Customer Journey
One month ago I have read an excellent book, written by Daniel Rowles. It is called Digital Branding. There Daniel brings in some essential topics on modern tools of digital age and its implementation for brands.
So the main goal of digital branding area is bridge a gap between business objectives and what our audience wants. That is where ‘customer journey’ term shows up. This is a process, how client decides to buy our product, which is important to understand before spending money on ineffective channels.
As marketers we can model, measure and use all sorts of tools to try and understand this buying process - and this is where digital marketing has its greatest strengths. We have access to more data and more ability to measure the user journey than ever before.
Here are two examples of customer journey of the author. This is B2B one, where
● Doing numerous searches for suppliers.
● Reading online reviews of these suppliers.
● Signing up for newsletters from each of these suppliers.
● Asking opinions on LinkedIn and Twitter from my social network of their experiences.
● Completing several diagnostic tools to understand what kind of hosting I actually need.
● Reading websites that talk about the technology behind hosting in order to educate myself about it.
● Signing up for newsletters from the sites that helped me educate myself.
● Talking to colleagues and trusted partners at unrelated events and meetings. Getting recommendations for suppliers
So at first, usual manager would study the subject, that's where suppliers need to provide educational and free content in order to attract my attention. Instead many tries to sell directly (which is not bad, logical), but I would like to know an ideal product for me, not buy 'something'.
Let's say I would like to book a flight somewhere.
"I may go through the whole flight-booking process only to drop out at the final step. This may not be because something went wrong, but rather that I was using the tools available in order to plan rather than make a booking. I may then go through the same process a month later and actually make a booking. I need to be able to understand this journey and attribute value to the original visit that didn’t end in a sale. This is something we’ll explore more and, in fact, we can solve this initially complicatedlooking scenario simply by using some free web analytics software (I’m referring to ‘multi-channel funnels’ in Google Analytics)." (Rowles, 2014)
That's wherer we move to sales funnel.
The sales funnel of Targetinternet.com
In brief, Rowles points out that every digital channel has a clear role in sales funnel, where value proposition and digital branding are closely aligned.
In case of Targetinternet.com, traffic gained from content on the website. He calls it 'hub', where a wide range of free digital marketing educational content is held. Though only one section offers commercial servicee, others are for free: mostly blogs, videos, in-depth reports and a regualr podcast with strong call-to-action.
Social media drives awareness and sends traffic to the website, which helps to improve its ranking in the search. Along of all that, e-mail date are collected. It used for ongoing interaction with awudience and building even stronger brand (say Megaplan e-mail marketing, I will write about it latter). This strategy allows to minimize the need for an extensive sales team and keeps cost to a minimum.
On internet there is a various number of customer journey mapping tools. So no problem to draw another customer journey for your business and see on what stage your marketing or sales team has a problem. Then it becomes very clear how to solve it, to bring value proposition to your clients.
So the main goal of digital branding area is bridge a gap between business objectives and what our audience wants. That is where ‘customer journey’ term shows up. This is a process, how client decides to buy our product, which is important to understand before spending money on ineffective channels.
As marketers we can model, measure and use all sorts of tools to try and understand this buying process - and this is where digital marketing has its greatest strengths. We have access to more data and more ability to measure the user journey than ever before.
Here are two examples of customer journey of the author. This is B2B one, where
● Doing numerous searches for suppliers.
● Reading online reviews of these suppliers.
● Signing up for newsletters from each of these suppliers.
● Asking opinions on LinkedIn and Twitter from my social network of their experiences.
● Completing several diagnostic tools to understand what kind of hosting I actually need.
● Reading websites that talk about the technology behind hosting in order to educate myself about it.
● Signing up for newsletters from the sites that helped me educate myself.
● Talking to colleagues and trusted partners at unrelated events and meetings. Getting recommendations for suppliers
So at first, usual manager would study the subject, that's where suppliers need to provide educational and free content in order to attract my attention. Instead many tries to sell directly (which is not bad, logical), but I would like to know an ideal product for me, not buy 'something'.
Let's say I would like to book a flight somewhere.
"I may go through the whole flight-booking process only to drop out at the final step. This may not be because something went wrong, but rather that I was using the tools available in order to plan rather than make a booking. I may then go through the same process a month later and actually make a booking. I need to be able to understand this journey and attribute value to the original visit that didn’t end in a sale. This is something we’ll explore more and, in fact, we can solve this initially complicatedlooking scenario simply by using some free web analytics software (I’m referring to ‘multi-channel funnels’ in Google Analytics)." (Rowles, 2014)
That's wherer we move to sales funnel.
The sales funnel of Targetinternet.com
In brief, Rowles points out that every digital channel has a clear role in sales funnel, where value proposition and digital branding are closely aligned.
In case of Targetinternet.com, traffic gained from content on the website. He calls it 'hub', where a wide range of free digital marketing educational content is held. Though only one section offers commercial servicee, others are for free: mostly blogs, videos, in-depth reports and a regualr podcast with strong call-to-action.
Social media drives awareness and sends traffic to the website, which helps to improve its ranking in the search. Along of all that, e-mail date are collected. It used for ongoing interaction with awudience and building even stronger brand (say Megaplan e-mail marketing, I will write about it latter). This strategy allows to minimize the need for an extensive sales team and keeps cost to a minimum.
On internet there is a various number of customer journey mapping tools. So no problem to draw another customer journey for your business and see on what stage your marketing or sales team has a problem. Then it becomes very clear how to solve it, to bring value proposition to your clients.