The Persuasion Journey: How Marketers Really Convince Us to Move
If marketing has one job, it’s this: get people to do something. Buy the thing. Vote for the person. Book the trip. That’s it. Everything else is dressing.
The “consumer decision journey” is the standard corporate playbook for this. It shows up in slideshows, in strategy decks, in consultant handbooks. Awareness. Consideration. Evaluation. Conversion. Neat little arrows.
But nobody actually lives their life like that. The path to buying gum at the grocery store is: see gum, grab gum, pay. The path to booking a vacation is: see a TikTok, tell a friend, daydream about hot springs, shuffle calendars, then hunt down flights. Two wildly different shapes. Same model? Doesn’t add up.
Enter the Persuasion Journey
The Persuasion Journey still has the same finish line as the consumer journey: get someone to take action. But the map looks different. Instead of a corporate four-step ladder, it’s built around how people actually move through their lives and edge closer to doing the thing you want them to do.
For example: Swayable, a creative testing platform, works with major movie studios. Their end goal is straightforward: sell tickets. But they don’t just ask “Did the trailer create awareness?” because awareness without intent is useless when your product only lives in theaters for a few weeks. Instead, the studio’s Persuasion Journey is built like this: 1) Interest in seeing the film. 2) Interest in seeing the film in theaters. 3) Interest in seeing the film in theaters on opening weekend.
Every step gets sharper. Every step moves the audience closer to handing over money on the exact weekend that matters most.
And notice what’s left out. “Awareness” isn’t even on the map. Because awareness without urgency is just noise. The studio only cares about one thing: are you watching it on their timeline, or will you wait until it drops on streaming six months later?
Visit Iceland’s campaigns show a totally different Persuasion Journey, because booking a trip is nothing like buying a ticket. Their map goes: Dream. Plan. Book. Three verbs that perfectly describe how people shift from daydreaming about glaciers to actually showing up at Keflavík Airport with a suitcase.
So, how do you actually build one of these?
I asked Jason Toups, Swayable’s Director of Client Success, how his team does it. His advice starts simple:
Start with the end in mind. Figure out the “do.” Not the “think” or the “feel.” The “do.” Buy a muffin. Book a flight. Show up on opening weekend. That’s your final step.
Work backwards. What do people need to believe in order to do that thing? If you want them to visit Iceland, they might need to believe it’ll be an adventure. If you want them to see a movie in theaters, they might need to believe it’ll be fun with friends. Each belief is a step closer to the finish line. These steps aren’t perfectly linear. They’re more like checkpoints. A parent, for instance, might need to hold two beliefs at once: that a film is safe for kids and still entertaining for adults. Only when both beliefs are locked in will they buy a ticket.
Track the journey. Set up metrics that actually test whether the content is working. For Iceland, that might look like:
Step 1: Dream
“How interested are you in visiting Iceland?”
“Which countries are at the top of your holiday list?”
Step 2: Plan
“How likely are you to research a trip?”
“How likely are you to ask a friend to join you?”
Step 3: Book
“How likely are you to actually buy the ticket?”
By testing content at each step, you can see exactly where the chain breaks. Maybe people are inspired to dream, but not planning. Maybe they’re planning, but never pulling the trigger. That’s where you put the work.
The English muffin story is a perfect example. Jason told me about a popular brand that wanted to drive more frequent grocery purchases. Their Persuasion Journey revealed a hidden belief: people only saw muffins as a breakfast food.
So the brand had to build new beliefs: that muffins could be sandwiches, snacks, hors d’oeuvres. Suddenly, new content ideas were unlocked. Party-snack recipes. Dinner-time ads. Packaging that literally called them “Anytime Muffins.” The Persuasion Journey gave them the map. The tests told them which routes worked.
And when you don’t know where to start? Jason’s advice is to do something most marketers don’t: stop being a marketer. Be a customer. Go shop for your own product. Sit in your own theater. Book your own trip. Ask yourself: what would I need to believe before I’d actually take this action?
That exercise taught Swayable more about its own product than any sales call ever could.
And that’s the point. A Persuasion Journey isn’t a rigid formula. It’s a way to line up how people really live with what you want them to do. If you can map that gap, and then close it with content that works, you’re doing more than building awareness. You’re getting someone to move.