Customer Journey
You want to add real value from that very first interaction.
- Awareness & information
- Interest & decision making
- Purchase process
- Long term relationship
We Live in a World Where the Customer is King.
You’ve got seconds to impress your customers, so we need to ensure we demonstrate how good you are at every opportunity by providing real value.
Defining your customer journey in your marketing strategy is an incredibly useful step. It assists you to understand what touch points exist and how you can best communicate and add value to your audience at each specific step along the way.
Digital Touchpoints
Awareness
This is about understanding how we are going to reach more of your target audience so they find out about you. As part of your marketing strategy, you should decide which marketing channels are best matched to your target audiences. For example, if you sell walking frames and your target market is elderly people 75+ years, Instagram isn’t for you.
Choose your channels
Whilst we live in a digital world, there is a multitude of ways in which you can get your target audience interested in your offering, however, not all are suitable or achievable given factors such as your available budget. What you do want to aim for is to start with those that will give you the best return on your investment. We like to categorise them into two main streams: inbound and outbound.
Consideration
Interest & decision making
Once your customers have become aware of you, you need to find ways that engage and ignite a genuine interest in your business, service or product. Consider how your target audience is researching and shopping for your products and services, the factors that are influencing their decisions and ensure you’re developing strategies to connect with your audience in these ways. According to a McKinsey report, one of the most important ways to influence your audience is consumer-driven marketing (such as internet reviews and word of mouth recommendations). This proves that it is becoming more and more important for businesses to come at this from both angles.
Purchase & Service
Making a good impression on your customers doesn’t stop at the ‘Buy Now’ button, it’s just the beginning! It’s the one experience that will shape their opinion on every future decision in the customer journey, including future purchases, so now is the time to win them over and gain their ongoing loyalty. Take a look at your purchase and post-purchase touchpoints and assess how well you are managing the customer’s expectations, including:
- Customer service: It needs to be exceptional, whether it’s ‘live chat’, phone, web enquiries or in-store. All of these need to ensure the lead up to and process of checkout runs smoothly and the customer feels comfortable with their decision.
- Check out process: Either in-store or online, it has to be as easy and streamlined as possible. Use analytics to show you where things may be breaking down online, where customers are dropping off etc.
- Post-purchase communications: Everyone loves a good ‘thank you for your purchase’ email and this is a good start but it shouldn’t stop there. It's important to develop a tailored email strategy for each of your audiences that keeps you top of mind, and lets them know about things they are interested in eg: providing them with exclusive offers to help them feel valued for being a customer.
- Returns Policy: Just like the checkout process, the returns process needs to be just as smooth.
- Deliveries: Customers want to have ‘A-Grade’ management of their returns or delivery of items. They want to have a choice about everything, including where and when it’s delivered. This ensures a good experience, which becomes very important when it comes to managing any issues that may arise.
- Maintenance / Upkeep: Customers want to know how to make the most of their purchase and ensure it lasts as long as possible. It's important to send timely reminders on how to make the use it, how to make the most of it, how to maintain it, and how can it be enhanced. These are all great bits of information that continually build a better relationship with your customers. This will show you care and they will appreciate it.
Loyalty
This is the part of your marketing strategy that ensures your customers continue to buy from you again and again. It’s how you build an ongoing relationship that drives repeat business and creates new business. In today’s consumer world, the customer is king. They want it now, they want it tailored, they want to feel special and appreciated and they are happy to come along for a ‘ride’ of enjoyment, entertainment and inspiration. Some ideas include:
- Thank them for being a customer, with honesty and earnestness. Click here for a sample of a great thank you email.
- Feedback: Vital to all business is to survey your customers, but get personal. Take a customer out to lunch once per month to get the good the bad and the ugly.
- Add value for free: Information, ideas and inspiration is simple and cheap. And customers are crying out for it!
- Make them feel special with discount offerings or exclusive ranges.
- Think outside the square: Some of the cheapest and best relationship builders aren’t your standard email. Offline/direct/mail are still great ways to engage with customers.
WORD OF THE DAY: ‘Wowie’
An experience or object that makes the person feel amazing, awe-inspired. This whole process is about making each and every customer and potential customer think “Wowie”. This is fundamental to any good marketing strategy.
Challenge for you: How do you ensure all your customers go “Wowie”?
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