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Understanding the buyer's journey is one of the most important factors in helping your business succeed. Due to the vast amount of information readily available at our fingertips, buyers are more informed than ever before, allowing them to hold the power in most sales conversations.
Long gone are the days of pushy sales tactics! Instead, for your brand or business to be successful, you’re better off stepping into your customers’ shoes. Getting into their mindset can help you immensely and the best way to get started is to familiarize yourself with the buyer’s journey.
In simple terms, the buyer’s journey is defined as “the customer’s path to purchase”- Hubspot’s definition is more informative, describing it as the buyer going “through a process to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service”. However, there’s much more to each phase and that’s what this article is going to tackle.
By understanding the buyer’s journey, businesses can better equip themselves to serve their customers by empathizing with them and positioning their products and services. Without further ado, let us get started!
There are 3 stages to be aware of. No more, no less! Though other blog posts separated the journey even further, this article will be focusing on the 3 main ones. Here are the 3 stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.
This is the stage where potential prospects become aware that they have a problem that needs solving. During this stage, buyers will research for general information about their problem, but won’t decide on a potential solution, which is why it’s also known as the “research stage”.
During the Consideration stage, the buyer has defined the problem that they’re experiencing. Using information and research done in the previous stage, the buyer is now more comfortable researching potential products or companies that can resolve their issue. Keep in mind that this isn’t the stage where they decide on any particular one. This is still considered the research stage where buyers are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each potential solution.
Finally, this is the stage where the buyer has explored all available options and decides on a particular product or service, eventually leading to a purchase. Remember, buyers have more information nowadays than ever! Before making a purchase, they’ll compare providers and take out the ones that they don’t like. Keeping this in mind, you should show them why you deserve their business over everyone else!
We’ll give an example. Let's say that a buyer is experiencing a problem with their laptop and wants to fix it. During the Awareness stage, they may look for information to understand, frame, and name their problem. In this case, the buyer may do a Google search to find out the problem. For example, if their screen suddenly went black, they might type, “Why did my computer screen suddenly go black?”
During the Consideration stage, the buyer has identified the problem and is committed to researching all possible solutions for the specific problem. So, let’s say, the buyer found out that his laptop had gotten infected with a virus. A possible question they might ask is, “How do I get rid of computer viruses?”
In the last stage, the Decision stage, the buyer has a defined solution in mind and is looking for possible vendors now. This is where they research businesses or possible vendors and select 1 for their purchase. One potential question that might be asked is, “ What is the best antivirus software for its price?”
During the Consideration stage, the buyer has identified the problem and is committed to researching all possible solutions for the specific problem. So, let’s say, the buyer found out that his laptop had gotten infected with a virus. A possible question they might ask is, “How do I get rid of computer viruses?”
In the last stage, the Decision stage, the buyer has a defined solution in mind and is looking for possible vendors now. This is where they research businesses or possible vendors and select 1 for their purchase. One potential question that might be asked is, “ What is the best antivirus software for its price?”
Now that we've gone over each stage of the buyer’s journey, we’ll now move on to the importance of it! I’m sure you have already grasped some of the importance of it by now, but there are so many reasons to incorporate the buyer’s journey into your marketing plan. In this section, we will go over several of these reasons. We have some statistics!
As eCommerce expands and the amount of digital information mounts up, traditional marketing is becoming increasingly obsolete. The primary reason is that it wasn’t designed to help and educate people. Nowadays, customers are becoming more knowledgeable and researching more.
Did you know that 65% of buyers spend more than 16 minutes in the Consideration stage before moving onto the Decision stage? 51% visit 4+ sites before finalizing a purchase! From this, we can conclude that a buyer's journey makes the buyer feel more valued because they are more informed.
By understanding the buyer’s journey, you can help your customers and make them feel valued. Understanding the buyer’s journey can help you map out what content to put out that will best serve them. It’s important that they feel their questions have been answered at each phase. For example, you can create informative content that is specific to each stage of the journey.
During the Awareness stage, you might write a blog post that describes the problem that they’re having and some potential solutions. The more detailed your contents, the better! This leads me to the next point.
Knowledge of the buyer’s journey CAN help you sell your brand, products), or services). Creating content that caters to each stage of the buyer’s journey can increase the likelihood that they’ll interact with your business, potentially becoming a lead. From there, it’ll be up to you to nurture them into loyal customers.
Remember, your customer wants the right content at the right time, so, by providing helpful and relevant information at each stage of their journey, they will gravitate toward you!
In the previous section, we discussed briefly how a buyer's journey can be incorporated into the content creation phase to help grow your business. This section will go into more detail on the types of content that you might end up creating.
Recall that buyers at this stage have recently become aware of a problem that they have that needs solving. This is the stage where they'll search for general information about their problem. Here are some of the potential content creation options that you can do here: blog posts, social media posts, whitepapers, educational webinars, ebooks, and so much more!
Whatever option you choose, you need to make sure that your content addresses the problem or topic that the buyers have questions about. We love to create blog posts for this stage because not only are you creating a brand asset for your website. You are also creating content that’s crawlable by Google and discoverable by everyday internet users. Not to mention, you can address ALL of your buyers’ questions in a single post! We recommend testing out what works for you at this stage. Every industry and business is different from one another.
For example, if you are in the fashion or music industry, a social media post might be better.
Recall that at this stage, the buyer has defined their problem and is now weighing potential solutions. For this reason, you should probably put out content that will subtly influence buyers’ consideration. Here are some of the potential content creation options that you can do here: infographics, webinars, free samples, product comparison guides, case studies, etc.
This phase requires some extra work, but we promise it will take you a long way! Our favorite method is creating an e-book that includes case studies because it can also incorporate the decision stage. It can even include the Awareness stage. An e-book is informative digital content that addresses a certain topic. While providing information, you can simultaneously convince the reader that you are the provider that has the solution. Incorporating case studies will allow you to appeal to the logic and emotion of your audience and nudge them in the right direction.
Finally, recall that the decision stage is the phase where the buyer has examined all possible solutions or businesses and is ready to make a decision. This is the moment that you have been waiting for! This is the moment where you connect with them, earn their trust, and show why your company is the best solution to their problem. Here are some content creation options: free trial, consultation offer, coupons, etc.
Notice that, at this stage, the content is directly related to the product or service you are providing. It has been recommended that you show the buyers what you really have to offer.
This is an opportunity to showcase why your company is better than the rest! This is the phase where you can let your product do the talking. This is the primary reason why we opt to provide free trials! If you run a consultancy business, you might want to offer a free initial consultation to showcase the quality of your service. What better way is there to decide than by letting the potential buyer try the product themselves?
We hope this article did a good job on the buyer’s journey and the types of content that should be created for each stage. After all, the best way to know the buyer is to step into their shoes. Understanding what a buyer does at each stage can help you better map out what types of content your business or brand needs, so we recommend treating this as an exercise. That way you will be able to better guide potential customers through the sales process in the future.
Understand and do this process well. We promise it’ll have a rewarding impact on your relationship with your customers, even resulting in higher conversion rates! We wish you the best of luck!
Check out our other blog posts and stay tuned for more helpful ones like this!
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