Let us understand the customer journey before we jump onto how we can effectively use analytics with it.
What is a Customer Journey?
In simple terms customer journey is the different stages through which a customer goes through while interacting with your brand. There are mainly 5 stages of the customer journey.
Let’s understand this better with the help of an example. Let’s say we are working for a website development company.
Awareness: They learn about your brand, it could be via any channel. Social Media advertisement, word of mouth, offline activation, referral program and so on and so forth. During this stage they are typically in the research mode. Taking our example, the user is looking for answers to questions like “Which medium should I build my website on?”, “Which platform will suit me better?” or “Should I get an agency?” and likewise. During this stage the best tag to track would be “Page View”.
Consideration: They have decided on the technology they want to use at this point. If they decide to use WordPress, they will search and read articles such as "Best WordPress Agencies", "How to make websites with WordPress", etc. We can check who has visited our WordPress pages by using the Page View tag. Alternatively, we could show them ads related to our WordPress Case Studies or articles that say “Why getting an agency would save you bucks” or send them a lead magnet. It will help them make decisions in favor of our company
Purchase: Now we track the people who have downloaded our lead magnet about WordPress, read our case studies, and visited the articles we discussed above. You can pursue them further by offering them incentives such as a free trial, free consultation, an agent appointment, and so on
Retention: As soon as a prospect is converted into a customer, we need to ensure they are retained. Taking a tech company as an example, a cross-selling or upselling strategy would be more advantageous than retention. We should continue sharing stories on how we have helped our customers gain traction with Digital Marketing or why website maintenance is just as important as building a website. This is a good opportunity to convert your customers into a sales spokesperson for you. Make them aware of your referral program and ask them to refer you.
This is how we can customize the targeting according to the customer's thought process and stage. This will not only help us convert them better, but will also give our prospects a more personalized experience. A drip email funnel can further automate this process.
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