What is the customer journey?
The customer journey is the collective name for all interactions that a potential client has with your company in order to become a loyal customer. From discovering your brand through a social media post that was liked by one of their friends, to receiving a thank you-email after making an actual purchase, and all the seemingly insignificant steps in between.
By understanding which steps your customers take towards their end goal, like buying a product or service that solves their problem, you can target and adjust your content in such a way that you will always meet your customer’s requirements in every stage of their journey.
The 7 phases of the customer journey
Every customer goes through different phases before they make their final purchase decision. What those stages are for your specific customers depends on the product or service you are providing, but, in general, we distinguish seven phases:
- Idea: It all starts with a need or a problem that your potential customer encounters in their life and that will make them hit up Google to find the answer to:good home exercise equipment to stay fit during the pandemic”, or “how do I set up an online shop now my bricks and mortar store has closed”. But people not only resort to Google to find the best products to meet their needs, did you know that 89% of people on Pinterest use the platform purely for purchase inspiration?
- Awareness: Your potential customer has started their research and has discovered your brand or company (because you have a solid content marketing strategy, of course) through the beautiful pictures you share of your product on Instagram, or because you’ve written an insightful blog that gives a detailed answer to their question. But more importantly, the customer has now become aware of your existence.
- Decision: Now your customer has landed on your website and has found the information they’re looking for, you want to slowly guide them towards the checkout. How you do this best depends on many factors, but it is always important that the customer feels adequately informed and convinced of the solution you’re offering through additional information you share on your website and social media accounts. Maybe you have more in-depth blogs about the subject matter you can lead them to or rave reviews on Facebook. If you understand your customer, you can guide them to the next step on their journey that will make them choose you.
- Acquisition: Congrats! Your content strategy has worked its magic and your potential customer is now an actual one. While making their purchase or inquiring about your services, you ask them to leave some personal information such as their email address. This will allow you to reach out to them with updates on your company and its products.
- Onboarding: Let’s put that email address to good use and start building a relationship with this customer by emailing them a thank you for their first purchase from you that includes other product options they might be interested in. This way they learn more about your brand and you learn more about your new customer from the links they click in your email.
- Engagement: To further grow your relationship, you want to keep popping up wherever your new customer is active. Connect with them on the social media platforms they are active on and send good deals and interesting updates by email. Try to make your customers’ experience as enjoyable as possible by connecting with them and delivering good service.
- Advocacy: This is the crown on your hard work. You have built such a strong relationship with your customer that they are now recommending your brand to others. The best way to get new customers.
Now that you’ve established the different phases of a customer journey, you can start mapping the journey of your customers for a specific product. We explain how this works in the next instalment of this blog.
Sources:
- https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-journey-map
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/customer-journey-mapping/
- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/consumer-journey/covid-decision-journey/
- https://hbr.org/2021/05/designing-customer-journeys-for-the-post-pandemic-world
- https://mailchimp.com/marketing-glossary/customer-journey/
