Understanding the Customer Journey
Have you ever wondered what truly goes on in a customer's mind as they interact with a brand. The customer journey, a fairly broad concept, refers to the entire experience a customer has with a business. Right from the first moment of awareness to the final purchase and beyond.
It's all about understanding the many steps that shape how customers feel about your brand, product, or service. This process seems like it might be made up of straightforward stages at first glance, but it's actually far more complicated than that. It seems like no two journeys are the same, especially when you consider that every customer is unique and has their own set of needs.
This means that their interactions and relationship with your business will differ too. It's not as simple as the age-old 'before, during and after' scenario - although that's not completely wrong. Looking at it from a brand's perspective, there are some key stages that virtually every customer goes through on their journey.
These include awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy. More or less. These touchpoints aren't always linear either - they're just part of an ongoing cycle where existing customers can re-enter the journey at any stage as well.
But I'd say that's not even the most interesting part.
It's how businesses interact with their customers at these stages that really matters - because these small moments collectively shape a customer's overall perception of your brand.
The Importance of Touchpoints
Have you ever wondered why it is that a certain shopping experience tends to stand out in your memory as distinctly pleasant or off-putting. Well, there’s a good chance that it has something to do with the key moments of interaction you had with the brand - also known as touchpoints. I Suppose these are places where a potential customer interacts with a business and this could range from something as simple as coming across their branding on an advertisement to a first phone call with a company representative.
Touchpoints are valuable for more reasons than one. They tend to act as the foundation for every other part of your brand’s marketing strategy and act as micro-moments that offer an important window into how customers experience your business. Touchpoints can quite a bit be thought of as tiny opportunities for your business to make a meaningful connection with a prospective customer or to give them value by demonstrating expertise in the industry.
These micro-moments act as windows into how customers feel about your business. If you have enough information about what customers feel about your business at various stages of their customer journey, it gives you great insight into what you can do better to help improve their experience. Touchpoints serve two very important functions for brands - they help inform the customer and help brands identify weak spots in their marketing or sales strategies. You can think of touchpoints as being spots where a customer feels like they’re being actively supported by your business - through product information, reviews, live chat options, good store layouts, and easier payment options.
Sort of. Touchpoints can make or break how your brand is arguably perceived by a potential customer, which is why they’re so vital in shaping a customer journey map that works well for your brand and also caters to customers’ needs. It seems like the best way forward is to learn about how brands have historically optimised touchpoints in the past and apply some of those insights into your own strategy.
Awareness: Capturing Attention
Ever thought about what makes you stop scrolling and pay attention to an ad or a post. We’re surrounded by so much information that any message that gets through has done some pretty impressive work. It’s easy to assume it’s all about clever writing, but there’s a lot more that goes into being memorable.
Reminds Me Of Part of it is knowing who your message is for - in fact, most successful awareness campaigns have some degree of specificity. Whether it’s location-based posts or content timed around major events, capturing attention effectively means being in the right place at the right time with the right words for the right audience. I’ve personally found that sometimes, even small tweaks like a pop-culture reference or a funny little comment can help make an ad stand out.
And every once in a while, the simplest bits of information are the easiest to remember. But this is reportedly where things get fairly interesting - striking a balance between relevance and novelty can often be more helpful than simply relying on advertisements.
Announcements and messages using platforms where customers spend most of their time can help create awareness gently and steadily until interest starts growing. It’s why businesses use slightly different branding strategies on different channels - each platform engages with audiences differently. When it comes to making sure your brand stays on top of customers’ minds, timing appears to be as important as personality.
Posts and promotions that stay relevant long after they’re first published are often easier for people to remember when they’re trying to recall a product or service they saw online earlier. And if you want your message to stick, anything from colours to mascots can become another way for customers to spot your business wherever they go.
Consideration: Building Trust
How do you get from liking a brand to trusting it. It's funny because that line is nearly always rather thin and treacherous - like butter spread over too much bread. Trust is a tight rope act, especially today.
