The complete guide to the buyer’s journey

With ever-evolving consumer behaviors, multiple touchpoints, and an abundance of information available, it’s crucial for businesses to unravel this complexity and gain clarity on the buyer’s journey. However, understanding the path your customers take when choosing to make a purchase can be complex and confusing.

In our guide, we’ll explain the stages of the buyer’s journey, as well as how you can use it to inform your sales strategy.

This post will explain:

• What the buyer’s journey is
• The importance of the buyer’s journey
• The stages of the buyer’s journey
• Buyer’s journey vs. customer journey
• Using the buyer’s journey to influence your strategy

What is the buyer’s journey?

The buyer’s journey encompasses the path a customer takes, starting from the recognition of a problem or need, followed by the evaluation process, all the way to the acquisition of a suitable solution.

By proactively addressing the needs and expectations of customers at each stage, companies can create a seamless path that leads to higher customer satisfaction, stronger relationships, and increased sales.

Ultimately, the buyer’s journey is similar to a sales funnel, but instead, it shows the journey from the customer’s perspective. It also details how each step leads to the next, ensuring customers don’t drop out of gaps in the funnel.

The importance of the buyer’s journey

Now that you know what the buyer’s journey is, we’ll explore some of the various reasons why understanding it is important for business success. The buyer’s journey:

• Facilitates the identification of challenges encountered by your target audience throughout the purchasing process
• Enables the examination of the choices customers make at each stage, offering valuable insights into their decision-making patterns
• Encourages a solution-oriented approach in your marketing efforts, ensuring that your messaging aligns with customer needs and pain points
• Enables the customization of marketing strategies to specific audiences, leading to more targeted and effective campaigns
• Builds trust with your customers by demonstrating a deep understanding of their journey, fostering credibility and loyalty
• Enhances the customer experience by addressing pain points, providing relevant information, and delivering personalized interactions
• Enables data-driven decision-making to help business leaders make informed decisions, refine their marketing strategies, and allocate resources effectively to maximize their results

The stages of the buyer’s journey

After learning about the importance of the buyer’s journey for businesses and marketers, we will break down the buyer’s journey and explain its three different stages.

1. Awareness

During the awareness stage, customers recognize that they are facing a problem or a need, but they haven’t identified the specific solution yet. This realization can occur through independent research or by encountering marketing content that highlights the existence of the problem.

In addition, at this point, customers may not be aware of a business’s products or services and are primarily focused on understanding and defining their needs.

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers have progressed beyond mere awareness and are now actively exploring multiple solutions available to address their identified problems and needs.

Customers are evaluating different options and assessing which ones align best with their requirements and preferences. During this stage, it’s crucial for businesses to provide comprehensive information, comparative analyses, and compelling value propositions to position their products or services as appealing options.

3. Decision

At the decision stage, customers have made a firm decision on which specific product or service they will choose to solve their problem. However, they have not yet made the actual purchase.

This stage involves finalizing details such as pricing, terms, and any additional considerations before committing to the chosen solution. This is the stage where it’s essential to provide your customers with clear and persuasive calls to action, as well as reassure them of their decision.

Buyer’s journey vs. customer journey

After learning about the stages, you may be wondering whether the terms buyer’s journey and customer journey are the same. Although these two have some similarities, we will go over some of their key differences.

Scope and focus

The buyer’s journey primarily focuses on the path a customer takes from the initial stage of identifying a problem or need, through the evaluation of solutions, to the final purchase decision. It centers on the pre-purchase stages of the customer’s experience.

In contrast, the customer journey encompasses the entire end-to-end experience a customer has with a brand, including the post-purchase phase. It extends beyond the purchase itself and covers the ongoing interactions, support, and satisfaction that customers experience throughout their relationship with the brand.

Timeframe

The buyer’s journey typically encompasses a shorter timeframe, concentrating on the stages leading up to the purchase decision. It also focuses on understanding the customer’s mindset, motivations, and decision-making process during this specific period.

On the other hand, the customer journey is a broader and more long-term view that considers the entire lifecycle of the customer’s engagement with the brand. It takes into account their experiences before, during, and after the purchase. This includes aspects such as onboarding, customer service interactions, product usage, and potential repurchase or loyalty.

Complementary nature

While the buyer’s journey and the customer’s journey have distinct scopes and timeframes, they are interconnected and can complement each other within a successful customer engagement strategy.

When you understand the buyer’s journey, you can provide valuable insights into how customers make purchasing decisions. This allows businesses to optimize their marketing and sales efforts to drive conversions.

Using the buyer’s journey to influence your strategy

Now that you have an understanding of the overall buyer’s journey, let’s explore ways you can use the information to inform the sales strategy.

• Assess the effectiveness of your buyer personas to ensure accurate targeting of your audience.
• Develop a clear outline of your desired buyer’s journey, specifying the progression from one stage to the next.
• Ensure alignment between your content strategy and sales approach for a cohesive and coordinated customer experience.
• Tailor your messaging and content to align with each stage and effectively guide customers and nurture their decision-making process.
• Optimize the sales process, ensuring a seamless transition from one stage to the next.

Going further with your buyer’s journey

Understanding the buyer’s journey gives you better insight into the process your customers go through when deciding to make a purchase.

When you’re ready to get started, start to outline what your current buyer’s journey looks like so you can define when customers move from stage to stage and begin to identify areas of optimization.

Adobe Marketo Engage allows you to map the buyer’s journey and gives you the data you need to measure engagement at every stage and identify areas of low conversion.

To find out how Marketo Engage can help you optimize the buyer’s journey, watch an overview or take a product tour.