What Is Customer Journey & How To Better Your Business With A Good Plan
You know that advertising your brand and products is essential if you’re a business owner. The problem is that marketing in the 21st century is rapidly evolving. Keeping up with new concepts, channels, and strategies can be highly frustrating.
It is even more important if you’ve taken a business loan for it.
You might even think it’s useless.
But it’s not.
In this article, we discuss the customer journey. This fundamental concept in marketing dictates your advertising plan and sales funnel to get more conversions. Ultimately, those conversions translate into a higher ROI.
So, if you want to avoid seeing your business stagnate or, even worse, plummet, read more about that customer journey below.
What Is The Customer Journey?
Customer journey defines the entire process that someone goes through from non-customer to potential buyer and ultimately, paying customer. UI / UX plays a huge role. Customer experience is another term that stands for the same thing.
Why should you care about that?
You probably already know from experience that it’s tough to develop a 100% original product nowadays. Reaching virgin markets is also next to impossible. As a result, you have to tackle fierce competition.
You can’t stand out from that competition if your advertising plan focuses on your products/brand.
That’s why you have to focus on your potential customers’ needs and, obviously, their individual customer experiences. Understanding why they’d choose your brand will help you craft better strategies to pull them to your products.
Let’s begin:
Customer Journey Stages
We’ll break down the customer journey in stages so that you can craft better marketing plans based on these steps.
1. Awareness
At this stage of the game, potential customers begin to realise their needs for your product. That means advertising at this stage should focus on:
- Showing how your brand can solve a well-known need innovatively (e.g., reusable menstruation underwear instead of one-time pads or face Yoga instead of creams)
- Pointing to people they need something without knowing it (e.g., phone loops that keep your phone steady while taking selfies)
Of course, you should choose one of these two strategies based on thorough research. You should understand your company, products, competition, and audience.
That’s why you need a dedicated marketing team.
This team will:
- Educate your target audience
- Craft compelling messages that support your strategy
- Lead your audience into the next phase
2. Research
Once people become aware of that need they didn’t know they had or about an innovative solution, they begin researching.
You’ve probably done it too – Googling a specific product, reading user reviews, making comparisons.
So you know what happens when you don’t find the necessary information; you quit wanting that product and move on to another.
What can your marketing team do to prevent that?
First, there’s the SEO part of things. You might think that SEO is just another fancy term advertising agencies have invented to get more money from their clients.
However, SEO is an essential process based on exact algorithms that push people toward your products. Thus, SEO comprises the use of links, keywords, pictures, and content to show search engines that your website (and by proxy, your brand) is relevant for your potential customers.
Then, there’s the strategy. Your marketing team can choose to leverage:
- User-generated content, such as genuine customer reviews reposted on your company’s website or in your newsletter. This strategy works perfectly for an innovative product that hasn’t reached full acceptance in the market yet (e.g., a menstrual cup).
- Whitepapers and blog posts that further explain how your product/services work. This method is best for innovative technologies that regular people don’t fully understand. It is very similar products in a large category such as fitness trainers or ergonomic mattresses.
- Influencer marketing if you want to create a desire for an unusual product. It helps to show your audience that you share the same values as them.
Of course, those aren’t the only strategies you can adapt based on your company’s, competition’s, and customers’ profiles. The essential thing is for your marketing team to know what they’re doing.
3. Decision Marking
This stage of the customer journey is also known as evaluation. People have chosen the correct type of solution and shortlisted a few products.
At this point, your strategy focuses on showing the audience that you’re different from the competition.
You can use:
- Your good reputation
- Influencer recommendations
- Emotional appeals to mutual values
- Price
- Proximity
- The bandwagon effect
- And more
Choosing an efficient strategy that brings you desired results means that your marketing team must do thorough research. It also means you have to hire professionals with rich experience in the industry.
Example:
You have a very innovative product, so you decide to appeal to influencer recommendations and podcasts to explain its technology. On the other hand, your potential customers are more interested in proximity and price. This disparity between your marketing decision and your customers’ profile:
- Leads to plummeting profits, but:
- Can be effortlessly avoided if you invest in that research (including software tools and an experienced team)
4. Post-Purchase Feelings
This customer journey stage is also essential, even though people have already purchased your products. It doesn’t end there. The point is you want them to:
- Feel good about that purchase
- Become loyal customers that come back to your brand
- Become members of your brand community
- Recommend your product to others
To achieve that, you should:
- Provide products/services that are up to par
- Keep in touch with your loyal customers, possibly through a rewards program
- Ask for reviews, photos, and feedback
- Mention those satisfied users on your website and social media
- Give recognition to people who come up with unique insights about your brand
- Send them new offers that would also benefit their needs
Focusing On Customer Journey Brings Benefits In The Long Run
Now that you understand each step of the customer journey, you also get why each stage requires specific planning. Of course, that strategising implies hiring the right people and providing them with the best tools to make their jobs easier.
That probably means money you don’t have.
On the other hand, not planning according to customer journey implies losing opportunities.
To bring their business ideas to life, entrepreneurs can apply for helpful business loans to aid their growth.
Launched in February 2018, SBL Singapore aims to provide financial assistance to all companies. We also gather mentors in the fashion and retail sector through our Coach-and-Go programme for our clients to attain more information and knowledge on business management. Our objective is to help local Singapore brands grow and enter the overseas market.
We offer a large range of business loans for online businesses to hotel/staycation businesses to music schools and more.