Master 4 of the 7 Customer Journey Steps to Gain a New Customer

Note: New Initiatives Marketing is part of The Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast of which this is one episode. The podcasts are produced and recorded for the ear, and they were designed to be either watched live on video or listened to via audio. If you can, we strongly recommend listening to this episode which will include emotion and emphasis that isn’t obvious when reading a transcript. Our transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and humans. They may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. This is not meant to be marketing advice.

Welcome to the Marketing Guides Podcast. I’m Jen Kelly. I’m here today with my panel of marketing guides, we’ve got Paul, Ken and myself, we’ve got Ian and Dan, have this episode off. So it’s just the three of us today. In this episode, we’re tackling the customer journey. This is a way Well, I guess the best way to explain the customer journey would be like this. No matter what product or service, you sell your customers, your buyers, your clients, whatever you want to call them, they all go through a few common steps from the time they find out about your offer until the time that they buy from you. Now they can’t buy from you without knowing about you. There’s some logical steps in this for sure. Now, the reason why I’m bringing this up today is I recently did a deep dive presentation was some business owners and took them through the concept of the customer journey. These were businesses. There’s one from Portugal, one from the UK, one from I forget where it was in the US, and one from the west coast of Canada. Different geographical locations, way different industries, some were serving b2b Somewhere serving b2c. And they were all blown away by how simple the customer journey wants, knowing it made them feel like okay, I really get where marketing comes in, and how marketing has to be different at every stage. with that kind of fanfare, I thought, I’m going to bring this topic to the podcast today, all of us on the panel are very familiar with the customer journey. As we dive in, we’re going to explain the steps, we’re going to talk through each one. And we’re going to explain how the steps don’t always happen in order even though we’re calling it a customer journey. And then we’ll talk about what types of marketing tactics you may want to use at each stage and and why. With that, let’s get started. I’m gonna start with you can, what are the seven steps in the customer journey?

Know, Like trust, try, buy, repeat and refer. And really, I think the key thing is to realize, yes, there is no like and trust. And that’s a phrase that if you’ve read any marketing book, you’ve probably heard that concept, it’s important to realize that the buyer has control over the customer’s journey more than ever before. And with COVID, it’s even more so because I don’t care what kind of business you are, whether you sell a product online or not. People are using online to find a business that they want to do business with. And so I think every business needs to take a step back and think about the know, like trust, what do they need to do to communicate those phases of customers journey or buyers journey, and then how they create the content, all that kind of stuff. But then keep in mind that the try element is really critical. Some businesses don’t really need much of a try offer because there’s not a lot of risk in a purchase. But if there is a risk, or it’s a complicated purchase a try offer becomes hugely important. And then by is pretty obvious. That’s where they’re actually making the purchase. And the transaction happens. The key thing I think and the thing I love about the customer’s journey, the way that John Jantsch and duct tape marketing have defined it is now you’ve got repeat and refer. And those are hugely important. And I think a lot of people when you think about a traditional sales funnel, it’s a funnel and it has it finite in and once somebody comes out as a customer, Okay, we’re done. No, that’s not the way it should work. And you’re missing massive opportunity. If you’re not taking advantage of the final two phases, which we’re not going to talk a whole lot about today. Yeah, the repeating refer elements today we’re obviously talking about how do you get somebody to the point where you’re making that sale? I’ll stop with that.

Okay, good. Dan, we’re talking about the customer journey. Sorry about that. We’re all busy. It’s no worries. So in the throw you over to this question. So do you have favorite step in the journey and what is it and why is it your favorite?

Yes, I absolutely. positively love the try. If you’re asking, what is the absolute favorite, that is always my favorite, because I think it’s such an underutilized phase of the buyers journey. I think, generally speaking, we’ve spoken about this is that you can shorten your buyers journey significantly, just by having an excellent try. When we’ve talked about offers in our past episodes, this is something that if you have a great try, and I mean a compelling one, not everybody does it in my industry kind of thing, then you can usually convert them. Let me give you an example. Because I think we’ve all done this one on the show, we oftentimes in some form or fashion, say, Well, let us give you a strategy. First, let’s see that you’re in agreement with it, it can take different forms. But if you like it, when we present it to you, then we can go on to an engagement from there and it’s paid, I think that’s very important is I do think it should be paid. But I do think that they should part with some kind of money, whatever that dollar amount is. But if it is a paid try, and they they agree with it, they like it, your conversion to making that a bi, I would say is like 90% or better. I think part of that you can track that and everything. But the trial is such an exciting part for me, because if you go from no to like to trust to try, again, I’m stealing here, I think from what from Eugen. But you have said before, there are seven phases, and this is essentially making it into a four phase part of the journey. It’s not to neglect the others that follow. But rather, this is really what we’re talking about. This is the part that makes the buyers journey, a buyers journey, rather than a prospects journey that try means everything, everything the buy becomes almost an afterthought at that point. 

