In today’s world, it’s tough to cut through all the things that compete for our attention. It’s more important than ever for companies to understand how they can use the consumer journey to turn their audience into loyal customers.
From a desire to buy and beyond the purchase, consumers learn about your business and your products, learn what makes your business unique, become enticed to buy from you, and ultimately become an ambassador for your brand.
Let’s take a look at what each step of the consumer journey looks like and how you can use it to maximize your marketing capabilities.
ATTRACT
The first step in the consumer journey is to attract new customers to your business.
Attracting customers should be a multipronged strategy that uses both traditional methods (such as radio ads) and modern methods (like targeted digital advertising) to reach audiences near you.
ENGAGE
It’s important to engage with your audience once you’ve attracted them to your business. Creating content marketing articles is a great way to build engagement.
Blogs on your website can be fun and educational; they should show your audience that you’re an expert in your business, tell your story, and show off your brand personality. An intentional social media strategy can ensure that your customers are reading and engaging with the content that you’re creating.
Creating contests is a great way to get customers engaged and aware of your business. At Federated Media, our contesting platform can also help businesses build a database of emails. This in turn gives you an opportunity to send bounce-back emails to your new fans to try to convert them to purchase or to make them aware of other news of your business.
As you build your email database, you can create multiple email audiences, which will allow you to send your content directly to the people you know are interested in your business with custom messages for the services or products they need most. For your most loyal fans, you can use text clubs to send special offers and exclusive deals.
CONVERT
Once you start attracting and engaging your customers to your business and your website, you want to convert them into paying customers. Your hard work in reaching and engaging with your audience has gotten you to this point, and now it’s time to make the sale!
If you’re running contests online, you should be sending those bounce-back emails with coupons to turn the audience into a customer. As you’re blogging, naturally include a call to action in the post — these can be as simple as suggesting they head to a store, fill out a form for more information, or schedule a consultation.
You can convert in your traditional radio marketing, too, by having people text a keyword to receive a bounce-back text with a link. These are especially great for job applications. You can also have a discount code that the on-air personalities can use to encourage the audience to shop at your business. Remember to use something simple and memorable, like the DJ’s name.
ADVOCATE
You want your new customers to become unicorn customers — people who’ve had such a great experience they’re shouting your praise from the rooftops. Encourage your unicorns-in-making to leave reviews online. Don’t shy away from this out of fear of receiving critical feedback. Negative reviews are an opportunity to grow your business and could end up converting that customer into a unicorn if you handle it correctly!
Keep sending your customers useful coupons and interact with them online, and before you know it, they’ll be your most loyal advocates. Your new unicorns will begin to organically share your content (and their own photos and stories about your business) to their own social media pages. They’ll also tell their friends and family about your business through traditional word of mouth, and the whole customer journey will begin again for a new audience.
Learn more about the consumer journey for digital marketing in, The Digital Marketing Consumer Journey Explained by Federated Digital Solutions.
