Thanks to the internet, buyers can find just about all the information they need to make a purchasing decision on their smart phones, laptops and desktop computers. They want to educate themselves before doing anything else, and that means we can’t always lead with a sales pitch. That’s why it’s so important to understand the customer’s journey, or path they frequently take, before making a purchasing decision.
The customer journey consists of three stages and, although shoppers can skip right to the second or third stage at any time, more often than not they follow a sequential path – starting with the Awareness stage followed by the Consideration stage and ending with the Decision stage. In this article, we’ll focus on the first stop along the journey and give you a better understanding of the Awareness stage.
During the Awareness stage of the customer journey, shoppers are just starting to understand that a problem exists and needs to be solved. This is where their online research begins – before they even know who you are. During this early stage, our goal as marketers isn’t lead-generation. While we’d never turn down a qualified lead that was submitted during this stage, our focus lies in creating brand awareness for your business.
In short, when a prospective customer is scouring the internet looking for information, we want them to find you, as well as the appropriate content on your website that speaks directly to their problem. To do this, we use keywords to optimize your content for Google, and then we might write a blog, article or white paper about the pain buyers are experiencing.
Measures of marketing success in the Awareness stage are KPIs such as:
- Website traffic
- Video views
- PDF downloads
Our goal is to educate them and create a “Eureka” moment that sends them to the next stop along the customer journey – the Consideration stage. Stay tuned because we’ll talk more about that in the next article in this series.
About Us
At Proximity Marketing, we’re experts at everything digital, and we offer a full range of services to help our clients achieve their objectives:
Contact us or give us a shout at (330) 220-6100.