Yeah, what’s really cool about the try is, both parties, get to try and make sure that there’s an alignment and a good fit. I don’t know about you guys, but I came from the world of software development, project management, before I got really deep into marketing 1520 years ago, when you’re developing software for the Department of Defense, you have to think a lot about risks. Because if I saw that software fails, people die. Yeah, I always look at it. What can you do to put risk measures in place? And the try is that perfect answer, it’s, you’re going to get something worth great value. But it’s pretty low risk, because it’s not an ongoing long term, 14 month SEO commitment or something like that, it gives you the opportunity to see what it’s like to work with each other both parties when figure out, hey, we’re a good fit. Regardless, the outcome of that initial try deliverable is still going to be valuable for the person who’s made that purchase.

If I can piggyback on that. I think that’s an excellent point. Because one of the things that we all on this call do is a strategy that sometimes can take a couple months or maybe even more, and we do like client interviews, right? Let’s say one of those times you’re presenting your your finished strategy, you’re putting it in front of these folks. And it’s not the first time they’ve probably seen it. They’ve seen it in phases before, as you’ve talked about, here’s some things that we’re finding out. But when you go and present it they say, oh, yeah, that guy who was a client, he always says that. Yeah, disregard that, or Yeah, yeah, we already know that. We already know that. And you’re sitting there going? Well, if you already know that, then why aren’t you doing it? And that’s kind of a red flag to me is that you kind of go, okay, they are just regarding information that I didn’t come up with. I got it from their clients. If somebody is going to do that in the strategy phase, what are they going to be like to work with on a regular basis where they don’t even respect what you’re bringing to them? Oh, I did the blog post myself, I just wanted it this way. Be prepared for that, because that’s the kind of person that you would be working with. So in other words, to Ken’s point about this is a really important part for both parties. When you see those kinds of red flags, and we all have the experience now where we are pretty good about spotting them, then the try phase is really where you’ll see it. That’s where you’re going to see those things and go, You know what? I think we’re, I think we’re good. Why don’t you hang on to that strategy for a while or maybe you flat out just refer them to somebody else, because all of us deserve clients who are not going to just have the work from us. But we are going to have the reviews from them, the referrals from them, the good vibes from them. And if we don’t feel that in the tri phase, then we’re not going to go forward. Guaranteed I’m not going to go forward with that. The try is huge. The point of our title here of you just need to master fourths of the steps to get a sale. That’s what we’re really talking about, in my mind is know, like trust, try. If you get to try your rounding third and headed for home,

if you want to be right, just when you want to be.

Yes.

that’s really great insight. Paul, talk to me about some of the examples of the right kind of marketing done at each of these steps. You don’t have to go through them all. But give us some examples. Because for many folks, not in marketing, it’s like all these marketing tactics and this that what, which do I use when can be really confusing? Could you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I mean, books have been written on this. When I look at this summit, the no stage, that’s going to be informational content. But in this day, and age where people have all this information online, and like Ken said, that the customer is in is in charge of this journey, they may not even engage with you, during that stage, at least not directly. If one of their friends refers them to you, that’s the beginning of that of that first stage. That’s really brand awareness, whether it’s a referral, whether it’s social media, whether it’s blog content, that that is brand awareness, people may not even know you exist, that’s getting your name out there. And then like, and trust me, personally, I look at those as trust unlike because if I’m engaging with a business that I’ve never dealt with, I don’t know about them, the first thing I’m going to do is go look at their reviews, because to me trust has to come first, if I don’t trust them, I’m not going any further, I kind of look at those two as reverse and content for the trust age, to me, it’s reviews is extremely important. It’s expert content, it you have to establish yourself as the authority goes back to Google’s expertise, authority and trust. And I think if you have that trust, then that like becomes much easier. That’s usually where they start to engage with you, in my opinion, okay, at that point, if I know about a company, and their content is authoritative, and they have good reviews, that’s when I’m going to engage with that company. To me that comes down to customer service, and how you deal with them? How quickly do you respond? Do can they answer my questions? Or do they give me some kind of run around? To me, that’s the trust stage. And then we’ve kind of already talked about the try. And like Dan mentioned at that point, if you get that far, the buy is much easier. Yeah, absolutely. Those first three stages is where your informational content, your reviews, your expertise and authority, because that has to be established. And those first three phases are essential. Like I said, they may not even engage with you during the know stage, but they have to know you exist before you can go any further.

