No matter what type of business you have, each customer takes a journey with your brand.
Understanding the customer journey can benefit your marketing strategy, brand sales, and overall customer support. During this journey, customers go from hearing about your business to engaging with your business and then (ideally) sharing their positive experiences with friends and family. Bottom line, the customer journey is how customers go from only being a target audience to becoming a client and/or consumer for your product or service.
Before improving or optimizing the customer journey to guide your marketing strategy, it’s critical to first fully understand what the customer journey is.
A customer journey is made up of touchpoints, which are interactions between a brand and a customer at any point in the journey.
These touchpoints are any type of engagement a customer gives to your brand and can happen through both online and offline channels. They can be controlled by the brand or not and may happen at any point in the customer journey – before, during, or after a purchase. From brand awareness to purchase and loyalty, businesses use the customer journey to understand their customers’ experience. They also want to optimize their experiences at every touchpoint. Some examples of touchpoints can be direct and include websites, SEO, apps, advertising, email marketing, etc. Other examples can be indirect and include social media, blogs, forums, evaluation sites, reviews, etc.
The customer journey is a series of stages that a customer goes through.
Each customer journey stage influences how consumers feel about your product or service.
This contributes to their overall experience with your brand. Let’s break down each stage, from your customer’s first touchpoint to their last.
Stage 1:Awarness
Awareness: This stage occurs before the customer is even a customer. During the awareness stage, a potential buyer or customer becomes aware of your company, product and/or service and begins researching it. This might be passive, as in they might see an ad online or on social media, or active, as in they have a need and are searching for a solution using keywords.
Stage 2: Consideration
Consideration: In the consideration stage, the potential customer has been made aware of several possible solutions for their particular need and starts doing research. They evaluate their options and compare the solutions. That could mean they are looking at reviews on what others are saying on social media, asking for recommendations, comparing prices, and absorbing information on products and features they find on websites. They are incredibly receptive to information during this stage that can help them make the best decision.
Stage 3: Decision
Decision: During the decision stage (also known as the conversion stage), the customer has all the information they need on the various options available to them. This is the stage where the purchase is made. At this point, they’ve evaluated their solutions and decided which product or service best fits their needs (YOURS hopefully!) This can be something that takes a long time to decide upon, or it can be very quick. Ultimately, this stage is where a lead or prospect becomes a paying customer.
Stage 4: Adoption
Adoption: Customers reach the adoption stage when they start using the product or service they have purchased. It determines whether your customer will be satisfied with their purchase. This stage of the customer journey, also known as retention, is where you, the business owner, do whatever you can to help leave a lasting and positive impression on the customer. The goal is to entice them to purchase more. That means offering best-in-class customer support if they have any issues, but it also means being proactive with follow-up communications that offer personalized offers, information on new products or services, and potential rewards for their loyalty.
Stage 5: Advocacy
Advocacy: If you nail the adoption stage, which I totally believe that you can, you’ll have yourself a customer who not only WANTS to keep buying from you but will also ADVOCATE on your behalf. In the advocacy stage of the customer journey, the customer will become one of the most powerful tools to guide your marketing strategy. Why? Because they will actively recommend you to their friends, family, followers, and colleagues. And that means…Business Growth!
Because each customer journey stage contributes to the overall customer experience, it’s critical to have a positive experience at EVERY touchpoint.
Businesses can map their customer journey to better understand their customer’s experiences.
Customer journey mapping can help you create a marketing strategy that meets your customer’s needs. The visual representation of the customer experience can help you identify touchpoints, understand your customers, and build connections between sales, marketing, and operations. Remember to refine the customer journey map as needed. Changes to your business may require updates to the map. It’s also important to consider the customer’s perspective. By doing so you can better understand their experience with your product or service and identify areas for improvement. Be sure to consider their needs, desires, and behaviors.
