Many entrepreneurs still do not know, however, that the customer journey is the entire process they go through from the moment they discover a product or service they need, until the time they make the purchase.
This interaction is essential for any organization to achieve assertive results with its sales.
Furthermore, it is important to say that this journey is not random, as there are some specific phases that make up the customer journey.
Understand how the customer journey works
Regardless of the environment in which your company operates, as mentioned above, it is important to think of ways to identify where each consumer is in the journey.
1 – Learning and discovery
Here, the consumer is identifying that he or she has a problem or need to solve. This moment of discovery awakens in the client the curiosity of how to solve this type of situation.
This first contact must be attractive to ensure that the consumer maintains interest in your company. The less commercial the dialogue, the more likely he is to be interested in the content.
Usually this happens when he finds your page by searching for a specific subject. In fact, the customer profile has changed a lot in recent years, and one of the main changes is this concept of relationship.
In these cases, it is important to think of ways to make better use of your resources, so when a consumer searches for, for example, you will be the name they find.
When the customer looks for something in search engines, the algorithms responsible for the platform make a deep search in their databases, identifying the most relevant websites and portals in order to present a precise list to the customer.
If your page is among the first to appear, chances are the consumer will look at the page to identify useful and relevant information to solve their problem, which will take them to the next stage of the journey.
2 – Problem recognition
When the consumer reaches a certain level of knowledge about the problem at hand and the need for a solution, he ends up getting even closer to your company. That's because its content was essential for him to reach this understanding.
When you can demonstrate that the customer needs a product or service to solve a certain element of their life, it becomes a business opportunity.
This is because he will already be closer to your company due to the relationship previously created between the two.
3 – Consideration of the solution
The third step of the journey is presented by considering how you can solve the problem. This is an important type of feature, particularly because of how you can interact with the customer.
Here is the time for your sales team to act, presenting your company as an adequate solution that exceeds customer expectations so that they can explore their full potential.
4 – Purchase decision
After all the steps, the relationship between consumer and brand ends up being very strong, which helps to reach the last step of the journey, where the customer decides to make the purchase.
What can the company gain from the journey?
Many companies still do not understand the potential of exploring this journey step by step, always staying close to the consumer and encouraging him to become a customer.
This type of action is fundamental and can generate several benefits, for example:
Better understand the customer
When you can better understand the customer and the way they communicate, you have a much greater potential to meet their expectations. A company that cares about the customer's thinking ends up valuing it.
This type of action is very well regarded in the market, and people feel much more likely to follow what you have to offer because of this type of action, as they feel welcomed by the company, understanding the importance of their opinion.
User experience is one of the main elements of any marketing action, and therefore making decisions that enhance that experience is essential. In fact, you can do a skills mapping and optimize your service.
Identify failures throughout the process
When you have a frank and open connection with your customer, it's much easier to identify any kind of flaws or bottlenecks in your process. This way, you end up being able to resolve these elements much faster.
This ends up being of great value to the customer. By showing the will to organize and tidy up, he can feel firm in the company's performance and even continue to encounter an obstacle.
Your main objective should be to be able to create a satisfying journey from start to finish for the customer, thus ensuring that they will become a frequent consumer in your company, through loyalty.
Cost reduction
Any company that wants a better result should be concerned with this factor. In addition to achieving profit, reducing process, communication and marketing costs are essential.
There are several ways to reduce a company's costs, but communication is critical. When following the customer's shopping journey, you end up identifying some process bottlenecks, which may be spending more than necessary.
In this way, you end up consolidating your service and focusing on what really matters to achieve better results in terms of saving values, using communication as the main catalyst for this improvement.
How to make a map of this journey?
Understanding the buying journey process is not a difficult process, but it is complex in points that you need to pay attention to several details to get results close to what you expect.
For this, you can pay attention to some good practices that end up being very useful to define your company's customer buying journey.
creating personas
The persona is the primary means of identifying that you are on the right track with the type of work you are presenting. It is a fictional figure, based on interactions with its customers and consumers interested in doing business.
A persona is a highly detailed picture, so you can walk him through the entire buying journey and get to understand some of its key details, as well as test sales techniques with that picture.
The first step is to create a life for your persona. Therefore, you must pay attention to a series of elements such as full name, age, address and profession, in addition to many other details to give a physical body to your persona.
However, the great advantage of this tool is when you work on its psychological aspects. It is possible to imagine a series of important interactions through this type of action, such as:
- Wishes;
- Fears;
- Consumption Patterns;
- Personal issues (gender, religiosity, among others).
The more detailed your persona is, the more you will be able to identify the steps that make up the purchase journey.
Calculate the journey time
This is an important step. Defining the deadline for the purchase journey depends a lot on the service or product you are offering, since the persuasion and presentation work count a lot in this factor.
However, it is important that you define the type of sales you want. For a fast-consuming product that you expect customers to consume multiple times, it's ideal to have faster time on the journey.
The same thing does not apply to other elements, such as real estate and other products with very high investment costs, which cannot better exploit all the resources at their disposal.
know where to work
Nowadays, the internet allows you to be in several places at the same time.
Identifying the most common forms of communication with your customers helps you have greater contact with them, thus influencing the purchase journey.
Be it social networks, blogs or other sources of information, it's important to keep an eye out.
Final considerations
The customer journey is a critical step for most people, especially given its potential to engage and convert to sales. Understanding each step of this journey is essential for you to be able to conquer a good space in the market.
When your company takes the opportunity to identify negotiation elements along the journey, you can transform the process into something much more effective, thus ensuring its market position and offering quality in solving the problem.