Yeah, absolutely. You made a good point there, that referral is technically at the end of the journey. As someone’s at the end, let’s call it someone else’s beginning with your company, right? Because that’s the first time they’re going to know about you. I like your point about reversing the trust in the light, because you may read a bunch of online reviews sounds like a great company, you’re calling them up or you’re emailing for, you know, a first interaction, and how that interaction goes can just slip literary, everything that you thought positively of them, or ramp everything up, and you just liked them so much more.

Email or a forum fill from unfortunately, I don’t know if you saw this, Ken, one of our clients, someone fill out a form said, Hey, I contacted you a few weeks ago when you came out and you gave us an estimate and never heard back from you. That’s not good. Okay, that can ruin the trust stage.

Yeah, you built it with them looking at your online reviews, and you just lost it. Because you didn’t respond.

We’ve talked about this in some of the past when it comes to a regular cadence funnels, things like that. How many times have we we can open up LinkedIn right now? And I bet you today we’ll get five to 10 sales kind of thing. Hey, can I’m this and this we specialize in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When can we talk? And it’s just totally destroyed? No, like interest right there. There’s no coming back from that. I think the the interesting thing that we’re seeing now, and I think especially with some technology, some more video that we’re seeing the lines of blurring a little bit more even now with like and trust and try just because we now have the ability to do some very customized outreach and say, Hey, so and so if you go to this site, I’ve actually created something for just you right now, with these assets. It has your name and the URL I think that to me just ramps up something from I’ve just gone from, like to trust to maybe even try in one fluid motion. I think that is coming. If not, it’s kind of here, but it’s going to be even more, I think in 2022. And beyond. That is very, very exciting to me.

Absolutely, absolutely. Can we’ve explained the seven steps in a very logical fashion. I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve kind of got a sing song in my head. But the customer may not always follow that logical path. Can you explain why that would happen? Yeah, well,

we’ve just talked about it actually a little bit. And Paul, I think, has some really awesome insight, which I’ve never really thought about where the trust may even come in and supersede the like. And I think it probably very frequently does, at least at that initial level. Because again, in the know might be you talk to a friend, they say, I need a new roof on my house. Oh, we use these people. Okay, well, the next step is okay, now you know about him. Now, what are you going to do, you’re going to go look at their online reviews, you’re going to go check them out, you’re going to look at their website, if they don’t have content on their website, that communicates to you that they solve the problem that you have. You’ve got to have messaging alignment, to build trust, then they may give you the opportunity to get the engagement to where you may actually build a like aspect of that. In other cases, there are businesses where, for example, a complicated software purchase, like a HubSpot, or something like that, you may follow HubSpot for years, because you love the content that they produce. And so you’re very engrossed and what they’re posting on social media. Well, before you’re ever ready to make a purchase that content, every time they deliver a new piece of content, and you’re getting that value in advance. That’s just building additional trust. And it’s just solidifying the relationship to the point where it’s like, okay, if I ever really have the need, and the situation where this comes into play, you’ve got that great opportunity as a business. One other thing too, that we I don’t want to skip over, because we’ve talked about it between Paul and Dan. And the last question, speed of response is huge. When you look at the statistics of speed of response, the first business that replies gets the business like 80% of the time, if you don’t reply, within a couple of days, you might as well not even reply, because you’ve probably lost that opportunity. Maybe not because they found somebody else, but probably just because it’s like, they must not care about working with me. And you’ve already sent a bad message. Those things are really important. We look at this all the time, Paul looks at the analytics, and we talk about this a lot. People may click on a Google ad, that may be how they found first find awareness, they go to your website, maybe they later do a search, they find a blog post that you wrote, but they go to that blog post, and they read the blog post, and they might take another action. And then all of a sudden, you know, before you know it, maybe they’re messaging you through Google My Business, or Facebook Messenger, or filling out a form on your website, the average touch points, or the typical marketing purchase is at least 12. Now, if you’re in a very expensive commodity market, like an automobile, it’s probably closer to 40. It’s going to be anywhere along that customer journey. So it could be looking at some social media, maybe that social media is really kind of geared toward the know in the light, the blog posts that you might read might be from other sources, like a third party independent review of that vehicle. That’s kind of a trust builder. And then they’re going to go look at Google Maps to find out who’s the closest car dealer and they’ll read the online reviews. And they’ll make a decision about okay, well, I’m equally distant between two or three, who am I going to go to, and they may go to the website of those dealers and find out what they actually have, especially right now on the lot because there are no cars to purchase on the lodge. A lot of people and then they’re going to pick up the phone and they’re going to have a conversation or they’re going to go in person and have a conversation with a salesperson. And they’ve got to build that trust to write a check for 20 to $100,000 for a vehicle purchase. The buyers journey can be all over the place and it’s not linear, and we don’t control it. What we can do is we can use the concept of the buyers journey to be a guide to kind of level out that oscillation back and forth between these stages. That’s really the importance I think of us understanding what the buyers journey is all about.

