The customer journey is a pivotal part of marketing efforts. It maps out how your buyers make decisions along the way to choosing a solution or service. In an omnichannel world, your customers seek out information about the problem they need to fix, consider the options, and make a decision.
Understanding your business’s unique customer journey will impact your ability to attract and convert your audience.
What Is the Customer Journey?
The customer journey describes all interactions and experiences a customer has with a brand to achieve a goal (i.e., resolve their challenge). There are three key areas:
- Awareness: The customer has a need and begins exploring companies with relevant solutions.
- Consideration: A customer further researches the options and learns more about your company and its specific benefits.
- Decision: Customer completes due diligence and comparisons and is ready to make a purchase.
Regardless of your industry or customer base, all three stages need specific tactics to ensure visibility and delivery of the right messaging to keep buyers moving toward your organization as the answer.
Aligning Digital Marketing Tactics to the Customer Journey
So, how can you ensure your company will be a contender for buyers? Let’s look at the digital marketing tactics that align with each stage.
Awareness: Attracting Attention
In the Awareness stage, customers are defining their problems and pain points and researching how to solve them. For digital tactics to be successful, you’ll need to understand the audience’s challenges and goals. You’ll also want to determine what channels they use to seek out information.
Strategies to use in awareness include:
- SEO and content marketing: Create content on your website pages and blog that your buyers would search for as they begin to recognize a problem. With high-quality, consistent content, you can increase your website’s search engine ranking.
- Educational or explainer videos: Develop engaging content that breaks down complex issues and informs the watcher.
Consideration: Making the Case for Your Company
At the Consideration stage, audiences have a greater understanding of how to tackle their problem and that your business has a solution. Move to the top of their list by:
- Continuing to create SEO content: At the middle stage, your content should include more niche keywords and begin to showcase how your product or service is the best option.
- Case studies: Publishing a case study demonstrating your company’s effectiveness can lead to trust and credibility.
- Product specifications: Customers are getting into the details, and these documents can improve their understanding of features and benefits.
Determining customer preferences and how they make buying decisions are crucial to deploying these strategies.
Decision: The Conversion
The Decision stage is the culmination of research. Depending on the urgency of the need or the cost of the solution, customers can arrive here quickly or slowly. To win the business, you should know what influences their buying decisions (e.g., cost, reviews, speed) and remove any barriers to the conversion.
Launch these tactics in the Decision stage:
- Paid search: Craft campaigns on paid search that include high intent to buy with terms like buy, purchase, hire, schedule, etc.
- Social media ads: Target specific demographics, locations, and preferences with exclusive offers to nudge them to a decision.
Enhance the Customer Journey at Every Stage
Managing the customer journey can be a challenge, as so many factors affect it. The tactics you use must be consistent and frequent, which may seem like too much for your small business. The experts at AQ Marketing can help. Contact us today to find out how.
