According to HubSpot, a customer’s journey is “the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service”.
“Customer journey” might sound like a throwaway buzz-phrase, but it is a significant factor for any business to consider today. A business that thinks through the various stages its clients will go through when interacting with them has a much greater chance of converting “browsers” – potential customers who are simply looking at what you have to offer – into loyal, paying customers.
There is a common model used to show the stages a customer will generally go through in their journey with a business. It’s important to be aware of these stages for the purpose of marketing, sales, and basically anything else that involves interaction with prospective clients!
The first stage of the customer journey involves potential buyers first noticing your business. This could be in the form of branding or the products or services a business offers.
Today, one of the most common ways of gaining awareness comes through social media presence, blogs (like this!), webinars and email campaigns.
Gaining awareness isn’t simply a case of being active on, say, social media though. There’s competition to think about! Your marketing team will have to come up with ways of being noticed amongst your competitors, making your brand noticed and engaging people immediately.
Learn more about engaging clients and stopping the scroll with our tips for social media marketing!
This stage of the customer journey is where the aforementioned “browsers” come in. Customers begin to look into the various businesses that can solve their problem. This will often take the form of online searches, and this is where your online content like blogs, reviews and educational resources can tip the balance in your favour!
This involves different things to think about than the first stage when it comes to your customer. Whereas in the Awareness stage the thinking needs to be about grabbing attention and sticking in potential customers’ minds, here more weight needs to be afforded to substance. You need to convince potential customers that your business is the one they should trust to resolve whatever problem they’re looking to fix.
Without building some level of trust in your business at this stage you won’t find many (or any) customers moving to the next stage in their journey with you. Here’s a few ideas for building trust.
· Add value! This is the key, you must show potential customers what you can add to their lives. Show or tell people how your business or your products are the answer to their questions.
· Get your face out there – with content such as video you can “introduce” yourself and your team to potential clients before they’ve even met you. This gives you a head start over competitors if customers feel like they know you already!
· Client testimonials are great for showing a real-life example of your company solving a problem for one of your customers. It’s one thing hearing from you about how great your business is, but it’s even better to hear it from someone else.
After your marketing team has done its job capturing the attention of potential customers and engaging them with great content, it’s time for your sales team to come in.
If you’ve built trust with your customers using video then hopefully your sales team will have already been introduced. This is a great first step and makes their job that much easier when it comes to convincing people that your business is the one for them!
Once a customer has expressed interest then it’s time to seal the deal. This can be done with more value-adding content – competitive comparisons, demonstrations of your product, past stories of success, etc. – provided by your marketing team and delivered by your sales department.
This is your last chance to wow your customers, so make it worth it!
In the past the focus of most businesses has been on pre-sales tactics. Today, though, post-sale activities are becoming more important not only for securing return-clients, but for attracting new ones.
People look for reviews and referrals as indicators of the effectiveness of a solution that a business provides. This means customer satisfaction has to be high, and post-sale interaction is vital for this.
High customer satisfaction means better reviews, more referrals and consequently more sales. It also keeps individuals coming back to your business time and time again, especially if you’ve done your job making their customer journey slick and smooth!
Once you have these four stages of the customer journey sorted you will begin to see increased conversion rates and return customers as well as increased sales in general.
The relationship between your marketing and sales teams has to be closer than ever to carefully co-ordinate each stage to be successful. The marketing department must provide the sales team with the necessary content for securing sales, whilst the sales team should be providing feedback about the wants and needs of customers that should be included in marketing.
Give your customer journey the thought it deserves and you’ll see the results!
