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The Customer Journey Explained - Why is it Important?

Updated: Nov 22, 2022




Ah yes, the customer journey. As an entrepreneur, you may be familiar with it, or have heard about it. But what exactly is a customer journey? And what influence can insight into the customer journey have? These are questions that are asked very often and that is understandable. We all know that the customer journey is important in some way, but what impact does having insight into your customer journey have on your business?


Do you really have insight into the behavior of your customer? Do you know when your potential leads are true and what behavior they exhibit there? Will they be on the website? What questions do they actually have when they come to the website? What information should you provide them? And when? Do they download documents? Do they follow you on social media? Most entrepreneurs cannot give a solid answer to these questions.


The above are questions that you absolutely must ask yourself if you want to get more return from your online channels and grow your business accordingly. You may know what you are doing, but what is your customer doing?



 

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The E-Academy teaches you all about the various strategies to now just answer these questions but to ensure you convert that lead into a paying customer.


 


What is the customer journey?


Often, when you can't answer these questions, you have to go back to the drawing board. Before you can formulate an effective marketing strategy, you want to gain insight into your ideal customer. You can do this with a buyer's persona, consumer research, qualitative research among existing customers and mapping the customer journey. To get the most out of your marketing strategy, a good insight into the customer journey is indispensable. But, what exactly is such a customer journey?


It is the entire process that someone undertakes before that person wants to commit to your organization is called the customer journey. You can see the customer journey as a path or guideline along the different phases towards and within your organization. The goal of this journey is to have the potential new customers convert and then keep returning to your organization.


The definition of Customer Journey:


“The path a consumer takes to ultimately purchase a particular product or service. Certain business processes can be optimized using the insights that a customer journey can provide.” - Bart Welzen (marketingtribune.nl)




The 5 phases of the customer journey


The customer journey therefore stands for the journey that someone takes before they become a customer with you. And as with so many journeys, this journey also consists of different phases. In general, the customer journey consists of 5 phases:


  1. The Awareness phase

  2. The Consideration phase

  3. The Decision phase

  4. The Retention/Service phase

  5. The Loyalty phase



You can find different customer journey models online and there are even specific customer journeys per industry or sector. The above model is the most common and is easily applicable in every industry and for every entrepreneur.


A quick explanation per phase:


The Awareness phase

The awareness phase is literally the stage that you want to attract your prospect's attention. You want to make people aware of your existence, your product and the potential benefits.


De Consideration phase

This is the phase that people start to consider purchasing your product or service. You now have their attention and want to move on to convince them that your product will bring great benefits to them.


De Decision phase

As the name reveals, this is the stage that people make the actual decision on purchasing your product. You have persuaded the prospect enough, they decide to buy.


De Retention/Service phase

After the purchase, you will want to provide a great service to your brand new customer. You need to ensure that this customer will be happy with your product.


De Loyalty phase

The last phase refers to returning customers. Keeping your customer loyal after their first purchase, is the fastest way to more revenue. This customer doesn’t have to go through the entire customer journey again. As well, loyal customers are great free advertisements for your organization.







The difference between the Customer Journey and the Buyer's Journey


The terms customer journey and buyer journey are often used interchangeably, while in essence these are two different things.


The buyer journey is all about converting prospects from a lead to a new customer. They go through the steps Awareness, Consideration, Decision. These are also the first three steps in the customer journey.





When talking about the customer journey, you are actually talking about the steps that come after the buyer journey. In other words, how do you, as an entrepreneur, ensure that your customers are satisfied and return to you with the next need. These steps therefore follow after the three steps of the buyer journey and contain the steps Retention/Service and Loyalty.




Okay, I get it. Yet, why is this so important?


What makes the customer journey so important? Why can't you as an entrepreneur do without it?


Let me ask you a question:

Do you want to know how to increase your sales/customer/revenue/profit?


I guess you would. Therefore, you need to know your weak spots, your bottlenecks. To find those bottlenecks, you need to map out your customer journey.


By mapping the customer journey you often quickly see where improvements in your marketing strategy are possible. It exposes weaknesses in the marketing mix. This way you understand where and why that one lead decided not to become a customer of yours and you know where you have to work to improve your marketing processes.


Do you want to know how to gain insight into the behavior of your ideal customer? Do you want to know what your customers need? And when? Perhaps you have never thought about the journey a customer has taken before they became a customer and you may not know, like many others, why certain leads drop out at certain points in their journey.



 

Joining our Sensaletion E-Academy will enable you to map out your process,

allowing you to set up and improve your system, leading towards growing your business!

 


We learned that the customer journey literally is the journey that a customer undertakes from not knowing about your business to being a loyal returning customer and everything in between. The first three phases of the customer journey are essentially the buyer’s journey as well (see this article to learn more about the buyer's journey). Understanding your customer journey will allow and enable you to improve your process.


Now that you know that the customer journey plays a strategic role in your process of improving your business operations, to eventually increase your sales, customers growth and revenue - the question is: do you know your customer journey? Have you mapped it out? And if so, do you truly understand it? Let’s say you do; do you also know how to improve it?




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