The global pandemic has indeed made some drastic changes in the customer decision making journey. The way consumers spend and the way they interact with the marketing activities, has witnessed a complete overhaul. Many businesses, especially SME’s are finding it difficult to understand this paradigm shift and are seeking out new ways to tap this ever changing consumer behaviour.
Regardless of the changes in the realm of marketing, one thing doesn’t fluctuate as frequently as consumer behaviour, and that is – The core nature of human as a consumer.
Humans by nature respond to specific patterns are are averse to some. In this article today, we are going to discuss how marketers can tap the very basic human nature and move cold prospects from one stage of the lead funnel to the next stage, successfully. This is not a “TURN MY PROSPECT INTO A BRAND ADVOCATE OVERNIGHT” guide. This piece of content talks about the stages that have been tried and tested over the years by various successful organisations and if followed in the same manner as described, is bound to give you excellent results, not just in acquiring customers online, but in retaining them, and more so, converting them into your brand advocates.
Why we need to understand CUSTOMER DECISION journey?
If you are planning to start a new venture, you must be aware that a prospect passes through various stages before your he becomes a customer for your business. We call these stages a part of lead funnel or your sales funnel, wherein, you have to slowly and gradually build trust for your product or service in the mind of your customer.
If you are an already an entrepreneur, you must have acquired at least a single customer, either intentionally or unintentionally. Whatever the case, once again, you must have witnessed that the prospect passed through various stages before closing the final sale. In some cases, the introduction to sales journey might be short, in other cases, it might have seemed like eternity.
Now, this is not about the journey duration, it’s about the psyche of a consumer, any consumer, whatever product or service you are selling. You need to understand what goes in the consumers mind and how to tap that to increase the sales and revenue for your business.
Many businesses live in the myth that their awesome product would automatically attract customers. However, that’s not the case, at least not what we have majorly witness in the business arena. People don’t actually care about the awesome product. People care about how the product is marketed to them, more so how your marketing resonates with their physche.
In this article today, you are going to learn the 8 tested steps to a customers decision. Even though these 8 steps are quite similar to the 6 pillars of internet marketing, which we have discussed in our previous article, the main difference in this article is that it mainly talks about the sales process steps and customer decision making process, whereas, the previous article was more about how internet marketing gives you excellent results and the importance of inbound marketing.
STEP 1 of customer decision – GENERATING AWARENESS
Every single customer for your business was once a complete stranger. They never knew which products or services you provide, what are your brand values, what are the reviews of your products/services and likewise.
So how did they become your brand patron? The answer lies in generating awareness, or simply as discussed in the previous article, the concept of visibility.
Generating awareness or visibility is the best thing that you can do for you brand. In case you wondering which platforms to use to generate awareness that will positively impact your customer decision making journey, consider the following internet marketing tactics –
Advertising
Even though digital advertising will give you wonderful results with minimal budgets, still we are not blind advocates of the digital realm. All we mean is advertising – reaching out to people, whether online or offline. In today’s era, we suggest to create a mix of both online and offline marketing activities. More of digital and less or traditional. or whatever works best for you. The idea is reach out to as many people as you can.
Social Media Marketing
There are estimated 3.5 billion people on social media. Social Media sites include all those websites which have UGC (User Generated Content). They are also known as Web 2.0 properties. The most popular of them being Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Advertising on social media is one of the inexpensive means by which you can reach out to large number of people over the internet. Below is an example of social media advert.
Search Engine Marketing
Till the time you read this paragraph, billions of searches would have been conducted over the internet. Search Engines are a good platform to tap the consumer mindset and thereby influence the customer decision. Even though search engine marketing is a little more expensive than social media marketing, but it tends to give you excellent results within your niche, and their are many targeting options to explore.
STEP 2 of customer decision – DRIVING ENGAGEMENT
Consider engagement as the gears in the picture above. They are interlinked to each other for a purpose and that purpose if to propel it forward, uniformly. Similarly, once you have captured your customers visibility, there is no point of waiting for a magic wand that would propel the customer decision. You have to do it yourself, and the only way to influence the customer decision positively is via engagement & what other method can be better than engaging content in this content hungry generation.
Some of the ways you can promote valuable content –
Blogging/Blog Posts/Content Marketing
Podcasts
Online Videos
IGTV videos on Instagram
and many more….
The key here is to be consistent and provide valuable content to the end user. You will not get the results overnight, but, at least, you will get the ball rolling. You customer might not just read your blog article and become an ardent fan of your business, but somewhere in the sub-consciousness it will set a recall value for your brand, which in turn will someday influence the customer decision.
Just like the gears in a machine propel the engine forward, similarly, engagement activities, either online or offline, influence the customer decision in a positive manner and propel the customer to be your brand patron.
STEP 3 of customer decision – BUILDING SUBSCRIBERS
The next step of the customer decision journey is to build subscribers. So far you have increased your brand’s visibility and taken a few measures to keep you product or service at the back of the mind of your customer. This is the time to engage into some serious action.
Building a subscriber means your customer has given you permission to have a conversation with them and they are good to proceed with checking out the products and services that you offer. It’s a subtle hint that customer decision is being propelled in the positive direction.
Perhaps the best and the most cost-effective method for building subscribers is Email marketing. If you are also keen to build subscribers via offline marketing, maybe you can send them physical postal emails, or offer them product demo at their convenient time and place.
We would suggest to promote your business and build subscribers using this method –
1. Write valuable content on your blog.
2. Share such content on Social Media to generate awareness.
3. once the awareness has been build, invite your readers to subscribe to your blog, something like this –
4. Once they sign up, start interacting with them on a regular basis. It may be a daily blog, a weekly article, once a fortnight, once a month or what ever you prefer, but be consistent.
