Learn the best strategy to close more deals
Did you know that as you are reading this, millions of people are engaging in different purchasing processes? Yes, the numbers are striking, and the mission of companies like yours is to be present in these processes even before your potential customers are aware that they want to buy a new product or hire a service. Why? Because by doing this, you will be able to understand your prospects better and place yourself at the person’s top of mind.
Applying inbound marketing in the customer journey
The moment a need starts to arise, a buying process known as the “customer journey” begins. This process can be divided into different phases: the discovery of the need, the consideration, and finally, the decision that satisfies the initial need (purchasing the product or service). There is also a fourth phase, the post-purchase experience, where, in the best-case scenario, the user reaffirms the decision made and recommends your product or service to others.
Below we will show you the four stages each user must go through during their customer journey.
- Recognition: The users realize they have a need, desire, or concern to which they must find a solution.
- Research: The users seek information on how to solve that initial need.
- Decision: The users must compare the gathered information to decide which product or service to purchase.
- Action: After making a decision, the users purchase the product or service. Once the users are customers, the company’s mission is to build customer loyalty so that they don’t regret their decision and will choose you again in the future.
Benefits of a clear customer journey
Understanding the benefits of customer journey is crucial for any business looking to improve customer experience and increase customer satisfaction. A well-designed customer journey can help businesses identify and address pain points, or areas where customers may encounter difficulties, in order to improve their overall experience.
One of the main benefits of customer journey is that it allows businesses to better understand their customers. By tracking a customer’s interactions with a brand, businesses can gain insights into their preferences, needs, and behaviors. This information can then be used to tailor marketing strategies and product offerings to better meet customers’ needs, which can ultimately lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.
Inbound marketing for companies
For their part, companies can engage with potential clients by applying inbound marketing strategies based on phases that are “activated” depending on the stage or progress of the customer journey. Below you will find the four stages each company must go through during the customer journey.
- Attraction: It is crucial to attract potential customers to the company’s website to get to know the offered products or services and form an opinion about them.
- Conversion: Companies must have quality content that engages with their users. It is advised to offer downloadable material, such as ebooks or infographics, in exchange for contact information. This way, you can create your database of potential customers interested in what you have to say.
- Closing: If the user chooses your company, they become a customer. We must continue to provide them with increasingly personalized content so that they do not change their mind or regret buying your products or services.
- Loyalty: Once the user becomes a customer, we must continue to offer them personalized content so that they reaffirm their decision. An excellent option to do this is to provide after-sales customer service. Think about it: if they are happy, they will likely recommend us in the future.
Creating a customer journey map
In order to create an effective customer journey, businesses must also be aware of pain points, or areas where customers may encounter difficulties. These could include issues with product quality, customer service, or the purchasing process itself. By identifying these pain points, businesses can make changes to improve the customer experience and increase customer satisfaction.
The customer journey is a critical aspect of any business, as it provides insight into the path that a customer takes from the initial point of contact to the final purchase. A customer journey map is a visual representation of this path that helps businesses understand and improve the customer experience. In this blog post, we’ll explore the steps to creating a customer journey map that can help businesses better understand their customers and improve their overall experience.
Step 1: Define Your Customer Persona
Before you can begin creating a customer journey map, you must first define your customer persona. This persona represents your ideal customer and includes information about their demographic, interests, and behaviors. Defining your customer persona will help you understand your customers’ needs, motivations, and pain points, which will be critical in creating an accurate customer journey map.
Step 2: Identify Touchpoints
Once you have defined your customer persona, the next step is to identify the touchpoints in their journey. A touchpoint is any point of contact between the customer and your business, such as visiting your website, calling your customer service, or receiving an email. By identifying touchpoints, you can gain insight into the channels through which your customers interact with your business.
Step 3: Gather Data
To create an accurate customer journey map, you must gather data from various sources, including customer feedback, surveys, and analytics. This data will help you understand how customers interact with your business and identify pain points that need improvement. It’s essential to gather both quantitative and qualitative data to ensure a comprehensive understanding of your customers’ experiences.
Step 4: Create Your Customer Journey Map
Once you have gathered data and identified touchpoints, it’s time to create your customer journey map. There are several ways to create a customer journey map, including flowcharts, diagrams, or even a simple list of touchpoints. The most critical aspect is to ensure that the map accurately reflects the customer journey, including their emotions and expectations at each touchpoint.
Step 5: Analyze and Improve
Finally, after creating your customer journey map, it’s time to analyze and improve. Use the map to identify pain points and areas for improvement in the customer experience. This analysis will help you prioritize initiatives that will improve the customer journey and increase customer satisfaction. Remember to continually update your customer journey map to ensure it accurately reflects your customers’ experiences.
What did we learn from inbound marketing and customer journeys?
In conclusion, creating a customer journey map is a crucial step in understanding and improving the customer experience. By defining your customer persona, identifying touchpoints, gathering data, creating the map, and analyzing and improving, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers’ experiences and identify opportunities for improvement. With a customer journey map in hand, businesses can make informed decisions that positively impact their customers and ultimately drive business success.
As you can see, implementing an inbound marketing strategy while being present throughout the customer journey is crucial because it provides you with a huge competitive advantage over other companies that are incorporated at later stages. By doing this, your company will be able to capture potential customers from the beginning of their “journey”, while also gathering information about their preferences. This data will be very useful in forming a unique Prospect Relationship Management (PRM) database. Why? Because thanks to the information collected, you can identify users with similar profiles and know how to engage them better to achieve a conversion.
Now you know the advantages of accompanying the user throughout the customer journey and how inbound marketing can offer multiple benefits for your business. What are you waiting for to implement it?
