Take your target audience on a journey and let them discover the advantages you offer over the competition within your own customer journey: the path your (potential) customer takes during contact with your company.
What is a customer journey?
It is a widely used marketing term. Yet the meaning is somewhat vague: The customer journey consists of all ‘touchpoints’ between customer and company. In this article, we focus on the customer journey that precedes becoming a customer: persuading a target audience to take action. In other words: the marketing funnel. During the customer journey, the potential customer undergoes 3 phases: the awareness phase, the consideration phase, and the conversion phase. In these phases, you attempt to reach the target audience with advertisements.
The goal is to obtain the contact details of those interested in your company; your target audience. Once these contact details are received, the prospect has become a lead. From that moment on, we refer to the sales funnel. The term ‘customer journey’ is used in both B2B and B2C. We discuss the part of the customer journey in which you encourage the target audience to take action. I will explain the different phases a customer undergoes during the customer journey.
The awareness phase
In the awareness phase, the intention is to make your target audience aware of the existence of your company and the services or products you offer. This phase is used to discover what the target audience responds to. In this phase, you also begin with, for example, A/B testing.
Collect as much data as possible about your target audience so that you know what works and what does not. This establishes a solid foundation to prepare you for the next phase.
The consideration phase
The next phase: the consideration phase. Here, you want to start ‘warming up’ the target audience for your product or service. By, for example, providing valuable content about your company or the service you perform, you provide the members of your target audience with many good arguments and experiences that ensure a high probability they will ultimately choose your company.
Sharing this value ensures that action is taken more quickly, leading us to the final phase: the conversion phase. Before you begin this final phase, it is therefore important that you have thoroughly researched what does and does not work in the first phase, in order to ultimately make your offer.
The conversion phase
You make that offer in the conversion phase. In this phase, you want to ensure that members of your target audience leave their contact details by filling out a lead form for, for example, a special piece of content (such as white papers, reports, or newsletters), a free training, webinar, or introductory meeting.
As soon as members of your target audience choose to leave their details, they have taken action. This makes them a) interested and b) reachable. We now call these members of the target audience leads. After these individuals have become leads, it is up to the sales team to convert them into customers. From that moment on, the members of the target audience are in the sales funnel.
Conclusion
In most cases, the beginning of the customer journey is set up in the order described above: first the awareness phase, then the consideration phase, and finally the conversion phase. There are also strategies where the order is changed. This only makes sense if you have devised a specific marketing strategy for a target audience about which you have already collected a lot of data.
Now that you have an idea of what the beginning of the customer journey entails, you can start thinking about how you can convince your target audience that you provide the best experience within your own marketing funnel. We are always ready if you have questions about one of the three phases of the customer journey or other marketing-related questions.
Do you have questions about LinkedIn marketing, or are you looking for other marketing advice? We can be reached via:
info@primemarketing.nl