That’s why I call it the convoluted customer journey. It is all over the place. And Ken just said that’s really To me is the the no win trust phases because we have clients that they don’t want to put content on their website about products that they don’t carry it. It’s a similar competitor product, but they don’t carry it. But the customer may be wanting those comparisons. And if you don’t have that content your competitor does, they may contact your competitor just because they had the content on the website. And they want to know, there’s these three products, they’re all similar what’s best for me, because they don’t care what’s best for you want to know what’s best for them?

Right? This is important, because I think we’re, I’m starting to see, for some reason, a little bit of pushback out there in the world about the buyers journey and things like that, for the reasons that you just outlined, there were no it doesn’t follow all the time, the same path. That’s true. But it doesn’t mean that this isn’t still extremely relevant. The fact is, is if you don’t have this, you’re going to have a list of, of 20 different things and be like, what do we do? I’ll give you a perfect example. Two weeks ago, a client said, gosh, now we’re adding on video and this and this, are we going to be okay doing all these things. And we sat down, and we did a customer journey marketing hourglass session, where we put everything in its proper place. And then suddenly, can you breathe a little bit more seeing this, he was, hey, now I get it. I think for people who are pushing back against this, because oh, we don’t follow that. They just come here and they buy stuff. Even if that were true, I think it’s better to cover all of your basis, and to be hitting all of those marks on the seven steps so that you’re not leaving anything through the cracks. If you’re a complacent industry, like accounting, accounting is like the most complacent marketing industry there is. People don’t leave accounting firms for hardly anything unless they screw up. If you are a firm, a competing firm that sends that prospects of accounting firm, a ongoing content that takes them through a little bit of a journey, they’re going to start to take notice and go, Why doesn’t my firm do that? Why doesn’t my firm ever asked me these questions? Why doesn’t my firm bring ideas to me, all they do is just give me stuff that I asked for, maybe I should start talking to these guys. It’s happened before we’ve all seen it. And suddenly, when you’re not going to get there unless you follow the customer journey. And if you follow it, you may get in the door, and suddenly, you’ll be the exception to the rule. You’ll get them to switch.

It doesn’t take a whole lot for somebody to decide that they want to change. If they feel neglected in any way. For whatever reason. With an accountant, for example, that’s pretty easy, because most of the conversations revolve around very set timeframes around taxes, tax planning, you know, tax preparation, things like that. What happens throughout the rest of the year? Who knows what happens to make somebody dissatisfied or have a question? You’ve got them out of a regular journey to stay in contact with people, even with existing customers, because they’re still looking to buy. They make a buying decision all the time. And they may choose to keep coming back and being your recurring customer or client. But they’re making a buyer’s decision over and over and over again. You can’t neglect that. So, by the way, Dan, I got to give a shout out I love the Shatner that you just wrote went into what did I do?

Talking about? Oh, did I? Oh, is that no.

