Your Marketing Plan (4/10); What Does Your Buyers Journey Really Look Like?

It’s important to understand the journey your customers go through that lead up to a purchase. What does that journey look like?

If you've read the first two posts in this series, you've already identified your ideal customer. Now it’s time to understand the journey they go through leading up to a purchase.

First, let’s talk about what that journey is not:

Graph here

Sometimes I’m surprised by the number of SaaS marketers who still think that’s what it looks like. Maybe in the early days of Google Adwords, you could generate a positive ORI by interrupting your audience with ads intended to sell them something they’re not ready to buy, from a company they don’t trust. Maybe.

The reality is that this will no longer get you very far. Trying to sell to people who don’t trust you and aren’t ready to buy is annoying, spammy and a waste of your money.

A typical buyer’s journey includes 3 stages:

Awareness – the prospect realized they have potential problem.

Consideration – the prospect clearly defined their problem, named it and is now committed to researching and understanding all available approaches to solving their problem.

Decision – the prospect defined their solution strategy and is now comparing vendors.

“Trying to sell to people who don’t trust you and aren’t ready to buy is annoying, spammy and a waste of your money.”

So if you can’t sell to people who don’t trust you and aren’t ready to buy, what can you do? Well, sell to people who do trust you and are ready to buy seems like an obvious answer.

You're going to need to start by establishing trust. Once established, you'll need to be there when they're ready to make a purchase.

There are several approaches to how to go about these two actions. Let’s start with the first.

Establishing trust

Think about brands that you trust. Now think about why you trust them. Mostly, there are two main reasons: They’re either the market leader or an expert in there filed.

Other brands you trust - trust them.

It’s why websites will put up information on their site with known brands as clients.

‘Well, if this email automation tool is good enough for Walmart, it’s good enough for me.’ (No, Random Potential Customer, Walmart is a multi-billion dollar retail company with millions of clients that sends out millions of automated emails a day. You have a new project management platform for freelance designers with less than one hundred clients. You might have different needs.... just something to think about)

If you don’t have a client with a market presence like that, you’re going to need to position yourself as an expert in your field. You do that by creating content you’re users care about and by building lasting relationships with them. Turning visitors into users or customers will happen on your visitors’ terms. Just as you can’t force a social relationship, you can’t force a business one.

"Turning visitors into users or customers will happen on your visitors’ terms. Just as you can’t force a social relationship, you can’t force a business one."

Which brings me to the second point of being there when they are ready to make a purchase. How do you know when that happens? To answer that question, let’s look at:

The SaaS marketing funnel

A marketing funnel is a representation of the buyer’s journey, along with different stages of a theoretical funnel. By strategizing and mapping out a marketing funnel, we can take action and be there as they move through the funnel, help them progress through it and be there when they’re ready to make a purchase.

Here’s a simple marketing funnel visualized:

Keep in mind that a potential customer can theoretically enter (and exist) the funnel at any stage.

graph funnel here

Now that its visual, and you can see it clearly, it’s easy to see how that different lifecycle stages correlate with the various stages of the buyer journey.

One more graph here.

By understanding that different people will enter the funnel at different stages, you’re able to plan ahead and figure out how to approach different customers in the different stages of the funnel. Now you understand that for customers entering the top of the funnel you’re going to need to position yourself as an expert in your field so can build trust (How are you going to go about creating that trust? Through content you produce. More posts on that are coming up in this series). However, for shoppers who are lower in the funnel (either that's just where they entered it, or they've successfully moved down the funnel to a stage closer to the bottom where they are ready to make a purchase) you'll need a different kind of campaign. Armed with all this knowledge, you can help buyers move from awareness to consideration and through to a decision.

Read the next post in the series about using the research you've done to put your marketing plan together and be sure to let us know what you think in the comments!