The customer journey encompasses all the actions a potential customer performs with a brand, from the initial contact with the company to making the purchase and, in some cases, even after the buy has been made. Understanding these processes helps businesses. It is often theorized that the customer goes through five steps in the customer decision process: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention and Advocacy.
Awareness Stage
At this stage there is recognition of a need or a problem that needs to be addressed and a search for solutions arises. It is also a primary point of contact with the various potential customers towards your brand, the first being through various marketing means such as promotions, social media, blogs, google and so on. The consumer may not know this brand at this point but will likely be looking for available information that may help in solving their issues.
Strategy: In this stage, it is essential to concentrate on increasing the visibility of the brand and on educating the audience. Content marketing such as writing blog posts, making ebooks, or recording informational videos in due time helps a customer to understand his issue, and then starts plugging in your brand as a potential solution out of the numerous available.
Consideration Stage:
During the consideration stage, the customer understands who your brand is and is in the process of searching for ways to satisfy their need. Customers could be looking at various products, going over reviews, or researching your solutions more precisely.
Strategy: For this section, your mission is to create persuasive and informative content that encourages the reader that this is the right brand and why it still remains unbeaten among the rest. Providing product comparisons, case studies or webinars can help resolve customer pain and demonstrate the benefits of the offered solutions. It is important to make sure that your product or service is given the platform it requires to be regard as one of the possible options
Decision Stage
At this moment, the customer stage is known as the decision stage where the client intends to make a purchase. As for now, they have all necessary and reasonable information and themselves even limited their option range including yours. It is very likely that they are buying these at the moment with looking forward to such offers as price cuts or other promotional schemes to assist them contain their budget.
Strategy: Minimize obstacles that can deter customers from completing a purchase by making the process and any required steps as seamless as possible; have a user-friendly website, well-placed CTAs and allow for various payment services. This is the time to use the cost of persuasion to the maximum such that the final outcome is determined in favour of the company; eg by using discounts, time lapsed offers, free testing, etc
Retention Stage
After acquiring a customer, the next step is to maintain their enjoyment. At this point, the customer looks at the product or service, but their experience with the organization has a large impact on their willingness to continue the purchase.
Strategy: Right Support will allow customers to purchase How-To content for that product or a free worksheet to increase efficiency, guide the customer, and improve simultaneous conversions faster. Internal mechanisms like loyalty rewards, emails, and supporting customers before they complain can help avoid dissatisfaction and ensure retention.
Advocacy Stage
A satisfied customer becomes a brand ambassador which is termed as advocacy. By spreading word-of-mouth, they recommend your products or services to others, write positive product reviews or share their opinions on social networks.
Strategy: Rapid growth of customer advocacy should be courtesy of Soliciting for reviews, incentivizing referrals, and nurturing your active clients. However, doing that, the chances of brand advocates also increases through word of mouth are very much attainable.
Conclusion
Understanding the phases that customers go through, i.e., awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy, enables the business to develop the right strategies. By considering the needs of the customers at the respective stages, engagement, sales, and relationships can all be improved.