That’s why I was grinning are trying to not laugh that was Shatner, this is just an episode of embarrassing things for me. Doing Shatner. This is so good. I’m a huge Shatner fan.

All right, well, then it was worth it.

It’s all good. With that, Dan, you mentioned those people on LinkedIn that just kind of essentially barge into your office, if you will. Hi, how you doing? Can we make time to talk about this? You know, ABC thing I have for you that can’t live without? In that vein, do you find that a lot of business owners want their customers to just kind of jump past all the stages and just go right to buy? And if you do Okay, so you do it so awesome. So I had to counsel them back to reality. And they have to follow these steps. They can’t just say “hi buy for me right now.”

Yeah, I get that a lot before the end.

Yeah, I paid for that. Where’s my customers?

Yeah. I’m laughing through my pain. Yes. The they definitely feel I mean, I’ll give you an exam. Gosh, I need more beer clients. This was fun. But the there I had a beer client years ago, before I did this thing that I do today, their thing was, as long as somebody sees our beer on the shelf, and they try it once, we never have to do anything again, they’ll try it once, then they’ll keep buying it. And we’ll be good. We don’t need to do anything. Not exactly. Because guess what, there’s a lot of stuff that you could be doing to increase the loyalty and the awareness? And what about some gifts that you could give those people who are loyal purchasers of your beer? What about inviting them to a special tasting of your newest craft brew? VIP experience? All of these things are part of the journey that get neglected is the post initial purchase. So I see this a lot in simple sale. But I also see it in complex sale to is, oh, they’re going to get how different we are. No, they’re not. Sometimes they say, Oh, well, our law firm has been around for a long time. So once they come here, they’ll see seriously, you’re going to rest on that. No, that’s, that’s ridiculous. You need to be able to articulate to them not only what it is going to mean for them to be a client for their initial challenge. But what it’s going to mean to have a relationship with them long term. And the customer journey is awesome for that. It helps you plan for how am I going to keep this person happy for years to come? I just think that’s amazing when you can kind of master that.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, if a listener today was brand new to that, let me rename it the convoluted customer journey. Can you give one or two things that they could do to start on this journey in their own business? If this is brand new to them? They haven’t thought about marketing this way, what are one or two things that they could take away from today, build customer personas, customer personas,

know who your ideal client is because your ideal client is not necessarily anyone with a chip. We have a client, that’s a high end siding company, their ideal client is not someone looking for cheap vinyl siding. So you have to know who your ideal customer is. And do you have a customer list? I know that that may not directly relate to this to the customer journey. But that does go to the repeat stage of it. Because like Ken said, they’re looking to buy, and it’s always more cost effective to market to existing customers. Do you have content related to each stage of the customer journey? That’s one of the hard sells? It’s like your question to Dan, do they want to go from no to buy? Well, yes, of course, they all want them to do that, because it takes time and effort and resources to build this content. We’ve talked in the past about omni channel marketing, because your customer or potential customers, they’re going to be on whatever channel they’re on. And you can’t control that. So yeah, it kind of sucks for the business owner, but you have to be on those channels. If you’re an accountant, you probably don’t need to be on Pinterest. But you have to be where your potential customers are going to be. You need to identify the channels where your ideal customers are going to be, you have to know who your ideal customer is. And then you you have to set out a plan to start creating content if you don’t have it for these different stages. And like I said, your customers are going to be on whatever channels they’re on. Some people spend half their life on YouTube. Well, if that’s where your ideal customer is, then you need to be on YouTube. If you’re marketing towards the 20, something generation, you probably don’t need to be on Facebook, because they’re leaving Facebook in droves. That’s not where they’re going to be. That’s where you need to start, you need to know who your ideal customer is and what channels they’re on. That doesn’t mean you neglect the other ones. But if you know what channels your ideal customer is on, that’s where you put the majority of your resources.

