Critical Touch Points to Consider Along the Consumer Journey
Most companies fail to understand that their job is to manufacture happy customers. Businesses come up with a product or service and expect to have hoards of people breaking down their doors. In most cases, this is not the case and most new ventures taste disappointment as they cannot explain why audiences don't flock to their offerings.
Understanding the digital marketing consumer journey will have you running circles around your competition with rabid customers craving interaction with your brand.
What Is the Digital Marketing Consumer Journey?
Marketing entrepreneur Ryan Deiss explains that the digital marketing journey is a visual representation of how customers "happen." In other words, how a stranger becomes a prospect, customer, and raving fan. Although there is strategy and skill behind the process, putting your audience on the consumer journey is somewhat like an assembly line. Knowing what makes your target market tick and understanding what sets each step of the journey apart can lead you to create a blueprint that converts with very little guesswork.
Buying a Car
Not all consumer journeys are alike. Every customer takes a different path to making a purchase. The example of a consumer in the market for a new car demonstrates this perfectly.
Parents looking to buy a car for their teen and a carowner who recently lost their vehicle in a collision are both prospective customers. However, essential distinctions determine the criteria and urgency that motivate each type of consumer in their purchase.
In the first case, the parent has several months to decide on a car. They will discuss with the teenager, do market research, and take their time in finding a good deal. The person whose car was totalled is likely operating from a sense of urgency. They need a car to function in their everyday life: go to work, shop for groceries, pick up their kids from school, etc.
Mapping the Consumer Journey
When mapping the consumer journey, you need to consider the end result. In other words, start with the end in mind. What is the triggering event that causes someone to enter the consumer journey?
Ruan Deiss calls this Step 0: Who are you selling to? You need to know your customer avatar. Target parents of new drivers. How do we reach them? Where do they hang out?
Generate awareness through: advertising, etc. Co-branding campaign with driving school, etc.
The 8 Stages of the Customer Value Journey
8 Stages:
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Subscribe/Capture info
- Convert stage
- Excite stage
- Ascend
- Advocate
- Promote
Awareness is the first touch point where a consumer realizes that your brand exists. Engagement is the first few interactions they have where they seek information on your products. Conversion involves getting the prospect to make a mico-commitment of time or money that will further strengthen the bond with your business.
The excite stage piques the prospect's interest to a point where they're ready to make a purchase and the last three stages cement the customer as a living, breathing brand ambassador and regular client.
Triggering the Digital Marketing Consumer Journey With a Lead Magnet
Lead magnets are tools that online marketers use to create sales leads. A lead magnet is a free product or service that consumers receive in exchange for their email address or other contact info. Newsletters, free consultations, ebooks, and samples are all examples of lead magnets.
What Are the Ingredients to a Good Lead Magnet?
Rahul Alim, president and CEO of Custom Creatives, suggests marketers focus on a single big problem. Don't try to solve all your audience's problems at once and don't go too broad with your lead magnet's scope. Keep a laser-targeted sight on the prospect's most grueling pain point.
Your lead magnet needs to have high perceived value and should be easy to understand. Also, deliver immediately! You don't want to tease your audience or use the lead magnet as a promise of future benefits. The key to an effective lead magnet is instant gratification through adding massive value.
A lead magnet can also be a loss leader, as long as your conversion rates are high enough to warrant offering a product or service at a loss. For example, Rahul Alim mentions banner ads as a potential lead magnet for firms that provide marketing services. People usually hate doing graphic design, and giving them a solution for this can be a powerful lead magnet.
The more a prospect detests doing something they need to do, the more effective it is to offer that service as a lead magnet. After you gain your prospect's trust by delivering with your lead magnet, move into different offerings and nurture the relationship you've started.
The Excite Stage Is the Key
Pinpointing the exact moment most of your prospects become excited with your offering is the key to optimizing your sales funnel. Knowing that "Aha!" moment where a user decides that your product or service is ideal for their needs will allow you to replicate the feeling across your audience.
Ryan Deiss shares the example of the Tesla test drive. When going to a dealership to test out one of the auto manufacturer's models, the employee has you floor it to see if you're into the car's monstrous acceleration. The rep will ask test drivers immediately after the experience what they thought of the exhilaration. In that moment, the prospect's reaction is enough to gauge if the customer is "sold."
Find the excite stage as it relates to your business and determine a way in which you can provoke it with an experience.
Visualize, Then Optimize
As an entrepreneur, you need to have a clear vision of the consumer journey as it relates to your business. Unless you can visualize the consumer journey, you cannot optimize it and grow your brand in a predictable, meaningful way.
Get the Ryan Deiss marketing blueprint at Digital Marketer for free. Print out as many copies as you need to map out each consumer journey as it pertains to your business. Think of yourself as the travel agent that creates a separate itinerary for travelers, rather than a bus that makes specific stops along a predetermined path. The more you are able to capture your audience's desired outcomes, the more your prospects will turn into loyal fans.