Like being at a festival and not knowing which stall is serving actual chicken in their chicken curry. And the stakes are even higher when customers are spending their hard-earned cash. I'm not an expert on trust - but I'm the queen of crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.
So what does trust mean in a business relationship. Is it loyalty. Is it faith in the company's commitment to its values and promises. Or is it simply 'believing' that your clothes won't shrink after that first wash (it's happened to the best of us).
I suspect it's all of the above - plus a little more. The truth is, trust is about as delicate as fossilised pollen. It needs nurturing, care and a tonne of 'showing'. Not selling - but showing.
Because people can tell when they're being duped, and people hate being duped more than finding out their pizza had pineapple on it all along. If you want someone to believe in your products or services, you need to be willing to put those products or services through intense scrutiny under a microscope. Are they good. Do they work.
Are they bad for the environment. Or worse still - have they been tested on animals. Once people know that you're honest and open about your product sourcing, manufacturing practices and pricing - they're far more likely to consider buying from you.
And oh, what an honour that would be. Being trusted by someone who came with reservations is a lot like being invited into someone's home for dinner after a couple dates. It means something's working out well.
Purchase: The Decision-Making Moment
Does anyone really have a straightforward purchase journey anymore. I think not. Where once buying was a simple affair of money exchanging hands, it’s now evolved into a multi-layered process involving many more considerations. The moment someone finally decides to buy can be quite the cathartic experience, really.
But it can also be fraught with uncertainty and guilt. The way I see it, after all, is relatively this really a product we need, or do we just want it.
I’m sure you know this already, but making purchases today takes longer and involves a lot more research than before. Especially in Australia, where economic instability and interest rate hikes have changed our relationship with money and spending. There’s a growing urge to look inward, ask tough questions, and justify the purchases we’re looking to make. So what could have been an impulsive buy once is now an attempt at mindfulness - because no one wants to deal with buyer’s remorse anymore.
To help customers actually feel comfortable and confident buying from you, there needs to be enough context and detail for them to see how your products fit into their lives - or how they don’t. Information is power after all. Sort of.
So giving people as much context as possible can help them navigate the purchase process far more easily. It’s important to remember that even if things may feel easy on your end - since you’ve built this business from the ground up - others may not see it that way. Shoppers need reassurance about your brand’s value system or motivations too sometimes - not just what you sell or offer. There’s no harm in gently nudging them towards making a purchase, especially if you can back up any claims you make about your products with facts and social proof.
Post-Purchase: Fostering Loyalty
What’s the difference between a buyer and a loyal customer. A lot, I think. There are so many ways people can purchase items from your brand, but only a handful of them will form lasting relationships with it.
It appears to be quite crucial to establish this distinction, lest you lose your buyers in their short-term engagement with your brand. Cultivating an emotional connection with your customers ensures you have them coming back for more — and also championing your brand in social circles and online. This goes a long way to helping make your customer journey ever evolving and naturally generating.
The one way that seems to work for most successful brands is the use of loyalty programs. These enable you to create incentives for repeat purchases, build rapport, establish trust, and sustain meaningful engagement with your audience. Of course there’s no hard or fast rule when it comes to post-purchase engagement as it entirely depends on individual buyer personas (and their expectations).
I think it also helps to ask customers their preferences for engagement such as post-purchase emails or texts about offers, new collections, and reorder reminders. If they’re willing to engage through these methods and share more about themselves, then why not make good use of this data. For example: if you know when your customers’ birthdays are, perhaps shoot them a birthday greeting along with a special discount code or gift card that they can redeem on that day or month. Or maybe you can directly ask them for referrals in exchange for exclusive discounts or gifts at checkout — this can help increase customer acquisition as well as existing engagement.
But despite all these incentives being well received by customers (for the most part), sometimes people just buy from brands because they must or because it’s convenient. Does this mean we don’t pay attention to these customers. On the contrary: offer incentives for reviews on Google so that every buyer has something valuable for shopping with you (like credit points.
). Every incentive counts; even if not all buyers turn into loyal ones.