While first impressions are important, the success of a brand extends to the buyer’s entire experience with your company. A well-crafted Buyer’s Journey results in more efficient marketing, and an easier acquisition of new customers. Attract, Convert, Close and Delight are the 4 stages in a buyer’s journey. Understanding your relationships with your Buyer’s in each stage will help you make wiser decisions about your marketing, and net you a higher return on your marketing investment.
STEP 1: Attracting Customers
The first step is to attract your ideal customers. Rather than shout your message to as many people as possible and hope someone listens, your goal here is to target your audience with precision. Understand the demographics of your customers, their needs, and what kind of voice and style they respond to. Address their particular needs, problems, and concerns. Another important consideration here is to find out where they are. Which social media sites to they use? What forums or websites do they prefer? What keywords are they searching for? You can use various inbound tactics to attract customers, such as:
- Pay-per-click ads such as Google or Facebook
- Videos
- SEO – rank for popular keywords your customers are searching for
- Social media – build your audience by connecting with people on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or other social media sites
- Blogging/Article Writing
Whatever methods you use, remember that how you present information is just as important as the facts and specs. Attractive images, clear language, and a professional layout help you get your message across and attract the right customers.
Step 2: Converting visitors
Once you’ve attracted your audience, you need to convert them. This involves some kind of call-to-action. The typical inbound approach is to send traffic to a landing page, either with paid advertising, SEO, or social media. Get people to sign up for your email list. Send them to product pages. Get them to call you for an estimate. Remember that, at this point, people are still in the stage of seeking information. They aren’t yet sold. It’s up to you to point out the advantages of your business. If you offer better quality products than your competitors, lower prices, unique features, or exceptional customer service, now is the time to point this out.
Step 3: Closing the sale
No matter how effective the rest of your marketing is, you can’t ignore the most important step of all – closing. This is the part where the customer actually takes out his or her wallet or hits the buy button. While you may think this is part of the converting process, it’s actually a separate phase of its own. Many sales are lost in this phase due to a variety of issues, such as slow-loading web pages, a shopping cart that’s hard for people to navigate, a lack of payment options, or (in the case of phone or in-person transactions) a sales rep who’s rude or lacks knowledge. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you may lose many mobile customers who find it too difficult to place an order. If you want to close more sales, make it as easy as possible for people to buy from you.
Step 4: Delighting the customer
After you’ve made the sale, your job still isn’t finished. You still have to satisfy and, preferably, delight the customer. This will increase your chance of repeat purchases. Reputation is a major factor with inbound marketing. As you attempt to attract customers, many people will check out your website and look for customer reviews. That’s why it’s more important than ever to give your customers an outstanding experience. When delivering your product or service, look for ways to over deliver. If you exceed customers’ expectations, you build up a loyal customer base and an outstanding reputation.
Know Your Buyers Journey
In reality, the above marketing stages, especially attracting, converting, and closing, overlap. The inbound methodology means creating an extraordinary user-friendly experience for targeted customers. Once you’ve identified the buyers who need your products, get your offer in front of them and provide them with a fast and simple process for buying. This means targeting the right audience, giving them the right information in an appealing format and then delighting them with your products. When you master the this process, your customers are eager to find you.
Over the next 8 weeks, we will be going over the 4 components of the Buyer’s Journey in more detail on Monday’s blogs. Be sure to sign up for to our blog email list to make sure you don’t miss some very important information that will help you take your business to the next level.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
