The Buyer’s Journey is the process that a consumer takes before making a purchase, understanding this process can help to inform your marketing and sales strategies.
In short, the buyer’s journey consists of four stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage, the decision stage and the delight stage. So, let’s look at each stage in a bit more detail, including what content you should be creating:
The Awareness Stage
To start this journey a buyer will need to identify that they have a specific need, this need (or pain point) will lead them to search for a solution. At this current step, it is likely that they are unaware of your brand/product and are not interested in reading up on brand-specific content. In most cases, the buyer is looking for educational and informative content.To ensure that you are meeting the needs of your potential customers you should be generating content such as:
- Educational/informative blogs
- Social Media Posts
- Guides
- eBooks
- Infographics
The Consideration Stage
By this point in the process, the buyer has identified their need or pain point, and are committed to resolving it. Often, they will analyse different solutions and approaches available to them, to discover what service or product they should invest in to help them solve their pain point. Much like the Awareness Stage, the buyer is still relatively uninterested in your business, they don’t so much care about the end provider but rather what product will help them fix their problem. For this stage, you should be creating:
- Case Studies
- Podcasts
- Videos
- Comparisons/ Pros vs Cons
The Decision Stage
As you might expect, this stage begins with the buyer having decided on a solution to their pain point. They’ve put in the research to solve their problem and will now start to compare their options to settle on which product/service to purchase. If they have already viewed some of your content as a guide in the first two stages of the journey, they will be more likely to trust you as a brand, hence why it is so important to generate a wide range of content. It is at this step in the journey that you are able to show off who you are. You can boast about your brand messaging and products. For this stage, you should ensure that you are publishing content and services such as:
- Pricing
- Demos
- Free Trials
- Client Case Studies
- Testimonials and Product Reviews
- Product Information
The Delight Stage
If you’ve reached this stage then that means the buyer has purchased from you. Fantastic news, right? Well of course, but that doesn’t mean you can stop there. You need to nurture your relationship with them, this will help to increase customer retention and loyalty. The impression you make from this point onwards may even encourage the buyer to tell others about your product and brand. To ensure you are impressing at this stage, you should create:
- Follow up emails
- Surveys and Feedback forms
- Newsletters
- Continued informative blog posts
Now you’ve learnt about the Buyer Journey, you can use it to inform your marketing and sales strategies. Whilst you shouldn’t assume that everyone will follow these stages in the order that they presented to you, simply because not every consumer’s brain works in the same way, it’s important to follow the steps yourself. By closely analysing each stage, and putting yourself into the buyer’s shoes, you can ensure that you have the resources needed to guide a customer, identify any missing gaps and create the necessary content to fill said gaps.
