Gaining insight into your buyer's journey can be pretty tough for every entrepreneur. But it's worth it! Your insight is almost guaranteed to yield more leads, conversion, new customers and revenue. But what exactly is the buyer's journey? How do you create insight? And how does that generate more leads, conversion and customers? Let's dive into that!
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The buyer's journey, what is it exactly?
What is it actually? Is it different from the customer journey? Yes! It sure is.
In a previous article we already introduced you to the theory of the customer journey. We informed you about the 5 phases of the customer journey, namely:
The Awareness phase
The Consideration phase
The Decision phase
The Retention/Service phase
The Loyalty phase
When you talk about the buyer's journey, the focus is mainly on the first three phases of the customer journey:
The Awareness phase
The Consideration phase
The Decision phase
Together, these three phases map out the buying process of your ideal customer.
Buyer's Journey Phase 1: Awareness The customer recognizes a problem, question or opportunity
In the awareness phase, the ideal customer has an issue that she would like to see answered. It is therefore important to know which issues your ideal customer may have.
What are the problems they encounter, what pain points do they experience and what wishes do they have for the solution or answer to their problem?
What is the customer looking for?
In this first awareness phase, the customer looks for objective information. The search terms they use have to do with defining the problem.
What do I suffer from?
What exactly does my question/problem consist of?
Where is an opportunity and what symptoms/solutions are there?
The potential customer conducts online research or asks friends / family / acquaintances questions in order to get an idea of the extent of the problem or question.
Why should I take solar panels?
How can I exercise with a knee injury?
How do I attract more visitors to my website?
Suitable marketing activities
At this stage, the customer is not necessarily looking for the best party to solve a problem. However, as an entrepreneur you already want to be top-of-mind in this phase. You can do this by using different types of content and advertisements.
PR activities
Informative articles
Independent white papers
Recent research reports
Buyer's Journey Phase 2: Consideration The customer is in consideration
The consideration phase is your moment to shine! If the ideal customer knows that they have an issue, they will compare options. They look for parties that can help them and they explore which organizations can answer the issue or offer the solution to the problem they encounter.
As an entrepreneur, it is important to know where and how your ideal customer is looking for information, which factors influence making a choice (what are the decision-makers?) and what the ideal customer is looking for in regards to the organization that will solve the issue.
What is the customer looking for?
In the consideration phase, your potential customer will look for solutions to the problem. Thanks to the awareness phase, the customer is now aware of her problem. Let's go back to one of the questions from the awareness phase.
“How can I exercise with a knee injury?”
With this question, the customer has given her problem a name. And now?
Now it's time to see what solutions there are.
“Exercise with a knee brace”
“Solutions for Knee Injuries”
“Sports instructor experience with knee injury”
Suitable marketing activities
As an entrepreneur, you have to show which solutions are available within your industry. You don't have to immediately focus on your own organization, but you can already show your added value (compared to your competitors). You could use the marketing tool below for this.
Blogs
Reviews
Social media
Landing pages
Buyer's Journey Phase 3: Decision Why the customer should choose you
Persuasion is key! When the ideal customer has formed a picture of the parties that can help her, the ideal customer will carefully make a decision. What does each party specifically have to offer and how does one differ from the other?
You as an entrepreneur must therefore know how you differentiate yourself in relation to your competitors. Moreover, you must ensure that your distinctive advantage is clearly visible. Are you the entrepreneur with the most personal approach, or the fastest or cheapest? These are examples of distinctive benefits that you should convey to your prospect.
What is the customer looking for?
In the consideration phase, the potential customer has decided how she wants to tackle the problem.
“Exercise with a knee brace.”
In this decision phase, the customer looks for the organization or person who can best serve her. The customer will compare, weigh and ultimately choose. Search terms that might occur could be something alongs the lines of:
“Brace X vs. brace Y”
“What does knee brace X cost?”
“Which knee brace comes out the best in the test?”
Suitable marketing activities
You need to convince this potential customer to make her decide in your favor. The goal obviously is that she ultimately purchases your product or service. You can deploy the marketing resources below for this.
Demos
Price list
Test results
Success Stories
Product Comparisons
And then the moment is there. The customer has made her decision, and yes! It’s you! From this moment on, the prospect turns into your actual customer.
The buyer journey has now come to an end and gradually transitions into the customer journey. You will find all information about the customer journey here.
In this article, we have walked you through the three phases of the buyer's journey.
The Awareness phase is all about a person that recognizes a problem and is looking for information on that topic. From there, we move into the Consideration phase. The prospect is now looking for solutions to answer the problem. This is your moment to start adding value to the potential customer.
We have provided several examples regarding different types of marketing activities for each phase. That counts for the Decision phase as well, the last stage of the buyer's journey.
Now that you have a better understanding of the buyer's journey, you can start designing your buyer's journey. Can I really? Yes you can. Yet, it's on a limited level.
In the Sensaletion E-Academy however, we take you on a journey and together we design your entire system step by step. You will have an extensive and practical system at your disposal, ready to rock and convert leads into customers!
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