A brand is nothing without its customers. At the end of the day, brands exist to reflect the personality behind businesses and their products/services. Since customers are the ones paying businesses for their products and services, a lot of power lies within their hands. That’s why it’s crucial to the longevity and success of a brand to keep the customer at the core of everything they do, especially their digital marketing strategy. More often than not, when it comes to marketing, the ultimate goal is sales—so naturally brands tend to obsess over the conversion stage of the customer journey.
What’s often overlooked is everything that happens before the customer makes a purchase. What went into their decision to purchase that product before they decided to buy from you and not one of your competitors? How did they find out about your brand in the first place? And once the customer gives you that sale, how do we get them to come back to purchase again? There are so many consumer insights that go into mapping out every interaction one has with a brand. But before we get into that, let’s start by taking a look at what the customer journey is and why it’s important.
What is the Customer Journey?
The customer journey is made up of various interactions and touchpoints between the customer and the brand that happen before and hopefully, long after they purchase a product or service. This is why it is so important to model your marketing strategy around every step of the customer’s journey. Think of it as the five phases of a love story between a customer and a brand.
Why Is The Full Customer Journey Important?
When we are focused on lifecycle marketing, it’s important that we pay attention to the customer’s entire digital experience so that we are able to meet them where they are and provide value at every stage, pushing them further down the funnel. In return, brands and marketers are also able to gain valuable insights about their customer’s behaviors and what type of content resonates with them at various stages of their customer journey. We are also able to validate our initial audience research and understand more about consumer’s pain points and values as it relates to their purchase decision making process. Furthermore we can make better use of our marketing investment dollars when strategically implementing a holistic customer journey-centric approach as opposed to putting all of our time and money into solely driving conversions.
For example, when mapping out a paid social customer journey, one must consider what type of questions a person may have about your brand or product. It typically takes eight touchpoints before a person converts into a purchase. With that in mind, as you are building a paid social strategy ask yourself what would a person’s considerations be? Are they just learning and finding your brand for the first time? Or are they someone who has purchased before in the past? Now that you know those questions, how can you help answer them?
Not every digital strategy is built the same. BuzzShift believes in a full-funnel paid media strategy and creating content that speaks to people at every stage of the customer journey. A large part of the success that comes from this approach is the initial insights gathered, these insights allow us to strategically test anything from creative to landing pages. By utilizing this strategy, we are setting your brand up for sustainable and long-term growth by catering to both new customers and engaged users.
How Buzzshift Approaches The Customer Journey
At BuzzShift, our strategic approach breaks down consumer touchpoints into five stages that encompass all the success of retention, performance, and brand marketing to create a holistic digital ecosystem unique to each unique segment of a brand’s target audience. Our process is built upon extensive industry and audience research. Not to be weird but, we are kind of obsessed with the customer: who they are, what they’re thinking, their likes and dislikes, etc. This allows us to find each customer wherever they are in the purchasing process and nurtures them to convert and become loyal brand advocates!
There is only one way to build out a strategic digital blueprint for a brand, and that’s by putting the customer at the center of everything. By focusing on a brand’s audiences and their unique journeys from awareness to advocacy, we are able to ultimately drive more brand awareness, more conversions, and turn more loyal customers into brand advocates. Not to mention this approach is proven to be a much more effective and impactful use of marketing investment. We’d love to get to know you, and your customer, and help grow your brand with a customer-centric growth strategy. Reach out today, and let’s chat!
About BuzzShift
BuzzShift is a digital growth strategy agency with a focus on mid-market, scaling, purpose-driven DTC Brands. By combining the ideologies of branding, performance marketing, and retention agency, we are able to create memorable experiences with measurable results, and build long-term success for our clients with scalable, sustainable growth. Learn more about BuzzShift.
