Five stages of your customers' buying journey

The customer buying journey has been subject to change and development since its inception. Over the years, a wide variety of models has emerged in an attempt to define this journey. These include seven-step models, five-step models, funnels, flow charts, diagrams and graphs, each offering its own unique take.

Our overview focuses on the most commonly used model and provides practical tips and advice to help your organisation improve the customer journey at each stage.

It will come as no surprise that there is a relatively long history associated with customer journey mapping, going back to the late 1980s.

What are the five stages of the customer buying journey?

The five stages of your customer's buying journey are:

1. Awareness

The consumer first becomes familiar with the brand through advertising, word-of-mouth or social media.

2. Consideration

Realising they have a need that must be met, the consumer actively considers whether or not to buy the product or service on offer.

3. Purchase

The consumer makes the purchase.

4. Retention

The customer uses the product, sometimes seeking guidance from the provider or a user community. Providers often engage customers during this phase to encourage brand loyalty.

5. Advocacy

A satisfied customer may share their experiences, spreading the word about the product through positive reviews or recommendations. Conversely, negative opinions can also influence their advocacy.

What is the customer buying journey?

The customer buying journey is the path your potential customer takes, from looking for your products or services to buying them, to eventually sharing their experience. While there are multiple stages and models, the starting point of the journey is always the same – the customer has a need that your product or service can provide.

Why should you consider the customer buying journey?

This model can help organisations visualise how customers interact with their brand at each stage. When the stages are considered in this way, they can provide valuable insight into areas which are in need of improvement or streamlining. The customer buying journey isn’t an exact science (despite what some  models would have you believe), it is full of both opportunities and difficulties.

The first step for any organisation is becoming aware of the experience that they currently offer. Once you have an understanding of your customers and their journey, it is much easier to craft a more intuitive experience. Providing a smooth and easy-to-navigate customer journey is key to increasing customer satisfaction and sales, and boosting customer retention.

Key challenges

Customers are firmly incorporating technology into their purchasing journeys more than ever, undertaking buying journeys in increasingly complex ways, and often using multiple channels and devices to complete a single purchase. While initially it may seem that customers using more channels gives marketers more opportunities to reach them, the reality is that customers expect to be able to use their preferred methods or channels at any stage and time, adding to the complexity faced by marketers. 

For example, half of all online purchases in the US are now made on mobile devices, but 75% of in-store shoppers are using their mobile device while in-store. So marketers must ensure consistency and convenience across all these touchpoints.

Another major challenge faced by marketers is meeting rising customer expectations. Customers increasingly expect their journey to be truly personalised, built around their individual needs. That includes different purchasing options and ever more convenient customer service. Consumers are increasingly seeking out reviews from friends, family members and peers when making purchasing decisions, so it is important that the reputation of your organisation is positive. Advocacy platforms like TripAdvisor have grown significantly in influence, playing a pivotal role in shaping customer behaviour.

Authenticity is another key factor. That doesn’t mean that your organisation’s products have to be all-natural or hand-crafted. It means that customers expect to be engaged with on a human level – they want organisations that demonstrate understanding and empathy towards them and genuinely care about helping to solve their problems. Customers are quick to recognise organisations that treat this as a tick-box activity.

Practical solutions

To address these key challenges, here are some practical points to consider when designing each stage of the customer journey:

Awareness

Boosting customer awareness depends on understanding who your customers are and being able to reach them at the right moment, on the right platform. To optimise this, research is crucial. Options include customer surveys, social media outreach and analytics.

Modern analytics platforms provide a wealth of information including:

• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Device preferences
• Dwell time (how long users spend on your site)
• Conversion rates

Understanding exactly who your customers are and how they are discovering and interacting with your brand can be incredibly informative for developing strategies to increase awareness.

Advertising also presents a significant opportunity to boost awareness. There are many different types of advertising available to businesses, including pay-per-click (PPC), Google Ads, search engine marketing and social media marketing. The advantages of these forms of advertising are that they can cater to almost any budget and are highly targeted.

Consideration

Consumers today are increasingly sceptical of advertising and marketing messages. Instead, they put their trust in the opinions of peers, particularly friends and family, when making purchases. A great way to get your brand into the consideration phase is by prominently featuring testimonials on your various channels.

Adding your own commentary on how your organisation has helped customers can provide valuable insights into your business’ ethos, helping customers to see your business as an authentic organisation, run by real people. Customers prefer to interact with organisations that match their values and are perceived as having an authentic purpose.

If you want to take things a step further, you can begin providing genuinely useful content to potential customers. This is an increasingly popular way for organisations to keep themselves in consideration throughout the customer buying journey. Content such as product demonstrations, FAQs, blog posts and reviews can all be valuable.

Purchase

This stage, often referred to as the decision stage, is the point where the customer has evaluated your brand against competitors and is ready to make a purchase. At this stage, it helps to be as transparent as possible about costs. Extra costs (think hidden shipping costs or additional taxes) is cited as the most common reason for cart abandonment.

Other notable factors which can increase cart abandonment include requiring an account for purchase and overly complex checkout processes. Optimising your checkout experience for customers can often just mean simplifying it. Ask yourself: How much data do I really need to collect from a customer to facilitate a purchase? Streamlining these steps can make the process faster and more user-friendly, reducing the likelihood of losing customers at the final hurdle.

Retention

After a purchase, customers want it to be as easy as possible to interact with your organisation if they need advice or support. Making sure this is easily accessible post-purchase can pay dividends – that means you shouldn’t hide the company phone number on the website just because it’s more convenient for you.

Offering and advertising cross-platform digital, social media, telephone and in-person interaction will make sure you have all the bases covered. It also helps if your front-line staff are able to make quick decisions. Customers will soon become frustrated if your service team don’t have access to the data they need and don’t have the flexibility to help.

Being able to successfully retain customers leads to repeat purchases and (if you do a good job) advocacy of your business. According to research from Semrush, the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60% and 70%, while the probability of selling to a new customer can vary from 5% to 20%. This shows just how significant long-term customer loyalty can be for businesses.

Advocacy

Advocacy strategies must include proactive ways to deal with criticism and showcase praise. If a negative review starts trending on social media, are you agile enough to contact that customer, assess the situation accurately and resolve their issue in a positive way? On the other hand, can you actively seek out positive messages from key influencers and reward people for their brand loyalty?

Finding comments about your brand is the first step – this can be easily done through a free service such as Google Alerts. Keeping a close eye on your company’s social channels is also essential as customers often vent their frustrations on these platforms.

If you want to learn more about the craft of customer experience and boost the skills on your CV at the same time, explore one of the many customer experience courses offered by CIM and book your place today.