Why Fixing Your Customer Journey Is Better Than Lead Scoring
Not every person who attends your webinar will buy your product.
Every person who reads your blog post will not sign up for a trial.
Every click on your website won’t lead to a demo.
You might think these statements are counterproductive to my role as a marketer, but hear me out. Each of the statements above is true but also not completely true and this confusion is partly why many businesses are failing their customers every single day.
Interestingly, this blog was inspired by a conversation I had with another marketer a few months ago. Marketing and Sales teams around the world have had this tussle of what defines a qualified lead. At what point does a random browser or window shopper become a person of interest? When can marketing confidently hand the baton over to product or sales and say, “hey, now this one is on you!”
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not that simple any longer.
The average customer journey now involves anywhere between 20 and 500+ touchpoints that go all over the map before they converge on a decision.
According to a study conducted by Google in 2018, the average customer journey now involves anywhere between 20 and 500+ touchpoints. Irrespective of where your sweet spot lies in that broad range, the truth is that customer journeys no longer follow a linear path of marketing qualified lead —> sales prospect —> customer. The actual purchase journey is strewn across a range of points that go all over the map before they converge on a decision.
Fix the leak before heading out to buy a new boat
Did you purchase every single product you own in the exact same manner? Forget that, do all your decisions follow the same logical pattern every single time?
As much as we’d like to believe that predictive analytics can guide us to the perfect solution, the truth is that like all other things that humans do, purchase decisions are not completely predictable. That might sound scary to a budding marketer or a product owner of a new business. But the good news is that unpredictability can also become your strength. All you need to do is combine it with another universally known but often forgotten superpower - you just need to listen.
If you’re a young product, listening to evaluators who didn’t convert can tell you what’s missing in your beta version. For products in a more mature but early state, this input can help you refine your personas or your understanding of your target audience.
Listening to how early customers are responding to your product can tell you about what’s working and what can be better.
This input can also guide future onboarding decisions on how new customers should start using your product. Eventually, these insights will show you how your product adds value to your users often in ways that you didn’t even imagine.
Analyzing the customer purchase journey and understanding your prospects and customers better lets you identify countless missed opportunities that you can optimize instead of starting from scratch every time. There is a lot to learn from your customers, but there’s also a lot to learn from the ones that ‘almost made it’.
Listening helps you fix the leak.
Repeat customers are your biggest marketing bet
Everyone talks about how data can help in making smarter decisions. But what does that mean at the smallest possible level? I’d say start by zeroing into your most loyal customers and understanding what makes them choose you over others.
You may even find that some of the reasons for their continued loyalty don’t even figure on your list of value propositions yet. That stuff is gold!
Use these insights to refine your product messaging and focus on the value you bring to your audience from their perspective, not just your own.
The best copy and most flawless design (read: marketing speak) in the world can’t replace goodwill and credibility. Find out why they choose you over others, and use that input to find others like them.
Probably more important than anything else, give your most loyal customers a reason to become your tribe. Word-of-mouth marketing is far more effective than paid ads and results in 5x more sales than paid ads.
But you didn’t need that stat to understand that point. You just need to go back to your last big purchase. Your customers are just like you. The chances of them trying your product or service are a lot higher if you give them a real and honest reason why.
Beyond retention lies advocacy and it’s where you want to be
I started this post with a bunch of bold statements that were capable of making any marketer sweat. The point I’ve ‘hopefully’ made is to stop thinking of purchase decisions as a logical list of points in a straight line and understand it in the context of our digital existence instead. Here information to aid a purchase can come from anywhere and your one and only responsibility to your audience is to stay consistent.
While achieving this at a product level (in terms of features and their evolution) is a bigger discussion involving a lot more than I have the knowledge or skills to comment on, from a messaging perspective this pretty much means that the factors influencing a purchase are numerous and their influence can go well beyond the purchase itself. To ensure that your customer stays with you, you need to offer the same or better experience consistently over time. But doing this well over a period of time can turn the same loyal customer into a brand advocate who can vouch for you.
Testimonials and reviews on your own website and external review sites are a great way to tap into this loyal audience and use them as a means to build credibility.
But here’s where it gets interesting - if you’re consistently good and you make it easy for people with similar interests to talk to each other about the things they like, they will.
And now you have all you need to build a community.
A community of supporters and advocates is the gift that keeps on giving. You now have a goodwill channel that not only validates your claims but also supports one another in finding solutions even when you’re not physically present. If you lean into your audience and engage with them in an authentic, fun way they will reciprocate and carry your message to others like them. For example, when someone retweets your post or replies to a question posed by someone else for no particular gain that’s a real example of community building.
The lesson to remember is to stop compartmentalizing product value as the sole responsibility of one department and look at showcasing value throughout the customer experience journey. Once you realize that each interaction on your product or website isn’t a lead to be closed but a relationship that can be nurtured you get more than repeat customers - you get brand advocates.
Are you ready to kick marketing jargon in the butt and give honest storytelling a shot? Let’s talk!