Yeah, that’s just a thought here as well is the part of the journey that gets neglected a lot. We’re talking a lot about the middle meet of the journey with tactical stuff. Don’t forget, on top and below, there’s all the questions that they may have all the goals they may have to go from this stage to this stage to this stage. I’m not doing this. So the voice has to match. Yeah. Right. So I’m not making this up. I’m not just blowing smoke the best and the first one I have ever seen filled out completely was from really smart guy named Ken Tucker. I’m totally serious. It was it had every single question filled out at the top it had every single goal filled out all the tactics you had all the ideas for things that we make. You know, Paul just said Pinterest. Who knows, throw it down there. Because this is not a set in stone thing. This isn’t a constantly living, breathing, evolving document. So don’t forget, you need to be in touch with what they may be asking at each stage. And that is as powerful as well as thinking about the tactics that they’re going to have. Because then you’re really going to understand everything about how they think about it, even if they skip over a stage and go from no to trust and trust to buy. It’s still going to be huge. When I saw that ingrained in me that there’s more to the journey than just the tactical that you can think about goals not in the end game of we need this many customers, but rather, we need to get them from No to like, and here’s what they’re asking. And here’s what they need to have checked off in order to do that. Before that I don’t think I ever really thought about it in that way.

One thing I’d add is that when someone starts their journey as it is, when they start looking, and I know we’ve talked about this in the past, is it they start with a problem, they have a problem, and your product or service isn’t the problem, it’s the solution to their problem. You need to have at the very top of that funnel to know where they may not even engage with you directly. You need to have content that addresses their problem, because at that point, they don’t know what the solution is. And they don’t care how great you are at what you do. Maybe you’re the best on the planet at what you do. But they don’t care because they don’t know your solution exists. They just know they have a problem. I think

that’s you guys are story brand, guys. Isn’t that one of the things that he preaches there, as he says, it’s not what you do. But what kind of problems do you solve? And if you can say I solve this, then suddenly things change a lot about your story. Yeah, absolutely.

Any last thoughts or comments on the customer journey? Before we wrap up today, guys,

A couple things just to kind of piggyback off the whole story brand kind of approach. It’s useful to look at a couple of things that I think are really great accelerants, a clear message is a great accelerant. So having a clear message that follows the story brand kind of a framework, the hero of the journey, is not you it’s the customer, they have a problem, they’re looking for a guide that can call them to action, to achieve success or avoid failure is roughly that framework, but what they need to see is empathy and authority that you are the right guide to help them solve the problem. And you have to recognize that the problem is expressed internal external and philosophical modes, external ZZ. It’s like I’ve got a flat tire. Okay, well, that’s that’s an existential problem in a certain respect, who are you going to call to fix it, you probably will make your buying decision based on an internal problem that you’ve had, like the last time I called this company, it took them three hours to get out here and I was stranded on the side of the road. Are you going to call those people again? No. Are you going to call the company that says we guarantee we’ll be there and within X period of time? Yeah, you probably would. So that’s a great accelerant. And that’s built out on know like and trust. It’s not expressed in that same way through the Storybrand framework. But it really is know like and trust. The other thing, I think, is video videos huge for accelerating know, like and trust. As a matter of fact, I think video can even go to try. Because when people get to see a video, if it’s an informational video, where you’re providing value in advance, and they’re seeing you and they’re seeing you in action, and they see the empathy and the authority that you can convey. That video is an accelerant. And so you really maybe have accomplished, know, like trust and even that try to where they’re ready to take that next step and maybe make a purchase from you just from that video. So look at accelerants. Paul mentioned ideal client personas, it’s important to make sure that you think about the customer journey being different for each one of your ideal clients. So you don’t have just one customer journey, you don’t create one set of content for everything you do. You have to align that with ideal clients, with the products with the problems and get that all consistent. So I just wanted to make sure we talked about that as well.

It’s probably a good thing to say. And then what you’re absolutely right, I can because I think without going crazy about it. You could do a customer journey for yourself that has a particular way of how you pull it all through. So for example, let’s say offline networking is going to be one of your tactics, one of your business development tactics. Okay? They’re going to know about me if I attend an event, whether virtually or in person, and then what? Well, if we like each other, then we’re going do a one on one. And then what? Well, then I’m going to ask for a qualified introduction, probably. Okay, and then what and then it just keeps going. Follow that all that thread all the way through to know what kind of things that you’re really working with there. Because I don’t think there’s one tactic that has to be necessarily something that just lives and dies at one stage, follow the path all the way through and see where it takes you. And I think you’ll be in good shape.

Paul, any last words,

The customer journey may not be linear, but at some point, unless you’re selling to dollar widgets, where they may go from no to by pretty quick, they’re going to pass through every one of these stages. At some point. Like Dan said, it’s a great way to conceptualize what your customers are doing. And they may not follow it in that exact order. And they may skip over some depending on your product or service. And, and that’s fine. But all of your customers at some point are going to be at some stage in that customer journey.

