What is the Customer Awareness Journey?

The customer awareness journey is the process that happens every time a purchase is made.

The journey involves steps toward a decision. We have broken this process into 4 steps: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, and Retention.

Knowing the process can help you map the journey your customers take from start to finish.

Why is the customer awareness journey important?

It can give an overview of the purchase process from start to finish.

Knowing/mapping the customer journey helps you:

• Understand your customer better
• Identify pain points
• Better marketing efforts
• Increase customer retention

Stages of the customer journey

Awareness 

Awareness is the first stage of the journey. At this stage, your potential customer has a need/problem and they are researching a solution.

This is the stage where you are providing information about your solution to the customer problem. This can be how-to articles or videos, social media posts on the topic, or another delivery method that is quick and easy to absorb.

Consideration

During the consideration stage, customers have some identified options and are comparing you with market competition.

Potential customers may reach out for more product/service information.

Purchase

The purchase or decision stage is where the customer has weighed the options and is ready to make a decision.

You can add value to your offering to try to increase purchasing with incentives like demos, coupons, trial periods, and product/service guarantees.

Retention

This stage is about keeping customers. Customers are more likely to buy from people they know. Acquiring a new customer can cost five times (5X)  more than retaining an existing customer and increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 25% – 95%.

According to a Microsoft article published January 3, 2020, “One customer experience agency found loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering.”

Providing value after the customer purchase is a way to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Some examples of how to provide value after the purchase is made:

• Follow up emails
• Survey
• Coupons
• Loyalty Program

Customer Journey Map

The journey map is a visual representation of the experience customers have with your business. Maps can be very detailed with many steps or more simplified and general.

It can be beneficial to map your current journey first to identify points on the journey that can be improved. You may need to do some market research to help you before mapping the journey. A good place to begin is with current customers.