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The ways customers interact with your business can profoundly affect their decision whether or not to make a purchase. Although the customer may not perceive it that way, you know how much effort went into generating and nurturing every lead on the business side of things. From their first interaction with your company to their final checkout, the importance of customer journey marketing for your business cannot be understated.
What is a customer journey?
The customer journey represents the entire process required for someone to purchase one of your products. It usually begins with building awareness about your brand for the customer. This can be achieved through various forms of marketing, and you can slowly start building interest in your brand. Social media marketing can be a great asset here since it relies on content that lets users explore information about your products at their own pace.
Although some people make occasional impulse purchases, especially for cheaper items, that’s not how most people buy products online. Most users will look at a product and think about it several times before they decide to make a purchase. These don’t necessarily need to be visits to the product page since some users will browse through your website or read articles on your blog. Each of these is an opportunity to target them with your marketing and convince them to buy. Therefore, the importance of customer journey marketing for your business quickly becomes evident.
Map out the customer journey
There are many definitions for what a customer journey is and what it’s supposed to look like. However, from our experience, every business will have its way of interacting with customers. Before you create a customer journey marketing plan, we suggest that you look at how things function in your company. Map out the entire process and pay special attention to the points of interaction a customer has with your company. We can call these situations touchpoints, which will be crucial for your marketing.
Touchpoints represent the perfect opportunity to offer your customers support in their journey. Make it easy for users to contact sales representatives, who can provide guidance and resolve any issues the users may be having. You can also use touchpoints to gather customer information and retarget them with your marketing. We realize that keeping track of the progress of every single customer through your sales pipeline can be a daunting task. However, you can use CRM to optimize your sales pipeline and stay on top of any customer interactions.
While we are considering touchpoints to be points of contact with your company, they can represent an extensive range of possible interactions. They can include viewing one of your ads, visiting your social media profile, subscribing to a service, or opening an email. If you map out the customer journey, you will have a better idea of when you can use your marketing to nudge users into completing a purchase.
How to make customer journey marketing effective for your business
Below are the two most effective ways to make your customer journey marketing work for your business.
1. Customize the journey for each user
Not only should you monitor how the customer is progressing through the sales funnel and support them with meaningful interactions at each touchstone, but you should also strive to make those interactions personalized for each customer. You can adjust your marketing to fit the current stage of the customer journey. Additionally, you can personalize the ads you serve based on customer behavior.
However, it would be best to keep in mind that, after the initial ads users see on various sites and social networks, you can continue your interaction with them on your site. This means that your site will play a pivotal role in your marketing and that website customization has a great impact. If you have been keeping track of the customer journey, you will probably know which products they are interested in. Therefore, making suitable customizations to your site and marketing shouldn’t be difficult. Make sure that your marketing features the products which users have previously viewed. You can even retarget them with discounts for those items if there is no substantial progress through the sales funnel.
2. Have clearly defined goals for each stage of the customer journey marketing
Your customers will go through several stages in their customer journey. Each stage has its touchpoints and ways of interaction, so your marketing should be adjusted to each stage. Although the ultimate goal of your customer interaction is to achieve a successful sale, this doesn’t necessarily need to be the goal of your marketing at each touchpoint.
Depending on the types of products your business sells, perhaps the average user will want to do a lot of research before committing to making a purchase. For example, in the awareness stage, your marketing goal should be to get users interested in your products and have them click on one of your PPC ads. To achieve this, you can focus your marketing for this stage on promoting the benefits of your products and the value they bring to users.
On the other hand, when users are in the consideration stage, your marketing can include detailed product information. Your prospective customers have already expressed an interest in the products, and your marketing should reflect that. Remember that the purchase shouldn’t be the end of your interactions with that customer. You can use customer retention strategies and implement loyalty programs to ensure a lasting relationship and repeat purchases from your satisfied customers.
In conclusion
Marketing is necessary for each step in the customer journey; however, this doesn’t mean that you should use the same approach throughout. We have explained the importance of customer journey marketing for your business and how you should develop a plan and have different marketing goals for each step in that journey. Keep communicating with your customers at every touchpoint and adjust your marketing accordingly.
