The Customer Journey

In our latest podcast, our founders, Steve and Samantha, spoke about the Customer Journey and how it relates to the sales funnel. We use our model, adapted from the old AIDA model, for the engineering and B2B Manufacturing sectors: Pre-awareness, Awareness, Interest, Proposal, Adoption, and Loyalty.

Watch the video here, or read the transcript below:

Transcript

Samantha Tonge: I’m here again with my co-founder, Steve Judge, and we are going to be talking about the customer journey.

In our last podcast we spoke about it. So we thought we’d do a bit more detail. drilling down a little bit about what we mean by customer journey, how it relates to a sales funnel and that sort of thing. Steve, do you want to start?

Steve Judge: There are a number of, things that as marketers creatives or business operatives that we use, that all have a similar kind of goal. We talk about the customer journey, a brand funnel, sales funnel, marketing funnel. If you overlay those, they are trying, generally speaking, to try and achieve the same thing, which is everything from people not knowing about you, to the people that buy your products or services and all the steps in between that they need to consider, or a consumer would need to consider as part of their journey.

It also informs us as businesses, what we need to think about if we want to start marketing or selling our products to people who nine times out of 10 haven’t heard of us. It’s about how we monitor and track each of those stages and the value of each of those stages is different for different businesses, but nevertheless, they all important, every step’s an important step of any, any funnel or, or customer journey.

Samantha: I think where the customer journey as opposed to the sales funnel, is really valuable is you’re looking at it from the customer’s point of view, where they are emotionally as well, as the information they require.

Often I find some, people in B2B think that emotion doesn’t play a big role, but it does, especially with, you’re talking about big purchases that are having big impact on someone’s job, on their role.

Steve Well, ultimately, everything’s bought by a person. people buy things from people. And that’s the thing that I think where historically I think emotional benefits and emotional triggers are less important. But as it’s been proved time again in the last few decades, emotion sells. And you need to engage with people in a human-centric way.

Pre-Awareness

Expensive, but the cost per reach is a lot lower than if you were doing one-to-one bespoke direct mails or, going to events. it’s a lot of eyes for not a lot of money. also it’s a long-term activity. If 90% of your target market aren’t in the market at the time that you are pushing a message out, then repetition is key.

Frequency is key to get awareness. You can’t get awareness from one advert. awareness comes from multiple adverts in multiple places. Frequency, opportunity to see, another key word when you are looking at awareness. And right at the top end of the customer journey/ funnel, not everyone, invests heavily at that end and you don’t necessarily need to.

It’s about trying to get that right balance, Throughout the funnel in the customer journey to make sure that your budget can go as far as you can to achieve your short, mid, and long-term goals.. But to omit awareness, I think is is something that a lot of people do because there’s less tangible outcomes.

Awareness

Samantha: I find a lot in the B2B sector, especially engineering and, and manufacturing, that there is too much short term focus in terms of KPIs and objectives, but you have to have those long term objectives because especially when we were talking about some really long sales funnels it could be five years before you hear from a customer that they’ve heard of you.

They know that when they have. a need for your product or service, it’s going to be you. or at least you’re going to be in the running. but you might not hear for five years. So, if you don’t get immediate results you, probably will get some, because there’s always that 5%, or 3% but you need to consider it, a long-term investment. And the rough rule of thumb, B2B is 50% on your long-term, 50% on your short term. which leads us on to interest. So this is getting to more the short term. These are, customers, getting customers to the stage where they actually interested, lead generation and nurturing.

Steve: Where someone’s at the start of a purchasing journey, having realised they’ve got a problem they need to solve, they’re now looking to find ways of solving that, whether it’s a product or a service they’re looking for.

They’ll be looking online for referrals and asking around, which is where a long-term awareness ends to paying off is because they’ll start to remember you as a supplier of that particular service or product at the time they’re now in the market. But then equally regular outbound marketing to these people also keeps you in the frame of mind at the point they’re ready as well. A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time, but you’ve got to be in the place to be in the right place at the right time.

Interest

Repetition is key, but also, especially as you get more personalised messages during that stage of the journey, you need to really think about your frequency of emails, because you don’t want people to unsubscribe or just get fed up with so many messages. I had a B2B email saying welcome to our Christmas, advent calendar. We’ll be sending you an email every morning. And it was unsubscribed. Oh, great. I don’t want an email every morning. Nice idea but they didn’t really think that one through.

I’m quite happy to receive marketing emails from companies that I subscribed to, but not every day. And I think, it’s about being remembered. You know, you can have the greatest meeting a trade event or face-to-face meeting, but the minute you’ve left that room, why is someone going to remember your service or product when they’ve got a really busy life, I think something that often gets, dropped off. this is the moment where the customers Have the most positive emotions about your product and service that’s going to solve this problem that they’d had for so long. and that will drop off very quickly if you forget the nurturing part.

