Tap Into Your Consumer
When you see the statement "Tap Into Your Consumer," what does it mean to you? I'll tell you what I hear: two things; literally what it states and also putting yourself in the shoes of your consumer. On today's episode, we'll be walking you through the journey that your consumer experiences, which in the marketing world is actually called your "customer's journey."
I tweaked the wording a bit to give you, the representative, a little more control over the process; to guide the individual who will eventually purchase your product or service. "Customer" gives off the impression that they will be customizing their experience, whereas with "consumer," they're consuming what you're providing.
The customers journey consists of five stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy.
awareness - your consumer becomes aware of your brand, through social media, word of mouth or out and about during their day to day life.
consideration - at this stage your consumer realizes that the product/service has now become a need that needs to be met.
purchase - the consumer makes a decision to purchase
retention - during this stage your consumer utilizes what they've purchased, they come to the conclusion that this product will become a continuous buy.
advocacy - you now have a person who will advocate your brand in many ways
Personally I believe that the two most important stages to me, would be retention and advocacy. I say those two because one, you want people to return (retention) over the lifespan of your brand and two, to have someone advocate for what you're providing is really a blessing because they'll spread the word on your behalf. Although I find those to be the most important, each stage is beneficial to your brand and you should focus on them all.
Now that we've explored tapping into the customers journey, I want us to venture through tapping into your consumer. Earlier I mentioned how you should put yourself in the shoes of your consumer, in order for you to successfully guide them through the process of purchase; I suggest that you think about how you process making a purchase. I know for me when I'm in the market for something new I typically do a little research, read reviews or maybe ask around. However I know that doing what I just stated would really be hard unless your physically with each individual (lol) or if you have a storefront then you could definitely take advantage of those tips.
The best way to tap into your consumer would be to tailor the experience in the way that would make you successfully checkout, if your product happens to be clothes; make sure the visual is appealing to the eye in most cases when it comes to clothing you can close out a sell with having the item on an actual person versus just having a layout picture. By doing this method not only will they like the pieces that your selling but now they can visually see themselves in the designs that you've created, which in turn would make them follow through with the purchase.
If you sell books, the key thing you could do for your consumer is maybe give them a glimpse of the first few pages in a chapter of your book; I personally would use the chapter that has some sort of a cliffhanger or suspense. That way they're more eager to see what happens next or how the book began. Those are just some examples of how you can guide the consumers purchase without having to actually "ride along" with them. Speaking of have you guys ever seen "Ride Along"? Pretty comical movie, lets just say the experience will be similar to that minus the chaos.
All in all you want the goal to be for them to complete the first three stages of the customer journey during the initial session of them becoming aware of your brand.
I hope this information has sparked some form of optimism for you and your brand. Till next time, see you at the next chat! =)
