How to create a step-by-step consumer journey

How to create a step-by-step consumer journey. No matter your business field, your clients must have a path to walk through your business. This must happen from the moment they meet you until buying something from you. By creating a guide like this, you will know exactly where they are. As a result, this will help you achieve a sale or format an action.

Today, we’ll teach you what a sales journey is, its importance and why you should apply it in your business. Now, without further ado, let’s start!

What is the purchase decision process or customer journey?

When we talk about a consumer journey, we mean the path that your buyer goes through from the moment they meet you until the end of the entire process.

This process or journey is carried out through five fundamental steps or stops.

These are- recognition, consideration, decision, purchase, and post-sale.

Besides helping your company know where all your clients are, it also allows you to use persuasive techniques and make customers feel attracted enough to buy.

Why is it important to know what stage your consumer is in?

In short, this works as a useful tool to guide your customers throughout the purchase process.

With it, you can discover what their motivations are when approaching you, what they prefer to see, and how you can help them dispel doubts so that they join our business.

It’s as simple as giving them a guide, from start to finish, on each of the steps they will take on the way to reach the goal.

Here the only difference is that instead of giving them a map, you walk alongside them at all times. Besides, you will be also using all your marketing and content strategies to attract your clients to your business. 

Stages of the purchase decision process or customer journey

• Recognition

In this first stage of the purchasing process, the customer discovers for the first time a need for a product or service. In some cases, it doesn’t have to be a need, it can be a simple desire the person wants to satisfy.

Here you must focus on the client, their situation, and what is that need or desire that they want to satisfy. For this, the most important thing is to work on a relevant and different digital content marketing strategy, sufficiently optimized so that it stands out from other searches on the internet.

These contents can be presented in different formats and channels. Some of the most popular are web pages and social media, but even there you can offer articles, digital books, video tutorials, guides, or webinars to attract people with the information they may like.

Take advantage of all the digital resources you have to attract that client in search of important information to satisfy a need or desire. Attract them with your content and don’t let them escape.

• Consideration

Here, your potential client already knows how to solve their problem or situation. Hopefully, within this stage, your business will be the one to help them. That’s why from this moment on, you must create and work with viable and attractive alternative competencies. As a result, you’ll be able to redirect your customers to continue with the purchase decision.

What sets apart this stage and the previous is that here, the client’s goal is to get specific data to fix their situation. Because of this, they’re more like to review the opinions and reviews of other consumers. Besides, they may also seek help from business advisors to gather the information they want to share.

In this step, we recommend using different digital elements on different channels. For example, podcasts, videos, live interactions, or expert guides. This way, you’ll be supporting your client in this process and offer them all the information they need.

• Decision

By this point, your client already has enough information. Now comes the most important step, the decision of what to do next based on their research. During this stage, you have to offer them materials or content with a little more information about why your company is the ideal one to solve their situation.

It’s important to understand what is the behavior and motivations of your client towards a product or service. For this, you can use an analysis tool such as CRM software to follow your clients in their purchase decision processes.

What’s important here is to maintain an active information exchange channel between customers and your business. This way you will be able to know the interests of your client, solve any of their doubts and guide them at all times to make a decision. Encourage them, without pressure, to make them trust your business and choose you as the company that will solve their need.

• Purchase

Very well! You got the client to take you as the company that would help solve their situation.

This is where that person has already decided on your product and services. Once you have reached this point, we must remind you that, although the commercial factor is important, it isn’t the only objective in the marketing world.

Marketing also seeks to create a link between clients.

This way, all this work about the customer journey can become something regular.

The main objective of this is to allow a company to keep its customers close.

• Post-sale

Once the purchase process is finished, we move on to the last but not the least stage, the post-sale.

This is where you will want to know if your client is satisfied and for this, you must follow up on attention.

Don’t be afraid to ask them directly, let them also have spaces to express themselves on different internet channels.

Remember, you must care about what they think since they could be the next ambassador of your brand or the one in charge of destroying your reputation.

Factors that influence the purchase decision

The factors that can influence your strategies can be countless and, in some cases, you cannot have control over them. A very simple example of this is going to work and then experiencing a traffic accident. Obviously, you didn’t plan this, but now you’re late for the office. So, even if you did everything right, there was one factor that got out of hand. 

The same thing happens with consumer journeys. In this case, we have two types of factors that influence you in the purchase decision process. Some of them are internal factors and others are external factors. Next, we’ll show you what activities, situations, or scenarios complicate the customer journey.

• Internal factors that influence the purchase decision

These are the factors that we can see at first glance. You will see how they relate to the personality, style, and location of your clients.

However, the idea here is to do a job of segmentation and broad and safe market research.

These internal factors are:

• Premises: location and language of the client.
• Personal: the individual experience.
• Lifestyle: the preferences of the person.

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  External factors that influence the purchase decision

External factors are unrelated to the consumer, but they still affect you at work.

These are:

• Administrative: the change or modification of some laws can transform your company.
• Audiences: recommendations given by word of mouth.
• Unforeseen events: any situation that gets out of the wrong hands and we cannot control.

BluCactus, your ally in Digital marketing

BluCactus international marketing agency serves clients all over the world. Our specialty? The creation of web designs and SEO positioning in online searches. Our group of experts focuses on helping businesses and brands succeed in one of the most competitive sectors in the market, the digital world.

BluCactus will accompany you in every step that your brand takes. This goes from the creation of the branding of your business to the creation of content. Our focus is on supporting you with the creation of your website or the administration of your accounts on social media.

This online marketing agency, based in Dallas, TX, seeks to strengthen your image as a brand and take it to the next level. Don’t wait any longer to get the help of the best specialists in digital marketing. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter