Are you presently practicing the marketing approach – ‘one size fits all’ for your business? If yes, you must rethink about it as this might be the primary reason why you are losing out customers. You might not have realized, but the current clients go through the buyer’s journey before they take a final decision and decide that you are the best business to meet all their requirements.
Hence, you need to take into consideration the buyer’s journey.
It is important to note and understand the various stages of the buyer’s journey in order to conduct a process that efficiently meets the consumers.
What is the Buyer’s Journey Mean?
The buyer’s journey is the buying process or journey of a buyer, which consumers go through to purchase any item of stuff. This process is carried out to become aware of, assess, and buy a new service or product.
The buyer’s journey comprises 3 stages, which are vital to make the final decision of whether to purchase the product or not.
- Awareness Stage
- Consideration Stage
- Decision Stage
By assessing the buyer’s journey through the process of inbound marketing, it is possible for marketers to clearly define a path of a prospect as the framework. This way, companies or businesses can create customized targeted content for each stage of the customer’s journey.
To know more about the buyer’s journey and use the same to your business advantage, it is essential to know the details about its every stage.
But before that let us tell you about the significance of the buyer’s journey.
What is the Significance of the Buyer’s Journey?
The buyer’s journey holds great significance. By assessing value and answers related to every stage, it is able to nurture customers and make a decision to purchase from you.
By having a complete understanding of the buyer’s journey, it is possible to avoid all the mistakes and overcome issues related to the traditional marketing approaches such as waiting for customers till they are willing to make a hard sales pitch.
Rather, you can offer your customers exactly what they require at every stage of the buyer’s journey. This way, you don’t have to make efforts to force them to build trust in you. We all are aware that trust holds a huge influence on the present buyer and nurturing a potential lead according to the position, offers you the biggest potential to convert them into actual customers.
So, you see, a buyer’s journey is extremely important. Hence, you must take into account and learn about each stage of the buyer’s journey. Having a clear understanding of each stage you can learn the way to engage to your clients and help them reach the final stage of decision making and sale.
The Different Stages in Buyer’s Journey:
In broad terms, the process of the buyer’s journey entails as follows;
- A buyer realizes that he is experiencing a problem or something is going wrong but does not know about the exact issue. It also includes people, who sometimes don’t realize they are experiencing a problem, or anything is presently impacting them negatively, and they would benefit by finding an appropriate solution to it.
- Identifying the exact problem, but not understanding what can be done to fix the issue.
- Finally, understanding the exact problem and the way to fix it. Finalizing the best option thereby acting actively to solve the problem.
So, before someone becomes an actual buyer of a business, he undergoes the various stages of the buyer’s journey.
Stage 1 – Awareness Stage:
This is the first stage in the buyer’s journey. It can be slightly complicated to understand, however, it is the most important one.
The awareness stage usually revolves around the individual who:
- Don’t realize the problem
- Realize the problem but does not what exactly it is
A newly established company or a business offering a new product will have a greater requirement for awareness content in comparison to a company that is selling the same product for years.
In order to market people in the awareness stage, it is first important to understand the target market. When you create or promote awareness content, you don’t wish to make the content a difficult sell.
At this stage, businesses have to educate people on what might be causing the problem and risks of inaction associated with it, rather than simply let them know that your company can solve the issue.
While creating the buyer persona at the awareness stage, one key priority is to identify questions these people might ask themselves. Also, you may consider the keywords these people use in Google when they are trying to find a solution to this problem.
According to research, around 70% of people turn to Google, during the awareness stage. When looking out for details, people type various keywords in Google. At the first stage, such questions are quite open-ended.
Also, you have to consider what issues the buyer may face if they are not utilizing the solution your business offers. Asking such questions will aid you to create content, which can educate people who don’t realize that they have an issue that requires solving.
In this stage, demographic data can be useful. This data can also be used to promote the content.
The best way to promote your business during the awareness stage is by creating content. You can write ‘how-to’ kind content by answering questions that improve the odds of reaching out to people in search engines.
For example, you can showcase the content titled:
- How can e-commerce websites improve sales?
- How our website can bring you the fastest sales?
When marketing to people at this stage, it is essential to create content that highlights the solution ‘why.’ It is because this content does a better task of highlighting the issues of inaction. By promoting such content, you can grab attention and ensure buyers that they will not experience any problem in the future.
Moreover, in order to target people who don’t realize they have a problem, it is essential to know where your target audience is. It implies promoting content using LinkedIn Sponsored Content Ads or Facebook Ads.
