What is the Buyer’s Journey?

The Buyer’s Journey is the process a buyer goes through to make a purchase. Each stop on the buying journey identifies the intention of the searcher. Now leverage this intention. Highlight how your company provides the best solution for the searcher.

How the Buying Journey Begins

The Journey starts with the identification of a need/desire. Desire leads to curiosity. Curiosity creates questions. Questions cause the customer to grab their phone to look up the answer.

How Does Intent flow?

Intent flows in a cycle:

1. Research Intent – Customer has a question, need, or curiosity
2. Compare Intent – Point out what makes your solution the best option
3. Buy Intent – Closing the Sale
4. Succeed Intent – Keeping the Customer through after-sale support

Questions and answers have a funny way of moving a person from one place to another without ever noticing the scenery change.  This is the natural motion that you need to copy in your website design and content.

How?

Solve the customer’s problem in each stage of the journey.

Create a written asset like a how-to article or comparison page that educates the customer about their problem. Then offer the solution that highlights your product or service. Phrase the solution in terms of the intent of the question being asked.

Let’s use accounting software as a theme.

These are typical questions a potential buyer will ask in each step of the buying journey.

1. Research Intent – Do I need accounting software? How does accounting software work? Is Freshbooks easy to learn?
2. Compare Intent – Freshbooks vs Quickbooks, Which software works best for small businesses?
3. Buy Intent – How much does Freshbooks cost? Does Freshbooks offer a free trial?
4. Succeed Intent – How do I change vendor addresses? Does Freshbooks have only tutorials? Can I import my existing information from old software? Is there a tech support line?

Zig Ziglar said, “You can get everything you want if you help enough people get what they want.”

Leveraging the Buying Journey

Now write a web page that answers each question in each stage of the buying journey. Create (and maintain) pages to answer these questions and satisfy the intent. These pages include (but not limited to):

• Articles & Blogs
• Product pages
• Comparison Pages (HINT:  If you don’t have one, your competitor will. Goodness knows what they said about you.)
• “How to” style videos
• Lead magnets
• Landing pages
• Sales pages
• Customer support pages/forums/testimonials

Make sure that you ALWAYS include a way for the Buyer to move to the next phase on EVERY page. Make it obvious!

Take-aways

Good content moves your customer through each phase of the Buying Journey. Great content does it without your customer leaving your website.

• Design everything you do to anticipate the needs, wants, and desires of your customer.
• Satisfy their needs and solve their problems with your products/services through each stage of the buying journey.
• Use search engine optimized (SEO) content to transform the potential buyer into a life long customer.

Want to leverage the buying journey to propel your business forward?

Call us at Springboard Writing Concepts, we would be happy to help!