Samantha: They want to feel loved and, to know that you’re really interested in helping them with their problems. So, yeah, that lead, nurturing is really important. Having that process, already in place. , making sure that you keep them engaged at this point, don’t lose them.

Don’t lose them. and then hopefully you get to the next stage where they ask you to do a proposal or a quote or, put something together.

Proposal

You need to keep the excitement that they’ve hopefully got going, they’ll need some reassurance at this point. it’s just making sure that that proposal is spot on dedicated to them

You are making them feel heard, that you are making them feel understood, that they know you are going to be able to help them with their specific issues.

Steve: I think excitement is a good word because that doesn’t mean necessarily, bells and whistles you know, song and a dance speed from your initial contact or inquiry speed at which you reply.

Shows your intent and your keenness to work with them. Even if you are really keen and jump straight on that proposal, remember to get in contact with them and say, right, thanks for your inquiry. We’re working on it right now. I’ll be back in. Set the expectation there.

They need to know that you are on it and when you’re going to get back to them. a lot of people get excited about that proposal, go off and spend the week writing a proposal, and they wonder why they’re struggling to get hold of that person again.

Someone else has probably already been on the phone or responded to them and at that point they become, well, you responded first. You were the keenest, you were the ones that were most hungry to work with me.

Therefore, you are the first I’ve engaged with, if it does most proposals, you are looking a couple of days to turn around. Something sensible if it’s a. Meaty project, then you need to respond straight away. Give them a call, say I’m on it, maybe get some FaceTime. it’s that excitement to keep them excited about you.

They need to see that you are really interested in working with them as well.

Samantha: And another good tip, at this point, it doesn’t always work, but if you can get an agreement with them, right, I’m going to have the proposal ready by x. do you have some time for me to go through the proposal with you and often they will say, yeah, great, and put a date in. So instead of just emailing a proposal and then chasing up. You’ve actually got them there you might even get a verbal agreement and they feel like you are more committed. They feel more committed. You are building that relationship up.

Steve: That’s a very good point whenever you, go on a sales training workshop or a prospecting workshop, they always say, put a date in the diary at the end of every call, don’t follow up and try and get a call in afterwards.

Put the diary in before you put the phone or the video call down, because that, that guarantees you. You’ve actually set some time to each other rather than disappearing into a stream of emails, get it in the diary. Then you’ve both got a deadline to work to as well.

Evaluation

Samantha: And it’s often the stage where if you’re a manufacturer, they might like to see your facility. If you’ve got other customers that are very happy, that are, that near them, that have the same equipment or have used the same service, they might like to speak to them.

So consider that at that stage as well, because that will really help. Help you push that proposal, help help you, as part of that which leads the customer then onto their evaluation stage. This is, another stage where a lot of people fall down the proposal’s out there and they’re just sitting there waiting.

You’re beyond lead stage now. This is natural opportunity. but you still need to try and keep that positivity going. more touch points. Just make sure they’re happy. If there’s anything you can do to, help them make that decision.

Is there any other information they need? Hopefully that stage doesn’t take too long. But we are talking about engineering and B2B, manufacturing here, , so quite a lot of the time other people come into the mix that you weren’t expecting. You had your contact that you’ve been speaking to.

All of a sudden there are all these other decision makers, who you need to speak to. so it’s really about the reassurance and maybe reutilising some of the other comms that you’ve done, in the run up to this stage, to these other people.

Steve: Things like creds, social proof awards. Reviews, case studies, understanding of the sector of the business, the challenge, all of those good things, which obviously then helps them make their final decision.

Adoption

Samantha And then we move on to adoption. sometimes, we’ve made the sale and that customer doesn’t get reengaged with, it’s really important. Once, you’ve made that sale that you keep that going, reassuring them, they’ve made the right decision.

Often with very large purchases, which for a lot of our audience we are talking about, this is the stage where after they’ve signed a contract, they maybe start to panic. this is a stage where most of the research is done.

In terms of the B2C world, this is very similar to the automotive sector. a lot of research has been done to find that people who buy on average, the most research on cars, is done post-purchase, not pre-purchase, which is counterintuitive.

Steve: It’s almost like that cooling off period. So, you’ve made a purchase. You’re settling into what, what in, in a lot of instances is a big purchase. There’s a lot of technical elements which need to be considered. There might be compliance regulations, various standards that need to be met. the contract can be won. but there’s still the last few bits of the detail to be done because that wouldn’t be covered until you start the project because there may be elements which are, so detailed, you’d only have an engineer involved a specialist within the organisation might possibly get involved

Samantha: This is often where the training comes in as well. Which is part of the technical, side. It is often part of what you’ve sold. Think of that in terms of, a communication tool as well to give that reassurance, to give that extra technical information to the people who are going to be actually installing it or using it. make sure they’ve got what they need.

