As a brand, it is important to map out the customer journey of the consumer as it allows to anticipate on the determining elements of the phase a consumer is in. You may respond to these elements the traditional way by using classic media and forms of advertising. However, nowadays there are also many digital options to approach your customer journey. comma, brand strategists strongly focuses on this digital aspect and has charted out a professional digital customer journey.

From target group approach to personas

First of all, it is important to determine the starting point of the customer journey for a consumer. Not every consumer will be entering at the same point in the process. It will depend on personal needs, time, location, preferences and actions as well as the type of consumer you have in mind. It is also important to assess whether the consumer already knows your brand or not. Each brand requires various target groups and for each target group (also called personas) you create a personal journey. More info about personas can be found another of our blogs.

The brand tasks to achieve the right conversion

The customer journey consists of five consecutive phases. The first one is the ‘answer’ phase where the brand must respond to the consumer’s needs and questions. Make sure that when they look for you, you are found. The second one is the ‘educate’ phase. The brand must educate and inform the consumer about the brand and the products. In the third ‘participate’ phase, the consumer becomes further acquainted with your brand online. Make sure they have a reason to stay. The fourth ‘motivate’ phase adds values ​​and entices consumers to make a purchase. Make them fall in love with your brand. In the final ‘activate’ phase, the consumer actually proceeds to purchasing the product. It is your job to ensure that a consumer passes each phase in order to arrive at the purchasing phase. As people progress further in the customer journey, your audience will decrease in numbers but their quality will improve progressively.

Consumer go through these phases quite unconsciously and spontaneously. That is why it is important for a brand to also consider the ‘touch points’, points to be measured – for example on the website – where you want to check if the personas (or target groups) do what they are expected to do at that moment. Finally, at the end of the journey, we want to convert them into a lead, a hot prospect, a test purchase or a real buy. To do so, we establish measuring instruments at every stage and follow the very large group that flows through a sales funnel in order to retain the really qualitative ones. In this way we can test at any time if something in the process needs to be changed. Examples of touchpoints are: to download a white paper, subscribe to a newsletter, watch a video, request information, request a demo, personal conversation, chat, make an appointment, trial order …

Digital triggers to hold on to personas attention

Going through the different phases can be stimulated by specific digital tools. First of all, as a brand you should really be digitally active. The consumer must be able to find all the necessary information he needs online and must see your brand around all the time. Make sure to have a good website and digital support. Secondly, you need to always be present on social media to cater to the consumer who is always online and increase the online presence of your brand. All this is supported by digital media and distribution. Specific examples of digital activity are SEO, a visually appealing website, offering an online shop and so on.

An nice example of comma’s digital support is the case we did for our partner SBM. We carried out an extensive keyword analysis for them so that SBM could optimise its website completely for SEO. For important keywords, we looked up numbers and variants to provide the website with the right set of keywords. In this way, we can create the best organic search results. Furthermore, we built their new website on the basis of mapping realistic personas in combination with their customer journey. Find out with this looks like on sbm.be. We also set to work in an interactive workshop with other partners such as Waveflex and Escala. Their input during the workshop enabled us to create a truly personalised customer journey.

Would you like to set up a customer journey for your brand? comma, brand strategists organizes dedicated customer journey workshops, that need not take more than half a day. Based on specific brand models to fill in, they are ideal to develop a professional customer journey and subsequently a proper, professional new website.

For more information about the workshops or our brand models, contact greetje@brandstrategists.be.