Nugget 45: Tracking the Buyer's Journey

Anyone who might become your client moves through several stages in what has become known as the Buyer's Journey.  Your marketing needs to cover each stage so that you get the best outcome from your marketing.
We say the stages are; 

• Awareness - thinking about starting to buy
• Consideration - choosing what product to buy
• Deciding - what supplier offers the best arrangements
• Retention - after the initial purchase, you want to keep the new client for as long as possible and,
• Advocacy - getting reviews and other social proof from your customers to be used as a marketing asset in the early stages of the Buyer's Journey

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Transcript

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Come on. You're beginning to talk today about tracking the buyer's journey. So the several stages. That lead up to a sale. And in order to get good sales, you have to address each of these stages so that you bond with a potential customer. So, for example, let's consider buying a television set. Person. Needs or becomes aware. That they might need to. Address. I need or pain that I think I have. So in the television case study, It might be that they're existing. Television has a very poor picture quality. And it's not connected to streaming services like Netflix. So they've, this is a pain. I have a need. I want to watch Netflix. They have a number of alternatives in the awareness stage, they have potentially a choice of products and a choice of service providers. And they'd probably start with product first and then work out. Who's going to supply. So the marketing that you might do at this stage is offering them information services. On the options that they have and suggesting decision-making criteria. You could do this through blogs on your website, for example, that are reaching keywords today might be searching for. Realistically in a world of perfect information. That we live in presently your material has a pretty low probability of getting found unless it's very personalized. Or your catchment area. Or your clientele in some way. If it isn't a crowded market, you probably won't make much of an impact if this awareness raising stage. So you may not want to invest a lot of time and effort. That's a decision that you make in the context of your own business. The next stage that our buyer goes through on their journey is. To consider all the consideration. But here they're actively identifying and considering potential solutions. So in our TV example for. For example. They're talking about, or they're thinking about the screen size, they thinking about the number of streaming services. That the television connects to. So really they're considering the pros and the cons and they're rejecting any product or service. That's not meeting their needs. They're probably going to be using product reviews. They're probably going to look for other social proof to narrow it down and justify the one that they lied at Pitt. Now social proof is a generic term. That refers to things like Referrals from a. Previous customers to. Online reviews. And two things like testimonials. So this is. Third party documents that are saying to your potential customer. This particular will, you can be trusted. As a provider of the service. In terms of marketing, you might have. Blogs on your website that are very rich in keywords. On a product and a need. And why you're better than the competitors. I remember here there identify potential solution. So what you want to do is remain in a race against other competitors. Who can. Provide. Somewhat similar service. Your website and your Google business profile should have as much social proof as possible. And also you should be listing things like your professional accreditation. And the years of service that you've had. So that those things might reassure the customer. About what. You can't. Address their particular niche. You can provide the solutions that they want. So the next step is in the journey is decision-making. At this point, I know what product they want. And they're now looking for a supply. So the. First of all going to look for supply that can affect supply what they're after. So that's the first cut-through. And elimination of. Potential suppliers. Then they're going to start to do price. And quality comparison. Now generally people will always look for quality before they look at price because no one really wants a cheap but effective solution. But your price definitely needs to be competitive or you'll be cut out. On that basis or price. Oh, you can't always talk about price because you may not know what's involved in. Satisfying whatever their particular need is. Or you may be afraid of sticker shock. If you tell them what it's going to cost, it might horrify them and they stop. Assuming that avenue. Or specific in you at least altogether. So you can sometimes use safety words, alternative phrases, like a government set price or professional. Fee. We follow the professional bodies fee structure. Prices on a sensitive topic, but just keep in mind that. It is going to be a reason for people. Ceasing to buy or rejecting you. If I think that the price is going to be too. So what marketing. Are we focusing on here, or first of all, we're looking at probably person to person sales, compensations. They're going to ring you or your office. And want to talk to someone about it. Give it a feel about, you know, the body chemistry, if you like, but also what's involved. In terms of marketing. On your website. There are specific types of pages called landing pages or funnel pages. That can be built on, on a website and they're designed. Skillfully and intentionally to move people down, a buying process, a funnel through the steps. Addressing their particular needs. Each of these stages. And making sure that they are satisfied with moving on to the next stage. Now if you've got a very fast. Very fast bias challenge. And the tunnel's going to be very important. Because that's the