Customer Life Journey First Three Stages
A Customer Life Journey consists of 8 stages. We completed an overview on the customer life journey in the last Podcast.
In this episode, I'd like to go into more detail on the first three stages of this journey with you and how you engage with your ideal customers and clients and bring them into this journey with you.
Your first stage in the Customer Life Journey is making them aware of who you are, what you do, where you're located, and how to engage with you. This can be done through advertising, blog posts, events that you might speak at or host, and of course, social media.
Stage One: Awareness
Your first goal is to make people, your ideal customers, and clients, aware that you're even out there. Once you do this and you set what I like to call the foundation, you get to move on to the next stage. Like anything you build in life you want to build it to last. This includes your business … so set the foundation first before you move on. Don’t get me wrong, through your entire “in business” time you will always be adding to this stage, but when you start building this part for your customer life journey, you want to have a process and plan in place.
Stage Two: Engagement
Once you have set up your Awareness stage and you begin to drive traffic to your site or business, you want to engage with those you have attracted. Engaging with them creates an emotional tie and the best way to do this is communicating with them.
Make a commitment within this engagement period that you will stick with and build this relationship. That's an important to make sure that you're building a relationship and engaging with them. Think of it like this: you don’t want to be trying to sell them something if when they have walked through your door, and you have not even said HELLO to them and acknowledged they are there. You want them to know they are welcome, valued, and important so that they want even more to be on a journey with you. They want to know more about you. They need to get to know you and your business more to build like and trust!
You want them to jump on this journey with you, and they will once you start to engage with them.
This could be accomplished through your blog posts, social media posting, or it could be through an event. You can combine these two stages together.
Stage Three: Subscribe—You want them to opt in.
You want to get prospects on your communication list so you can communicate with them beyond this initial engagement. You want to have something they want to get them to subscribe. This is usually referred to as the “ethical bribe”. At this point you're offering them something in exchange for their contact information. It could be a free consultation or a download of valued information. It could be, or it can be a type of discount for products or services.
If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, you can create an offer for them to give you their business card or email address and in exchange you’ll give you a 10% off coupon. There are many creative ways to create a valued exchange of information that will benefit both of you.
I recommend that you sit build the awareness stage, and never stop because you're constantly going to be filtering people in and out of your community.
These first three stages are your foundation and first floor! You'll continue to bring awareness to your business and engaging through the life of your business.
Clients will often struggle with the “engagement” stage. They don’t know what to say or feel like they will be bothering their customers and clients with conversation. Remember, the engagement stage is not for nonsense conversation but true engagement; continue to share valued information, take time to ask a question or two for you or your team to get to know THEM!
To recap, you want to bring awareness through all channels available to you. Start building relationships immediately, then offer those interested a way to opt into your communication list. Once you’ve gathered information you want to utilize it, but make sure it is not just for your benefit. You want to build a loyal, interactive, and super responsive list.
There is no greater turn off than starting to send people all these offers and try to sell all these products/services as you get their email or phone number. That's not what people are looking for. You gave them some information. Remember you gave them a free consultation, or a discount on something to come back and learn more. If it was an information guide, they're expecting to get more of that from you.
Work on the top three foundational pieces of your customer life journey and stick with it. If you need any help, let us know.
If you've already have these elements in place, remember to revisit those “messages” at a minimum annually to make sure they are still relevant to your business at that time and that your offers are still relevant. If you'd like someone to review and evaluate what you have, we are here to support you reach out to us!
If you have any questions or need any feedback on what you've been doing, I'm happy to speak with you. Give me a call or contact me. All the information is on this page.
I invite you to go over to StrategiesForSmallBusinesses.com and download the Branding and Purpose Checklist. This will help you work through the questions you need to answer and really helps you have a focused dive into all of your Branding.
If you have any questions, remember we're always here for you. Just utilize the question button on the website and will get back to you.
Thank you
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The biggest thing to make note of and always remember is this: don't hesitate to reach out when you need support! You don’t have to do it all alone, or become an expert on every working item, marketing plan, nurturing cycle, and tech piece in your business. Focus on your clients and get help with the rest!
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