As a marketer, it’s your responsibility to plan and execute the best marketing strategies to nurture leads for the sales team. Yet, the modern consumer’s purchase journey is complex and multidirectional. Some consumers spend months considering a small purchase while others spare no second thought at the sight of a good deal.
What you can do, though, is to map your consumer’s purchase journey, segment your consumers based on their motivations and knowledge, and match the right tactics and strategies to each stage.
In this article, we cover:
3 key stages and the key performance indicators (KPIs) in a modern consumer’s purchase journey
Best marketing tactics for each stage of the consumer purchase journey
3 Key Stages and the KPIs
There are many variations of the stages in a modern consumer’s purchase journey, but we commonly observe the following 3 umbrellas:
1. Awareness
The goal is to make yourself known to this group of consumers and keep your brand at the top of their minds. Make your brand visible, provide information about your product/service, or bring to consumers’ attention a problem that you can solve.
KPIs generally surround traffic, eyeballs and mentions:
Website sessions or new users
Average time spent on your landing page
Bounce rates from your landing page
Advertising impressions and reach
Social media mentions
2. Consideration
Consumers at this stage are interested in solving a problem, comparing different products/services, or have questions lingering about your product/service. Provide education about your brand or offering and how it addresses their issue, have a discussion with prospects, build brand recognition by making your brand easily discoverable, or simply show them that you’re better.
Success metrics mainly measure engagements and brand inclination:
Branded search volume
Search engine ranking
Clicks and click-through rates (CTR)
Social media engagements such as comments, follows, and shares
3. Conversion
Now it’s all about encouraging prospects to purchase by reinforcing your brand with more aggressive messaging and providing clear and seamless call-to-actions.
Success indicators are directly related to customer acquisitions:
Total conversions
Cost per conversion
Deal size
Return on investment or advertising spend
Best marketing tactics for each stage
Now that you’ve got a quick rundown of the stages and their corresponding KPIs let’s get to the crux of how we can achieve these goals.
Here are the tactics that work best to satisfy the needs of the different customer segments:
1. Awareness
To generate demand for your product/service or drive awareness of your brand, you’ll need to present yourself to consumers and meet them where they are.
Make your presence known with:
a) Social media advertising
Social media advertising is one of the many forms of online advertising. As the name suggests, you’re advertising on social media. With 4.48 billion social media users worldwide in July 2021, it would be sensible to exist on these platforms. It goes without saying that you’d first want to set up your social media accounts and have social media content running, so an empty and sketchy account doesn’t greet consumers.
b) Display banner advertising
Display banner advertising publishes your ads on various sites across the web. They can be presented in text, graphic, or animated formats. Different from social media advertising, you’re reaching a more expansive network across devices and platforms. You may also target specific websites that your audience would be lingering on. For example, if you’re a financial product, you may want to purchase ad inventory on Seedly 😉
c) Outdoor advertising
Even though online communities are large and easily accessible, showcasing yourself in the physical world allows you to connect with your consumers more tangibly and tells people that you’re a genuine, living brand.
d) Landing page
Complement your advertisements and their messaging with a landing page. The landing page helps build your brand credibility and answer any questions consumers may have from the ad.
2. Consideration
The approach to consumers in this bucket is to increase their desire for your brand or product/service. Your tactics need to answer the question, “why should consumers choose you?”
a) Content marketing
Content marketing builds brand recognition and educates consumers about your product/service. Publish information about your industry, contribute your expert opinion, answer your consumer’s burning questions, and more. When you share helpful information, consumers look up to you as a thought leader and are more likely to trust your brand.
b) Search engine optimisation
Search engine optimisation (SEO) refers to organically ranking high on the search engine results page (SERP). With SEO, you’re speaking to users with high purchase intent, which translates to higher conversion probabilities. Ensure that users can discover your brand when searching for a related problem, solution, or competitor. Include keywords in your landing page’s title, descriptions and content, and earn backlinks from other websites.
c) Paid search advertising
Pay search engines like Google and Bing to be listed on a SERP when a user looks up a selected keyword. Paid search advertising is beneficial if you’re gunning for competitive keywords that would otherwise be difficult to rank organically or to remind consumers of your brand when users search for a competitor.
d) Email marketing
Instead of hoping consumers land on your website, get straight into your consumer’s inbox. With email marketing, you can deliver personalised messages to prospects and connect directly with them. You may also leverage industry-related emails by sponsoring their newsletter and having them promote your brand in return to a similar target audience. These recipients will be more inclined to read about your product/service because they’ve signalled an interest in the topic.
You can read more about the 6 benefits of email marketing.
e) Video marketing
Video marketing is another type of content marketing to host information. They can come in presentations or explainer videos, live webinars, question & answer sessions, animations, product demonstrations, expert interviews and more. As compared to a wordy article, videos are more dynamic and efficient in educating your consumers. In particular, live webinars have been all the rage now since the pandemic hit. The interactive elements and people behind the screen make the experience more engaging, conversational, and human, strengthening brand credibility.
Gemini's Intro to Crypto Webinar
Franklin Templeton's Live Webinar with Seedly
f) User-generated content
User-generated content includes social media posts where your prospects mention your brand, and customer reviews. Marketers tend to overlook customer reviews as a viable tactic, but they very often play an integral part in a prospect’s consideration process. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations. Compared to advertisements, reviews come from real customers who share similar pain points as your prospects and have used your product/service. Establish a reviews collection practice and leverage your customer reviews by advertising them everywhere.
3. Conversion
Conversion tactics are a lot more straightforward, and they are focused on nudging consumers to make the purchase. When deciding on a tactic, the immediate objective is for consumers to dish out the cash in exchange for your product/service.
a) Promotions and deals
Promotions and deals don’t need further explanation. With significant savings or additional perks, consumers are more motivated to purchase your product/service. This tactic works regardless if a consumer is aware of your brand or trying to solve a problem. Sometimes, it may be more effective to get customers onboard your service first then educate them about your brand.
Read up on the 5 types of sales promotions if you’re interested.
b) Direct selling
Meet your customers at their convenience to sell your products/service. This tactic is commonly used in insurance and credit card sales, where a financial advisor builds a close relationship with the consumer to sell a financial product/service. Direct selling may not work for every business, but it has proven effective for products and services founded upon trust.
c) Conversational marketing
Conversational marketing is a personalised and subtle approach to advertising your product/service. It’s an avenue for prospects to have continuous and open discussions with your brand via live chat or a chatbot. It’s almost similar to direct selling or a free consultation, but it’s more scalable. If using bots, they can also recommend supporting resources based on a list of the consumer’s past behaviours and interactions on the landing page.
Bear in mind that these tactics are merely recommendations and are not limited to the individual stages. Live webinars and product demonstrations may sometimes be applicable for consumers in the conversion stage, while social advertising and landing pages are useful in all stages, depending on the content.
A variety of tactics are always valuable and it’s up to you to create a comprehensive marketing plan as a marketer. After all, as mentioned at the start of this article, the modern consumer’s purchase journey is a complex one.
If you’d like to advertise to millennials interested in personal finance and lifestyle, let us know, and we’ll make the best recommendations for you!