Consistency plays a key role here. Remember the phrase – “Out of mind, out of sight” ? Well, this phrase somehow accelerates when it comes to business. Your consumer will have a short recall value, so its pertinent that you remain at the top of their minds. You never know when that customer decision takes place.
STEP 4 of customer decision – INCREASING CONVERSIONS
Well, the first 3 stages in customer decision have been more of passive. You doing the more of talking and your customer doing the more of listening. This is the stage to test the waters and to establish a firm connection between the customer and check the depth of their interest levels.
The idea is to offer low value products or services to the customers. Now that you have given them your product demo and generated good amount of trust with visibility and other engagement activities, its time to gauge is they are actually interest in your products/services, or it will take some more time to influence that customer decision.
One of the best practices in the trade is marked by GoDaddy, a leading provider of domain names across the globe. They often offer a domain name for the first tear at reduced prices. You see the asterisk* in the image below. Well, that’s a good marketing strategy. If you book a particular domain for 2 or more years, they will offer you the domain for the first year at discounted prices. Got it? This is what denotes offering low value products/services to the customers. Also, it looks very enticing to book the domain for number of years as the costing comes down as the duration increases. Pretty Cool!
You can also offer miniature packs, in case you are selling a product. One of our customers who is into selling clear whey protein realised that his product packaging was too bulky for consumers to try, so we gave this idea to seel miniature or on the go packs to build trust among his customer. Well, his sales skyrocketed after that!
STEP 5 of customer decision – BUILDING EXCITEMENT
Nothing is constant. Your best of customers may go to a competitor one day if you do not build excitement or make some awesome changes in your product or service. Doesn’t matter of you selling offline or online. If you are into online business, you should re-vamp your website after every 2-3 years, and your landing page, every 2-3 months. If you are into offline business, change your product packaging every few months, change the font or colour. But beware about this, it might have a negative effect of your customers, as many customers love your brand because of its attributes like logo, colour, slogan, etc. Fiddling with these things might influence the customer decision in a negative way.
You can also circulate your product or service guide that shows the various uses of your product/service and how it is useful for them. You may start with a points system or a loyalty program so that your consumer is willing to spend more on your services to gain the rewards of the program.
Keep in ming that the value of your offerings should far exceed the price paid by your customer. Delivering great products and services and creating bespoke marketing campaigns for your target market that would encourage your consumer to buy more of your products/services. This applies for both offline and over the internet.
STEP 6 of customer decision – SELLING YOUR CORE OFFER
Step 5 is the stage where marketing ends for most of the brands, as they have converted a prospect into a customer in step 5. However, that’s not the case. To build long lasting brands, you need long lasting customer loyalty. This is the step that would enable you to retain your customers for over a long time. Perhaps, retention is the least used marketing technique, and as far as businesses are concerned, whether offline or over the internet, it is actually the most important.
Scroll back to step 4 and re-call how you made a low value sale to a customer. Why did you do that? It was simple because the customer develops interest in your products or services and you can convince him to makke high value purchase decisions. Let’s say you have even convinced a customer to make a high value purchase. What then? It’s a one time purchase. These customers cannot become your brand advocates for lifetime.
Here comes the concept of monthly subscriptions or retainer-ship. If you have ever purchase Adobe subscription, they have aa smart way to sell it. Look at the image below.
You get a single app from their creative cloud database for INR 2300/m and a huge collection of 20+ apps comes for INR 5412/m. What sounds a better deal? Of course the former one. Now, don’t get excited that you got the point. There are further complications to this. The price that you see per month and you think that you can use it for limited months for a particular project. Sounds very cost effective…isn’t it? No No No…the price is a special discounted price when you agree for their 1 year retainer-ship, if you cancel the plan before 1 year, you will have to pay the remaining retainer amount on pro-rata basis. Pretty smart move!
STEP 7 of customer decision – CREATE BRAND ADVOCATES
Whenever you are planning to purchase a product or service, majority of the time you go to over the reviews. Brand advocates provide you testimonials about the awesome experience that they had with your product/service and in turn act as influencers to alter customer decision in a positive manner.
Consider them as fans of your company who defend your brand on social media channels and other online platforms and spread positive word of mouth for your organisation. If your business has reached this stage, you are already a brand.
Now most people confuse the term brand and business, and often consider the name of their business as name of their brand. The bitter truth is that you business is not a brand, unless people start associating with it in a positive manner. Your business is not a brand until your present customers influence the customer decision of to be customers. Thats why they say – “Aim to build a brand, not a business”.
Your ability to create brand advocates largely depends on the relationship that you share with your existing customers. You build this repo by adding value to your customer and proving his psyche that customer decision he took was to the best of his interests. By consistently delivering good products/services and adding value, you turn people into brand advocates and ultimately make them them your silent brand ambassadors.
STEP 8 of customer decision – GROW BRAND PROMOTERS
Consider brand promoters as one level up from brand advocates. Bothe carry loyalty for your brand. However, the former is simple in love with your brand. They simply cannot see your brand’s shortfalls. Even if they see, they choose to ignore them.
They do everything from tattooing your logo on their chest while driving Harley Davidson, to spending their free time writing blogs about your awesome product/services. You company has become an integral part of their life. They simply can’t do with it. They know your brand very well and have unlimited trust and faith in your brand. They have simply not committed their money to your brand, but also their time. They love you and you should love them back with special privilege offers.
Another point to mention here is about BRAND INFLUENCERS. Now brand influencers is a third category that is different from brand promoters, as well as brand advocates. Brand Influencers are not self motivated to promote your brand. They do so only in return of something, cash or kind. Even though they are not an integral part of your business, but, still your business needs them because they have a large number of followers and can influence customer decision, the way you want it!
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