Steve : Ultimately as you say, the adoption. This is, the time, just before and just after purchase, we’ve made a commitment to a sale. Sometimes that’s also referred to as last purchase. So we talked about the first bit being first choice, and then this consideration and purchase cycle starts with your first choice.

Who would I use, or something that I’m, that I’m looking for if I’m aware of something or a product or service that fits my immediate need. And then the last purchase is after all that consideration phase, the actual choice I went with. one thing that is really important to remember is that if you did have the awareness at the beginning, you’ve got a higher chance of coming outta the option at the end because someone’s already got a level of familiar or think they’ve already got a level of perception or familiarity with your company, brand, product, or service.

That’s why all of these steps need to be considered all the way through. But now we’ve got the Yahoo moment, the sale. The sale has now happened and we’re, in the land of delivery, actual delivery expectations.

And you want to make sure that you deliver on those expectations, which leads us to the next thing. Loyalty, something that’s often forgotten about.

Loyalty

Making sure that you’ve got a happy customer, make sure they stay happy, and how can you utilise that, in terms of getting them to purchase more, and how that can help you further. you need to make sure that you’ve got your, x and customer service, all that after sales care. If relevant. Spares and consumables. they may be a repeat customer depending on what the product or service is

Samantha: There might be other areas where they need the same product or service. and also don’t forget things like calibrations and upgrades as part of the process.

B2B manufacturing, it’s something that has a service life, that might be a long service life, but within that you need to calibrate. they might get to the point where, they want to upgrade anyway because it comes with extra,

It comes with things the previous version didn’t do, don’t forget to keep in contact with your existing customers. People have already bought from you. Keep in contact, make sure they’re aware. proactively go to them and say, did you know that you have this piece of equipment and it’s time to recalibrate it? It’s good practice anyway, But it also increases those touch points and they feel,

Steve: I think in high value engineering and manufacturing products do last decades. I think, one of the things we look at with a number of clients, where they’ve got lots of products, still in service from 25 years ago.

Not going to break anytime soon, but they do need. Checking

I think that’s important. So you’re always bringing out new products, improving. But Remi, always remember to have access to your legacy products, even for product information, whether it’s manuals, technical specifications, somewhere on your website, or keep a repository of that.

Also wherever possible, keep a record of who’s got exactly what piece of equipment. Then so that you know when to set reminders to yourselves, to follow up and say, are you aware it needs this, that, I mean, consumables, you would assume that they would call you regularly if they’re aware they can get consumables from you.

So it’s just a case of keeping a tab on that, but making sure you’re always selling the value of, OEM. Parts, servicing, et cetera, especially on high-value items, high-value machinery and manufacturing equipment. if you are delivering a fantastic product and service, you’ve met the expectations set during the marketing and sales process. Then hopefully you’ll get lots of referrals, recommendations, and great reviews.

Samantha: Don’t forget to ask for reviews as well. That’s often a step that you’ve got a really happy customer. send them, links to where you want, positive reviews. Ask them for, testimonials, directly and nine times out of 10 they’ll give them to you. They might even do a case study.

Steve: You have to do that. Businesses forget they have to do that because the one unhappy customer that leaves a review otherwise. If they’re happy, they might just say, I’m happy on the phone. And then you lost the opportunity to, leverage that, five star potential view.

Samantha: That’s a really important stage. we’re social beings. We look for social proof. if they see lots of similar companies or people saying, this product or service was fantastic, these people are great. That’s huge. that’s something you can’t buy. But you can remind happy customers to do that.

Steve: Indeed. And then obviously letting future customers know about wonderful reviews. And all the wonderful quotes and referrals and recommendations you are getting as well. So feed back into that, especially at the initial contact, that initial inquiry stage, all of that feeds social proof.

I guess that’s in a nutshell when we talk about customer journey, they are the key stages, At each stage, there are various tactical activations that can happen. They might be emails, direct mail, advert, trade shows, events, webinars, all of those factor into those various type points throughout that journey. Even your documentation, not forgetting your sales documentation. if you’ve got really quality, well formatted sales documentation, that’s gonna go a lot further than a handful of spreadsheets and, and, and, and, and a, a mis formatted word document really, you know, that that’s all in part, that’s really important part of, of that, managing expectations.

Are they professional? Is everything branded? Is it all in a similar tone of voice? But you know, does it, does it fit my expectation of company of that size? Does it look like a quality proposal for, I even read, does it look like a quality read? And I think the one thing is always to remember every stage of this, you are ultimately managing someone’s experience of a product or service against the expectation that was set via marketing or face-to-face meetings or a proposal.

And that gap between experience and expectation needs to be as small as possible. Under promise and over-deliver. That is Where a lot of companies do extremely well, you’re setting an expectation, you know, you can exceed every single time,

Samantha: I think that pretty much covers everything.

Steve Judge: I think that wraps up this podcast. If anyone wants to have a chat about this, the email addresses will come up at the end. otherwise look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Samantha: Thank you, Steve.