Buyer’s Journey From A Buyer’s Point Of View

What does the buyer’s journey look like from the other side?

This article is letter (B) of our “Automation Brand" series where we write an article for each letter of the phrase. “Automation Brand" finds all the ways automation benefits marketing. Find links to more articles in the series below.

Have you ever considered how the experience of researching, purchasing, and relationship-building has been made so seamless online? How the customer personas are created and what are the statistics for customer experience?

Let’s break that process down from our, the customer’s, point of view. And today, we want to spice up our morning commutes to fill in that one-hour time frame of dead air.

Exposure

At this point, we don’t have a clear idea of how to entertain ourselves in the morning. So we mentally run through options we already know and do searches online.

We may type in things like

“best ways to make your morning commute more fun”
“what to do on your commute”
“how to survive morning commute”

Here, we’ll read blog posts, watch videos, and look at our social media to find out how other people have solved their problem of a boring morning commute.

Discovery

So we’ve seen some options and weighed it out against our preferences. We stand up when there are no more seats, so holding our phones to read an eBook doen’t seem appealing. Games are cool, but they zap your phone’s battery. Now, listening to music… that’s just the right amount of ease and wake-you-up energy we need in the mornings!

Right now, we just figured out our problem – we want to listen to music on our morning commute. So naturally, we type into our search engine “best online music streaming services.”

At this point we want to look for content like blogs, guides, or reviews that will give us neutral information. Third-party reviews can be trusted much more than paid or sponsored content.

Consideration

We know what we want - a streaming music service. But which one do we want? So we continue researching all the possible methods and approaches to listening to music on our commute. We’re looking to buy.

There’s downloading songs onto our phone, listening to YouTube music videos, or subscribing to an online music streaming service. We’ve heard of Spotify before, but we want to see all that’s out there.

Great expert comparisons like this one on pcmag, really help make our options clear.

Conversion

Buying time! We’re feeling pretty good about our decision to go with Spotify. That’s because we’ve researched and weighed our options based on price, perceived value, and personal preference.

At this point, we’re ready to seal the deal. But these types of content can just make the purchase that much more happier and enjoyable:

Trial Downloads
Vendor and Product Comparisons
Case Studies
Virtual Trade Shows
Product Literature
User Reviews

Retention

At this point after making our purchase, it’s up to companies to keep us loyal, happy customers.

“According to Econsultancy, 82 percent of companies admitted that customer retention is significantly cheaper than customer acquisition. It was also reported by Ipsos that customer acquisition costs 500 percent more than retaining customers.”

As a buyer, we can pretty well agree that we don’t want to have to jump from company to company either! It’s much more comfortable to stick with one service that works really well.

In the case of a subscription service we purchased, it’s about making sure we continue having a seamless, fun experience with streaming music from Spotify.

Relationship

A lot of us have the experience of companies staying in touch with us after we make a purchase. We usually see this as email newsletters in our inbox, personalized suggestions, and, when it comes to Spotify, curated playlists. Don’t forget that awesome, friendly customer service too. When we love a product or service enough, we love telling our friends and family about it too!

In China, “buy-what-you-see-instantly” shopping allows users to do their normal online activities - entertainment, education, socializing. During any of these activities, the user can easily purchase anything they see. A great way to build a relationship!

Word Up:

All along our journey for getting the ideal solution to our problem, is the unsung hero of automation. Let’s give three cheers for automation because, without it, it would be near impossible to give millions of online users the same awesome, personalized experience. Automation makes our buyer’s journey more seamless.

sources: pcmag.com entrepreneur.com superoffice contentmarketinginstitute

This article is part of our “Automation Brand” series where we write an article for each letter of the phrase. “Automation Brand” finds all the ways automation benefits marketing.

Click below to read more articles in the “Automation Brand” series:

(A) Ready Or Not - Why (A)utomation Is The Future Of Your Brand

(U) 5 Easy Rules To Create (U)niversal Content

(T) Use These 4 Types Of (T)raffic To Earn More Online

(O) Automate Your (O)nline Content And Never Waste Time Again

(M) Important Stuff You Should Know About (M)arketing Automation

(A)Content Equity–The Key To Monetizing Your Brand (A)ssets. Here's Why!

(T) The Unexpected Way (T)ags Help In The Age Of Peak Content

(I) To (I)T Automate Or Not To IT Automate? That Is The Question

(O) How To (O)rganize And Automate Your Content Start To Finish

(N)arrow Artificial Intelligence Lives Among Us

(B)uyer’s Journey From A Buyer’s Point Of View