The Buyer’s Journey
The buyer’s journey is important for businesses to understand and evaluate to promote the success of their company.
This can be broken down into three main stages – awareness, consideration, and decision, as the path they take towards the final purchase of a product. At ExtraDigital, we also identify a fourth stage – the ‘Delight’ stage after purchase.
On average the marketing industry has accepted that at least 8 touchpoints with a brand are needed before a customer will make a decision. With the growing rate of social media and overall global connectivity, this has increased to more like 11-12 in recent years.
Social media can have a drastic impact on the buyer’s journey at each stage if implemented correctly. Social provides an opportunity for more touchpoints because simply put – they are platforms your customers use every day!
Social Media Touchpoints – Awareness Stage
The awareness stage can be seen as the most important stage within the buyer’s journey.
Throughout this stage your goal is to increase awareness around your business by attracting and educating your customers about your products and services. Without knowing what your business is and what you provide, customers are not likely to consider moving forward in the buying process.
The touchpoints within the awareness stage are key for competing for consumer mind space as they shape your customer’s impressions of your brand, potentially influencing their decision to move forward in the buyer’s journey.
Potential touchpoints include:
- Ratings and reviews
- Word of mouth
- Community involvement
- Advertising
- Marketing / PR
Consumer mind space can be an important player in the buyer’s journey. By maintaining a strong position in the consumer mind space, it often translates to brand preference and loyalty, leading to higher results. If your brand effectively captures consumer
Your business should be able to solve customer pain points so identifying them is your first step!
By positioning yourself as a business that can provide solutions to address your customer pain points, you are then able to boost your brand awareness. This can be achieved through the use of social media.
Social media can assist this goal by providing you with the ability to share your content across multiple platforms to reach your target audience. The implementation of hashtags and keywords ensures that your content appears when people are searching for relevant and related topics.
Social ads are also crucial for gaining awareness as they are used to target people who are interested in your product offerings which can be identified by their buying habits and social media usage.
Social Media Touchpoints – Consideration Stage
The second stage in the buyer’s journey is the consideration stage. Customers begin to evaluate your business and product offerings before comparing them to your competitors.
In order to nurture a lead to become a buyer you can use social media to emphasis the benefits of your products.
This can be achieved by posting success stories or customer reviews to outline to potential buyers how your products have helped previous customers and their thoughts and feelings.
Other touchpoints in this stage can include:
- Store or office
- Website
- Catalog
- Promotions
- Staff or sales team
- Phone system
By using customer reviews, you can build confidence in your customer’s mind that your products are worth spending their money on compared to your competitors’ offerings.
In addition, you can also use social media for customer service reasons. During the consideration phase, customers may have questions regarding your products or doubts about the benefits they provide, or how to use them correctly.
By providing a chat session, or Q&A session, customers can ask questions to address their concerns quickly and efficiently, providing you with the ability to reinforce their confidence in your brand.
Social Media Touch Points – Decision Stage
The third stage of the buyer’s journey is the decision stage. This is where customers are making a purchasing decision around what product is best for them.
To ensure that your customers are buying from your business you can use touchpoints to encourage them to take action on your website, and this is where the use of social media can play a crucial role.
Touchpoints in the decision phase on social:
- Retargeting, personalised ads
- Abandoned basket reminders
- Clear CTAs
- Ads providing information on delivery, timescales, etc..
Remove any friction to purchased or making the decision in the final stage, try to answer their questions before they know they have them.
While we try to avoid discounts for the sake of discounts on our clients strategies – For those who are not taking action, you can re-engage by waiting an appropriate time length after the last interaction (1 month, 3 months) and offer a discount ONLY to those who have yet to make a decision. This is easily doable on social!
Social Media Touch Points – Delighting Stage
There is a fourth stage in the buyers journey that we consider at ExtraDigital – the delight stage, where you turn your customers into brand ambassadors because your service AFTER the purchase is outstanding as well – they can’t help but shout about it to their friends!
‘Delighting’ is one of the most important stages as your customers can be your biggest advocates – encouraging reviews and tutorials is the best kind of social proof that can help others make up their mind to choose you. And where are people most likely to share their feedback?? Social media!
By boosting re-engagement, you can increase loyalty and the likeliness of your customers purchasing again in the future.
Happy, delighted customers are easier to encourage to come back and repurchase from your website. On social you can consider running reengagement ads shown to purchasers if a new product releases, or a complementary service to the one they originally purchased will be of use.
Other touchpoints to consider in the decision stage:
- Billing
- Transactional emails
- Marketing emails
- Service and support teams
- Online help centre
To Sum Up
The buyer’s journey can be influenced by efforts from businesses through the use of social media across different platforms and the implementation of social ads.
The buyer’s journey can be key for understanding where your company’s strengths and points of improvement lie. By understanding the touchpoints throughout the journey, you can engage with your customers effortlessly encouraging them to buy from you and increase your competitive advantage.
Do you want to improve your ROI on social media? Or discover what doors social media can open for your customers? Contact ExtraDigital today to find out how we can help you!
