What is the buyer’s journey and why does it matter?
Let’s be honest.
If you’re reading this, the title may have piqued your curiosity. You may be wondering how to accelerate sales of your goods and services from your business – whether that’s physical or online through SEO.
You’ve got a functioning, attractive website embedded with social links and yet sales are not materialising.
I’ve been there and as a veteran, some would say obsessed, consumer, I’d like to talk about my journey to buying – relate it to marketing and suggest ways to accelerate sales.
What is the buyer’s journey?
There are said to be three primary steps:
- Awareness. This is where a buyer recognises they have a need for a product or service.
- Consideration. The buyer begins research on the best product or service to buy.
- Decision. The buyer makes a decision of what to buy and who to buy from.
The problem with this model is that it doesn’t factor in the buyer’s persona, lifestyle or income. An impulsive consumer might leap from Awareness to Decision in one hour. A more cautious one may take a month or a year. Some buyers never move beyond stage 1 or stage 2.
Major purchases take longer
If you decide you want a new EV, or a hybrid vehicle, and you have the means to do it, a buyer may take six months to choose which electric vehicle to buy and who from.
A new case for your smartphone may take 10 minutes to decide upon and buy.
You get the idea?
Your first step is to enter the customer awareness stage
By this, I mean you’ve got to be on their radar at the start. if you’re selling estate agency services, used cars or fake eyelashes, you’ve got to be able to be found. Not just in terms of premises but in terms of search engines. If someone Googles “Estate agents near me” where are you? If someone searches for “Used Cars Oldham” how visible are you? There’s more to marketing than just Google rankings though. I get found on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Bing & Google for web design and copywriting.
I own page one of Google for my name “Get Pro Copy” – do you? It means if someone sees my branded VW, backlinks, social media channels and Googles me, I dominate page one of Google. You need to do that too. Try it.
Customers also prioritise purchases – so you may have to play a waiting game. I find this constantly. I get an enquiry for a website redesign. 12 months later, they ask again if I can do it. Sometimes I’m ghosted but mainly it’s because customer priorities constantly shift.
A question for any business too is dealing with inaction.
Do you pursue sales? Do you send an email reminding them of your quote? Do you assume they’ve gone elsewhere? I do some gentle chasing and if I can get a response saying they’ve abandoned or chosen a different freelance web designer, I thank them and say I’m here for support in the future.
Your business needs to devise a strategy for customer inaction.
Step 2 is Consideration
This is where the buyer is usually committed. It may not be a firm commitment but they’ve moved beyond awareness. You need to know what categories of solutions they’re looking for. Your content and digital marketing strategy needs to address these categories of questions.
- What categories of solutions do your customers research? Are they looking for a niche solution?
- How do clients educate themselves on the various categories?
- How do buyers assess the pros and cons of each category?
- How do buyers decide which category of solution is right for them?
Finally, decision time
How do you compare with others? What do they like and don’t like about what you offer? No one likes rejection but it’s important so you can refine what you offer.
Is it a solo decision or a group one? Clearly the latter takes more time. It’s often called Hick’s Law.
What are buyers’ expectations of your product and service? Can you meet and exceed these?
Is there additional time needed before deciding? Such as funding, training or business planning?
All these impact on a final commitment to buy.
Your pipeline
As much as I dislike the term, pipeline does seem apt for this post. I’ve sat through meetings espousing the pipeline only to find what you added to the top of the pipeline oozed only to the company director, and not the one who started and ended the process. You need to track customers. You need a way of recording prospects and checking in on them occasionally. Above all, in my opinion, you need to continue to provide helpful content that will make a buyer come to you and not a rival.
If you’d like more advice on getting your prospects to commit through social media, infographics, email campaigns, web design and blog posts, contact me directly.
Additionally, there’s two more steps I’ll talk about in a future post: retention and advocacy.