It is because such people don’t realize they have an issue, and hence, they do not search Google. For this reason, it is essential that your content does not take just a single form and you have to follow numerous approaches to create content for awareness stage.
Stage 2 – Consideration Stage:
With a well-defined aim or challenge and dedication to addressing the same, the consideration stage is about the evaluation of buyers of distinct methods, which are available to them.
During this stage, you are providing critical details to help the buyer make the finest possible decision. Here are some kinds of examples for consideration content offers, you must provide, to qualify the lead for decision stage.
- Expert Guides
- Product Comparison Guides
- Live Interactions (video or podcast)
Within such communications, utilize keywords such as service, tool, and provider. Ask yourself about categories of solutions the buyers investigate and how they educate themselves on such subjects. Then, use this detail to create content offers.
Stage 3 – Decision Stage:
When buyers are in the decision stage, they are close to the end of the buyer’s journey and will soon buy.
The one in the decision stage decides that the best solutions are going to be in association with solving the pain point.
To keep things simple, this is the stage where buyers are searching for the best product and one that comes with the best offer. Potential clients are comparing prices and features, and both have to be balanced, particularly if the situation deals with a B2B realm, where buying decisions may need to be explained.
The marketing approach you use will differ, depending on your offerings.
For example, the content can be used to convince buyers in the decision stage, but the product demos can also be used in this stage. For businesses dealing with the B2B market, they must focus highly on ROI, when preparing content.
Each content piece has to illustrate how your offerings can reap positive results, which surpass the price that is being mentioned. The best way to do is to offer customers case studies of how your product or service benefitted others.
You can incorporate data from third-party, customer testimonials, and documents on company product development and ethos. Remember, each customer is different, and hence, influenced by distinct things.
Try to cover numerous bases as possible to ensure that you persuade customers from all perspectives. Moreover, it is your content that helps increase the sale.
Also, the buyer at this stage may spend huge time researching data, documentation, reviews from the vendor, and other materials to win over their confidence in the decision. Content provided at this stage may include product or vendor comparisons, free trials, and case studies. Important terms to include in your content are pros, cons, compare, test, and review. They align with the process of decision making and positioning the content as a resource and not a complex sales pitch.
Additional Stage – Client or Customer Post-Buying Stage:
You have finally closed the deal and you think it is all over. However, this is not the truth.
Still, customers can experience queries and issues and it is your job to help them overcome all of it. This stage is your chance to maximize the value you offer the customers. You have to continuously interact with the customers and offer them exciting and new ways to use your services and products. If you are successful during this stage, there are higher chances of your customers turning into returning clients.
You want your clients coming back. The fact they have already purchased from which means that they are more likely to do it again. Other than entertaining and useful articles and emails, you can invite clients to try samples of other products offered at a greatly discounted rate.
The aim is to keep the brand fresh among customers by offering value. You could also generate an online community around social media where your customers can interact with each other or offer feedback on novel products.
How to Optimize Website for the Buyer’s Journey?
Your website plays a pivotal role during each stage of the buyer’s journey. It is vital that the website is optimized for each stage of the buyer’s journey. You will have to design your site so that it is convenient for visitors to search for the content that is related to their stage. It implies to make the navigation simple, clear, and intuitive. Utilize the navigational toolbar and sidebar call-outs to make sure that visitors can search exactly what they are searching for when they land on your website.
One best way to support prospects from one stage of a buyer’s journey to the next is through CTAs or Clear-to-action. Where you can position the CTA, will be based on the kind of content you are offering. For example, you may use a CTA at the end of a post or video, guiding the viewer to another content piece, which offers in-depth research for their consideration.
When it comes to longer pieces of content, which are targeted toward buyers in the consideration phase, you may include a CTA, which invites them to sign up for a download or free trial.
Here are some tips to optimize the website for the buyer’s journey:
- Create a clear CTA – Visitors must know exactly what you want them to perform next. For example, sign up for a free trial leaving no doubt in the user’s mind about their next step.
- Utilize Active Words – Use active verbs that will motivate visitors to take action, helping move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Make it Convenient to Take Next Step – Not only must you be clear about what you wish the user to do next, but you must make it as easy as possible for them to move through the sales funnel. Incorporate buttons and links to display CTAs.
To Sum Up:
In order to create a marketing approach, which caters to each stage of the buyer’s journey, you may follow the information mentioned above. By creating an effective buyer’s journey you can generate better returns on marketing.