A Simple Marketing Tip to Change Your Business

Today’s businesses are super focused on designing websites that will attract the masses. After all, when your job is to meet your customers where they are, you’ve got to go online! For most organizations, this means developing a professional-looking and functional website, as well as deploying inbound marketing tactics that help draw in new consumers. But what happens after a guest arrives at your website? Do they look around for a sec and then bolt for the door, or do they hang around and take some sort of desirable action? Well, that’s what this two-parter is all about. Join us as we foray into the exciting world of conversion rate optimization (CRO) for tips on how you can convert every casual visitor into a paying customer.

What Is The Buyer’s Journey?

In very simple terms, the buyer’s journey is the process that a buyer goes through from not knowing they need a product to finally choosing one and spending money on it.

In the awareness phase, the buyer realizes they have a problem or a need. In the consideration phase, the buyer defines the problem and looks for options or solutions. And in the final decision phase, the buyer chooses a solution to the original problem.

So how does this help you and your marketing efforts? Understanding what problems you’re solving, how your customers do their research, and how they end up choosing you can give you valuable insights into how to attract their business. Let’s dig a little deeper.

The Awareness Phase

This is the earliest part of the process. Your buyer has the symptoms of a problem, but can’t state them succinctly. Let’s say you make a smart coffee maker — the kind that can be scheduled from an app on your phone. What kind of problems or needs might your buyer have?

Maybe it takes too long to make coffee in the morning. Maybe they forget to set it the night before. Maybe buying coffee at Starbucks is getting expensive.

Your role in the early phase of the buyer’s journey is to help your customer identify their problem. Using whitepapers and blogs to establish yourself as a reliable source of information, you can guide your buyer to a clear, succinct need: I want hot coffee to be ready when I wake up.

The Consideration Phase

The consideration phase is the point where your buyer is researching options. They haven’t decided that they need a smart coffee maker yet — they’re just looking for information and solutions.

At this point, the buyer is assembling a list of possible solutions in their head. Maybe I can make coffee the night before? Maybe I can grind the beans and fill the coffee maker ahead of time? Maybe I could start buying pre-packaged instant coffee that doesn’t take as long to prepare?

Your role is to highlight the product you make in a way that shows your potential buyer that you have the solution to their problem. Use videos, demonstrations, and even customer testimonials to show potential customers that you’ve solved their problem before and can do it again.

The Decision Phase

This is the final phase of the process, but it’s where a lot of companies actually start their marketing without thinking about the previous two. At this point, your buyer is convinced that a smart coffee maker will solve their problem. They just need to pick one.

Now is the point in the process where you get to show the buyer that you make the best smart coffee maker available. Maybe yours has a built-in grinder, or is easier to clean, or has the best price point.

The Buyer’s Journey and Inbound Marketing

In the inbound marketing methodology, you can’t just put flashy ads on TV about how great your smart coffee maker is and expect customers to come running. Today’s customer isn’t as impulsive — they need to do their research and compare their options before they make a decision.

Understanding the buyer’s journey is the best way to insert yourself into that process. If you provide not only the product, but the information and answers that lead buyers to it, business will boom.