need a broader view. After a programmatic audio campaign, Ad Results Media saw a significant lift in branded and nonbranded search activity—and found that one in three paid search conversions happened after earlier audio exposure. Google claimed the click, but audio created the demand. This matches what we see at North Central Florida Media: Multi-channel campaigns regularly increase branded search and conversion rates, even when the last click happens somewhere else.
To grow sustainably, businesses must resist the temptation to only invest in what is instantly trackable. The real shift comes from understanding the full buying journey. Clicks are important, but they’re not the whole story.
The most successful marketers will be the ones who engage in smarter attribution, not just faster optimization. At North Central Florida Media, our goal is to help businesses build strategies that reflect how people make decisions, from first memory to final action.