first and last. To what they're going to say. And approaching. Having made a decision. And treated the. Work with the customer. And our client, you want to actively explore. Retention. How you retain them on that bias journey? So many services will be reviewed. So many medical services, for example and you want to be a continuing supply and you. I don't want to have that person just once off. So in other words, your goal. Is to maximize the lifetime value of that customer. Through repeat business. What marketing do you use? Well, you need some sort of reminders. Because they can simply forget you. If it's. They don't hear from you or. I have the pressing need. So if you're a dentist, For argument's sake. And I pitch them every six months. To get a checkup. Or, but it's good also to be giving people something, every say 30 days. If you can't set a specific. Appointment in advance. And there's some evidence that after 90 days, if I haven't heard from you. Totally forget. When the need arises a guy. I forgotten that you were there previous person. You could do things like surprise me with a birthday card. It's a once a year thing, but it has its sticking your name. So the, I am here. I am a pretension. It was to avoid what is called churn. Churning customers through the cycle, but not keeping them. The long view, there's plenty of evidence. That the lifetime value returning. Or retaining existing clients is far more profitable. Include your business and having this expanded. Much more money. Getting a new client. I'll say that again because it's important. It's far more profitable for you to retain a client. Kind of justified a nuclear. And. Perhaps the final step or a final step is the step in the buyer's journey, which we call advocacy. And this is extremely important because advocacy, when people haven't become your advocate. I have a Kate, you. Then that's the source of all of your social proof. And that therefore that's extremely important. And we talked about social proof earlier. On the buyer's journey. These are things like reviews. Referrals testimonials. And these are extremely important because they're third parties. They're not related to you independently. Giving potential customers. The value of their experience. And saying that yes, you've done a good job. For the Africa. So part of the process here. It might be following up. Every client opt. Every contact. Because what you want to do is to see if there's any looming problems, any reason why they wouldn't become an advocate for you. So there's a saying, for example, that 10% of an iceberg it's about water. So 90%. Of. An iceberg. You're not saying so if you don't actively monitor for problems for issues. For concerns for customer disappointments. They're going to sneak out. 90% of them. Y draw their attention to view. By themselves. And another rule of thumb, is that an unhappy person, tell us an average of 13 other people that they're unhappy. And this is particularly an issue in today's age of social media, where it's so active, so easy to. Spread the word about how disappointed you arm people. Unfortunately very often like to say. So we'll spread the word about disappointment. Pride. Excited. The various tools for Mang. For advocacy, you'd be looking for review management tools to try and capture them and get them onto your website. There's also things like net promoter score that you're almost certainly saying where it says rank me on a score of one to 10, where 10 is the best. That's a very powerful tool because. It's got a lot of science behind it. And it allows you to measure a trend of how things are progressing. So. Things again, to be different at every stage of your Marketing. To a bias journey and it's far too big a topic to cover here. But you can research it. You can look for example. On Google for things like all. Website 12 ways to stop business. For things like sales funnel and buyer's journey, Google those terms and see what comes up. And on Google in particular, you might be lucky enough to find articles, specifically covering the marketing, the bias channel. Your particular profession. So if you're a lawyer, for example, And it could be searching for a talk. Articles and Google on the buyer's journey. And marketing. For lawyers. Keep in mind also. That the speed of the journey. The buyer's journey will vary. According to need and to risk. If they have an injury, for example, the spade of maca decision, which doctor to go to. Or a medical professional is likely to be a lot faster. That it is. There's no pressing particular name. I don't really need to television. That I saw make a decision. And the other dimension and the speed of the journey is at risk and fall. The more risky. The decision the longer they're likely to take. To make a decision. So you'd spend a lot more time. Considering buying a house and you will not consider in black television. And you would on considering buying. I went off this. Massage therapist. So in summary, your marketing. He needs to cover each stage in the buyer's journey. To an extent that's appropriate for your industry. You want to make sure that you don't spend too much on an area that some relatively unproductive. But you do need to be careful that you don't miss a step. And lose the buyer altogether. So. Hopefully that has illuminated the various steps in the buyer's journey. Sensitized you to things to consider and how to. Adjust your marketing strategy to suit. So we've come to the end of this. Nugget on the buyer's journey. I hope that you are now more aware of the various stages and how to potentially market to those stages to maximize the number of customers. That you. Can get from your catchment area. If you like this. Article and we'd like to get more like it, please subscribe to the channel where you got this. Please tick the light box where that's available. So that you can share. The fact that this was useful. With other people. And you can always learn more about what we have to offer. On our website at 12 faces. Doc business. Thank you for your time.