What is the best way to win the trust and loyalty of your customers? Put yourself in their shoes to understand their needs and challenges. And how do you do that? Using the customer's buying journey is one of the many ways.
The buyer / customer journey represents how customers move through the sales funnel and what actions they take at each touchpoint. By doing so, it offers actionable insights into their expectations and preferences.
According to American company Gartner, organizations that have and use customer buying journey maps are two times more likely to outperform their competitors than those that don't. And what could be better than winning more customers than your competitors?
There are several stages in the Buying Journey, each with its own specificities. Different content is developed for each of them. Check it out!
Even before considering a purchase, the customer must have a reason to act. They must have a desire, a problem they need to solve, or a different perception of reality.
During this stage, the best strategy for advertisers is to articulate the customer's problem with marketing efforts. Ads must explain what the problem is and how their product or service can solve it.
On the other hand, with online businesses, the best way to influence the "problem recognition" and raise awareness among customers about a problem is through Content Marketing. Using the right content, your audience can identify their needs and the useful resources and tools you can provide.
Actions that can be taken during this stage:
Now, imagine a random person found a post about the history of your brand on social media. They don't need your product or service yet, but your article was well-written so that your brand stays in their mind for a while.
Most of the time, when this person faces a problem or desire related to your brand, they come back to you!
This stage is also the moment when a potential customer asks for recommendations from friends or other people. Even in the digital age, recommendations are still the most successful way to attract new customers.
So what can be done?
The truth is, although some people make a quick purchase decision, most customers don't buy the first option they have. Consumers will evaluate various benefits or disadvantages of different products.
One thing that can be done is to show the added value of your business compared to your competitors. For some sectors, this may be easier - such as software where you can add more features.
Other industries where products and services are almost the same, your story and how you get involved and connect with your audience make the difference.
This is the moment when a potential customer decides whether or not to proceed with the purchase process. Even though they've come this far in the journey, some may still opt to leave.
This is the best time for your business to convey a sense of security regarding your products or services. Return policies, guarantees, or a trial period for your service should be created here.
Additionally, this is the stage to remind customers about their problem. Hence, sending a reminder email is advisable.
In this stage, it is necessary to ensure that the site is loading fast, that contacts can be found easily, and that payment methods are secure.
These small details make a big difference when you think about how many people abandon a purchase because the site loads too slow or is not intuitive enough!
Your customers will evaluate the purchase and decide whether they are satisfied or not. This can greatly influence the amount of recurring customers or recommendations you receive.
Therefore, good customer service is essential. Your customers should be able to talk to your business easily and receive help when necessary.
Therefore, follow-up emails and surveys should be sent. This is important to show your customers that you care about their opinion and that you constantly strive to improve your service.
There are many reasons to create content for the stages of the buyer's journey. Follow some of the most important to help clarify why structuring content this way is so powerful.
One benefit, if not the most important, of creating content around the stages of the buyer's journey is that it offers the ability to nurture potential customers towards a conversion, instead of trying to sell them right away.
Most potential customers don't arrive at your site ready to buy. Many are just gathering information, as they have recently developed a need or problem and are still looking for information on the best ways to meet that need or solve that problem.
With the right types of content, it is possible to provide them with the right types of information at the right times to help guide them gently towards a sale, instead of overwhelming them with sales copy or persistent ads.
Another important benefit of creating content around the stages of the buyer's journey is that it allows your business to qualify its leads before handing them off to sales or before they make contact with your team.
Well, if they can determine on their own that what you offer is not suitable for their need or problem, that is really a good thing. The only people you want to spend time selling to are the people with the highest probability of actually buying from you. It doesn't make sense to spend hours of work educating people when your content can be doing it for you!
Of course, taking care of a customer's buying journey is essential to guide them towards completing the business, that is, making the purchase, and even more so, to make them a loyal customer. In this sense, one of the main ways to ensure this is through content creation.
However, it is also necessary to pay attention to aspects such as SEO, responsiveness, visual identity, and easy navigation.
Throughout this text, you have understood how the customer's buying journey works and what types of content should be made at each stage.
To help users in their purchasing decisions and increase the chances of conversions and sales on your business's website, you need the expertise of someone who understands the subject.
We have everything you need to succeed in the digital environment. Talk to our team of experts to learn about our methodology and receive a map of what you need to maximize your results. Follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, to keep up with other content!