 Yeah, let’s just take an accountant, for example, most accountants that I know work with both individual taxpayers, you know, family, or individuals, and then they also work with businesses and accountant needs to have at a minimum, two different buyers journeys mapped out one for individual or family tax preparation. And another one is going to be for corporate tax planning and tax preparation, that might dictate where you’re putting content, what channels you’re using, if you’re doing business tax returns. LinkedIn as a play LinkedIn as a channel, you should consider if you’re doing individual or family returns, LinkedIn, maybe, but that may not be the best channel, either. You just need to give it some thought you need. And like Dan said, I think kind of running scenarios through that journey through the content, map it out. I used to do simulation, we you can’t really do true simulation here. But you can kind of do mental simulation to say okay, if I’ve got this, this, this and this all, you know, kind of mapped out in my in my customers journey. How is that going to work? How’s it going to flow? And then if you can, you know, say, Okay, well, maybe they get to this point, then they say, Oh, my God, what about this question? Well, now they’re going to shoot up up here. Okay, well, that just helps you plan and it’s going to help you be more effective. And ultimately, content, which I know Dan and I are huge fans of it, I think it’s the most cost effective way to to create that journey for most businesses, is to have that content strategy nailed map to the customer journey until your ideal client personas,

I have to tell the story that will be out I promise. The thing that people have to remember is even if you have a simple sale, this will apply. The thing that I that I always come back to is a few years ago, I was in a car accident wasn’t a big deal. I went into a place that was like an auto body shop. And when I look at their reviews, the reviews were glowing, not just about they fixed up my car, but the experience, like who talks about the experience of fixing up a car is being enjoyable. But you walk in there they go, Hey, while you wait while we put the coat together, would you they have a popcorn machine in there. And then they have a kid’s playroom. And then they have all kinds of other stuff there. And everybody knows your name, things like that. So needless to say, this first car has resulted in several different kind of dings and scrapes as a result of living in a city. Well, every single time I go in there, I know it’s not going to be a whole lot of money, I almost look forward to going to an auto body shop because of the communication and every stage of the customer journey. Because I walk in and they go, Hey, Dan’s here, what are you doing here? What do you do now? Well, they laugh at my expense. But I I really feel like there’s no way in the world. I could go anywhere else, because they’ve taken such good care of me. Yeah, of course, they’re going to fix up the car. But it’s everything else that goes as part of the customer journey that makes it so rewarding, if you will, you don’t want to go there. But if you got to go there, shouldn’t it be a kind of a good experience so that you’ll say this is a good experience to other people? And that’s why they have the reviews that they do. I had to tell that because I know there are a lot of people who go well, if this doesn’t apply to me, I have a simple sale. Yeah, so these guys, they still put a lot into the experience at every single stage.

You know, but here’s what’s interesting, too about that, Dan, is they could charge more because of that experience, but it could probably do an auction. And I know all their names do now. But if you do this right, it can lead to higher prices.

 Yeah. And they’re not the cheapest not by any means. But I’ve seen what cheap also then interesting well enough in that same timeframe, an insurance person recommended a different one. And I said, Oh, no, I don’t think they’re going to be as good. They were not. And you then see what the difference really is. And you’re like, Oh, I’m never ever going away from you again. I’m so sorry. And that’s how good it can be. Yeah.

I think that’s a great place to wrap up today. That was a great story, Dan. Thanks for Thanks for sharing it. We will see you next week with other marketing topics and marketing insights. Thanks for joining and have a great day. We want to thank you all for taking the time to listen to today’s podcast. Please be sure and subscribe to the Marketing Guides for Small Business podcast in your podcast software. We’d love for you to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And please don’t forget to visit Marketing Guides for small businesses.com For more episodes, free resources and links to set up free consultation calls with any of the hosts of this podcast. Thanks again and stay tuned.

Jen Kelly runs New Initiatives Marketing (NIM), the marketing team for businesses who don’t have a marketing team. With implementation and execution as NIM’s focus, we’ve been working world-wide remotely since 2009. NIM has supported marketing strategy execution in companies as large as the Fortune 50 and those as small (but growing) as $2M in annual revenue.