Our aim in this blog is to guide you, the business owner, through one of the first steps we take when supporting your business’ marketing: your customer buying journey.
What is a ‘Customer Buying Journey’?
The Customer Buying Journey is the process each customer will take from when they first need you, to when they actually purchase from you. This can be a quick process, for example
when deciding to purchase from a food outlet when the customer is hungry. But for most purchases, the journey is a long one, taking weeks or even months from when the seed is first planted, to the end result of the customer actually purchasing something.
Why is a ‘Customer Buying Journey’ important to your business?
Marketing is all about driving as many potential customers as possible to your business.
Successful marketing is when those customers actually buy from, and then stay loyal to you and recommend you. To ensure the latter, we need to see the journey your customers take to purchase from you, and then fill in any gaps where you’re losing them, as well as putting in place any assurances to make sure they stay on that journey. For example, a person might decide they need what you sell. They do a quick Google search and you appear near the top. They click through to your website, look around and sign up to your newsletter. Then they leave your site and explore your competitors, or check price comparison websites and the like.
After looking around they decide they like the look of your business, but, having never purchased from you before they need the assurance that you’re the kind of business they want to buy from. They look for testimonials and reviews on your website, feedback sites and social media; but they can’t find any. And so they decide not to purchase. You’ve lost them.
However, if you’d already recognised the path they were going to take, and therefore plugged any gaps where you might lose them, such as ‘evaluation’, they’d have found your glowing reviews and continued on their customer buying journey with you.
What can you do to support the customer’s journey to purchase?
Your first step is to map out the buying process for what you sell. Write down all the different steps a customer would take before buying from you. As mentioned above, make sure you’re doing everything you can to help them along that journey; which essentially means answering the questions they might have. Can they garner everything they need to know from your website? Can they feel confident in your brand because of the visible reviews and awards you have to your name? Why should they buy from you rather than one of your competitors? As Marcus Sheridan entitled his book, ‘They Ask You Answer’… you need to “address every question, concern, or fear they may have” on their customer buying journey.
If you already have details from the customer – perhaps they’ve signed up to your newsletter
or entered a competition – then you can use your CRM to your advantage and touch base with them first, reminding them you’re still there, affirming why you’re the right fit for what they need and maybe even tempting them with an offer?
If you head to our Facebook page you’ll find a series of videos from Jessica to support the marketing of your business; one of which is all about the Customer Buying Journey. Once you’ve watched it, why not book a discovery call to see how Cornerstone Your Business’ Outsourced Marketing Manager can set your business on the path to success? Call: 07929 905229.