The Buyer's Journey in Inbound Marketing Strategies

Now that we have built the Buyer Persona, the first pillar of the inbound strategy, what's next? Well let's look at the second pilar, the Buyers Journey, in these times of high content and immediacy, consumers only pay attention to something that interests them; therefore we must gain that attention and keep it, how? You have to recognize that they like it, what they want to see and where, in short, identify what is the right and appropriate time to provide them with offers that might interest them or that they are needing, this is the great magic of consultative selling and its loyalty power.  

After all, Inbound Marketing is the one who helps us to integrate all these ideas in an orderly manner and combine them with Smarketing or Growth-Driven Design through a marketing automation platform, allowing us to be present to our consumers at the right time. Therefore, consider also working these methodologies together to obtain a better result.  

Table of Contents 

• What is the Buyer Journey? 
• Buyer Persona and Buyer Journey 
• The moments of purchase that your potential customer follows 
  
  

What is the Buyer 's Journey? 

The Buyers Journey is the search process that we all as potential consumers carry out until we become a real customer. This means that all those steps that the user follows are identified from the moment he discovers that he has a problem until he chooses the most optimal solution. This according to the Inbound Marketing  funnel consists of three stations that represent the customer experience during their purchase cycle: discovery, consideration and decision. 

Buyer Persona and Buyer’s Journey 

As we have already seen, the Buyer Persona helps us to have a clear idea of who I am addressing, they work as a compass helping us to design actions, content and campaigns more precise and focused on the characteristics, traits and needs of your ideal clients. 

In the buyer's journey the information reaches the user naturally, for example and as simple as a call to action, it is necessary that you know what the stage is so that it can adapt to the characteristics of the process and the dissemination channel. Here are some questions you have to ask yourself about your Buyer Persona to create the perfect Buyer's Journey for each stage: 

Discovery 

What are your challenges and goals? 

How do they learn or educate themselves to know more about their goals? 

How do you prioritize those goals? 

What if they fail to meet their challenges?  

Consideration 

How do you classify the solutions you usually look for? 

How are they educated to know those categories? 

How do you define the pros and cons of each of those solutions? 

How do you decide which category is the right one to solve your challenges? 

Decision 

How do you evaluate your different options? 

When it comes to researching about your company, what makes you choose you over the others? 

What would be the objections to your offer? 

What are the expectations around your product? 

Does your Buyer Persona involve someone in their final decision? How are your perspectives different? 

Would you like to test the offer, before buying it? 

Do they need additional preparations, such as plans or strategies? 

The moments of purchase that your potential customer follows 

As we saw earlier, the consumer journey includes the steps that a person takes in the purchase process. It all starts with the discovery, that moment in which your buyers become aware of their needs and begin the search for solutions, then we have the consideration stage, when these potential customers have already investigated and are more aware of what they want to buy and where they can get it and finally the purchase decision, where the consumer chooses the best option and makes the purchase. But what do you think if we see it in greater depth? 

Discovery: The prospect discovers that they have a problem and need to solve it, therefore, they start investigating and looking for options without commercial intent, while they discover that, your company can:  

• Offer descriptive blogs descriptive blogs that help the person better understand their problem. This, in addition to being accessible and easy to digest, can be found on Google or on your social networks. But remember that at this stage the blogs are only informative, do not try to sell anything, remember that the potential client is only educating himself more about his problem.  

• Developing descriptive videos, a popular way to reach your potential customers, we see with the rise of YouTube, Snapchat, InstagramTV and Facebook Live. This is an easy format to consume because it delivers a lot of information in a short time and in an audiovisual way. As a tip, you can create videos about frequently asked questions by your current clients or guides to solving a problem. This modality allows you to share on many platforms and define the best option for a greater impact.  

• Work on infographics informative images that are easy to digest and understand, add graphics that attract attention and offer relevant data about your potential client's problem. This piece of content is recommended in this first stage because in addition to being easy to consume, it also allows people to share it by giving it greater diffusion. 

Consideration: At this stage, the prospect has already defined his problem, therefore he will begin the process of reducing his options and investigating them in depth, this is where we identify the commercial interest of that person. Help them to know more about your company by offering: 

• Private content or as we commonly call it, downloadable offers, files such as eBooks, guides, calculators or tools are the next step to capture the contact information of your potential client to continue nurturing it in a more personalized way through email marketing. 
• Comparative videos, in these videos you will go one step further, previously they learned about the problem, in these videos you will explain them what are the advantages of your product / service, compared to other offers? Show your knowledge and build confidence in your prospects by giving them different and practical solutions for what they are looking for. 

Decision: This is the decisive moment, at this stage the client decides to buy based on what he investigated and is convinced of the best option based on his needs. This is the moment when your company must finish hooking them through: 

• Webinars, create online seminars and live demos, talk to them and encourage them to ask your sales team, who will have solutions specifically designed to help them. 
• Specialized information provides real cases, reviews and everything that helps them fully trust that what you are offering them is the best option. 

• Offer the customer a hook to stay with you, be it a discount, a demo, a free consultation, a free trial, etc. There are many options, find the one that best suits your industry. 

At this point, you already know how to create content for each stage of your Buyer 's Journey, it is time to identify the sales process of these prospects and their moments of truth, but we will see that in another chapter. 

Finally, like the Buyer Persona, the Buyer 's Journey is not static, they both evolve. The more you learn from your people, the better the path you build for them, and understanding this path is the key to maximizing your marketing time and budget. Remember to reuse or reuse existing content whenever possible and create new content to fill in any gaps you find. 

Value generation is a never-ending process of continuous learning, measurement, personalization and analysis!