To make the most of inbound marketing and marketing automation, one must have an appreciation for their customer and customer journey. Customer journey refers to the path that a potential customer takes from the moment they become aware of their problem and your company, product or service, to the point of making a purchasing decision. It involves various stages such as awareness, consideration, and decision-making.
Awareness Stage
The first stage of the customer journey is awareness, where potential customers become familiar with your brand or product. Through targeted advertising campaigns powered by inbound marketing, online marketing platforms and tools like social media, digital ads and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), businesses can reach their target audience effectively.
By delivering relevant content based on what customers need, marketers gain deeper insights into consumer behaviour leading them down a path towards purchase decisions.
Consideration Stage
As potential customers move into the consideration stage where they evaluate different options, marketing automation can play a vital role in nurturing leads and guiding them through the decision-making process. With automated lead nurturing campaigns, businesses can deliver timely and relevant content that educates and influences potential customers. By providing valuable information, answering questions, and addressing pain points, businesses can build trust and credibility with their audience.
Decision Stage
Finally, during the decision stage, potential customers are ready to make a purchase. Inbound marketing helps facilitate conversions by using personalized email drip campaigns or dynamic content.
This content is tailored based on previous interactions or preferences identified by marketing automation software. These algorithms analyze big data sets from various sources, such as website traffic patterns or social media interactions. With this information, marketers can create compelling calls-to-action that drive conversions.
Another fascinating customer journey that is less paid attention to, is the Know, Like, Trust Factor.
Zig Ziglar, the late American author, salesman and motivational speaker, once said, “if people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you”. This is truer now than it has ever been.
What Ziglar meant, and what I take away from this quote, is that we now live and do business in a world that trades in the currency of trust. Without trust, fewer and fewer customers will buy from you. It is, therefore, imperative that your company begins to apply principles and best practices that will help you to keep and gain this trust from your existing customers and your prospects respectively.
The currency of trust means that every prospective buyer asks themselves if they know you, if they like you, and if they trust you enough to invest their hard-earned money to buy your product or service.
As they consider these questions, they will also ask themselves:
– Who are you?
– What do you do?
– Should they care?
– Are you an expert?
– Have you successfully helped others in the past?
We have seen what happens when customers neither like you nor what you have to say. 94% of them will opt out and discontinue communicating with you! But if they do like you, then you are in a much better position to start earning their trust, which increases the likelihood not only of them purchasing from you, but also the likelihood of their becoming your brand ambassadors.
So, how do you achieve this? How do you successfully guide strangers from awareness to consideration and decision-making? How do you get prospects and customers to know, like and trust you enough to become loyal repeat buyers and brand ambassadors?
You implement Inbound Marketing.
