Knowing the phases of the Customer Journey will help you better understand your customers and increase your sales. In a past article called “What is a customer journey and why is it important?” we have described what the Customer Journey is and gave an example of it. We defined the customer journey as the process that encompasses all the phases people go through from the moment, they feel they need a product or service (pain point) to the moment they buy it.
As managers or business owners, every time we hear about something new, we want to know how it can help us increase our sales, this happens to be the Customer Journey, a concept that has been around since 1920, but it has only been in recent years that it has been applied to marketing to describe the different steps a customer goes through from the moment they feel they need or want something until they buy it.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the Customer Journey to learn about its phases and how it can help us to increase sales.
Table of Contents
Phases of the Customer Journey
The phases of the Customer Journey are as follows:
Awareness
That is the phase where the consumer becomes aware that he has a need or a desire, but has not decided to do something about it, it is the phase where the person knows that something is missing, but does not know specifically how to define that need. At this stage, the Buyer Persona will start researching on social networks about their need, but more out of curiosity than to find a solution.
Consideration:
At this point, the person is more aware of his need and decides to look for a solution. To do so, he deepens his research and evaluates all the alternatives he finds. At this stage of the Customer Journey the Buyer Persona makes his search more specific, he can include some brands he knows or some characteristics of the product or service he requires. He will also begin to enter the various pages for this comparison of options.
Decision or Purchase
The Buyer Persona has already done all the research and has enough information to make the purchase, this is the moment to convert a visit into a sale.
Retention
This is the stage of customer care, it is not enough that the person has purchased our product or service, we want that person to be able to make future purchases of our product and keep in his mind our brand every time he decides to buy this type of product. It is necessary to have excellent after-sales service to make the customer’s experience as pleasant as possible.
Advocacy
In this phase, a satisfied customer will recommend us to others, and we can also receive recommendations from them to improve either the product or the service.
How to use a Customer Journey to increase your sales
Each phase is in itself an opportunity for your business to contact your Buyer Persona or get ahead of them to offer them what you know they are looking for.
Let’s see this with an example, imagine you own a company that sells personal care products and you want to use the Customer Journey to increase your sales. Knowing your Buyer Persona, you know that they buy your products on specialized sites.
You should have a page for this type of product. Therefore, you have to include both the description of the various products, as well as articles that are interesting to your Buyer Persona to help them know more about personal care in general. You can also make a presence on social media such as radio, television, or print. The idea is to keep your product on people’s minds.
By having this presence in social networks and media we have covered the first two phases. Let’s assume that the person decides to purchase the product on your page. The next step is to follow up with them to offer benefits such as discount coupons, new product previews, and anything else you think will help build customer loyalty.
Finally, ask them to let you know about their shopping experience and any feedback they want to share. This will allow you to improve your business, your product, and your customer service area.
All of this will help you have a real opportunity to increase your sales.
