How Web Strategy Impacts The Customer Journey

The customer journey. It’s how potential prospects and current customers interact with you and your company. When you deliver continuous value throughout that journey, you'll connect with more prospects and add more customers. But when the customer journey gets derailed or hits a dead end, you miss out.

Connect with more prospects as they progress through the buying stages.  Here's how.

The Customer Journey Progresses Through Stages

A B2B sale is rarely an impulse purchase. Instead, the customer journey progresses through stages and often takes months or longer to lead to a purchase decision.

Discover → Compare → Consider → Commit → Retain

Many organizations connect effectively when a prospect is considering or ready to commit to a purchase. Although succeeding in the latter stages is crucial, ignoring the discovery and compare steps means missing out on prospects that have a need and interest in your capabilities.

However, an effective web strategy can impact these stages, increasing the number of prospects that discover and compare your capabilities.

How Discovery And Compare Occurred Before The Internet

Customer journey steps haven't changed throughout the years. But, how prospects access information today make the process very different.

Discovery

Although prospects accessed trade magazines, association information, attended trade shows and more, B2B companies used their sale force to foster discovery.

It started with “prospecting.” Before LinkedIn or other data sources, reps went from account to account to get names of prospects and attempt to schedule a meeting. If the rep was lucky, the buyer met right then and there. But if not, the sales rep dropped off a brochure and attempted to schedule a time to discuss his or her capabilities. For B2B companies, the customer journey discovery step started with these interactions. Prospecting was a key element to discovery before the internet.

Compare

If you were able to schedule a meeting you could gain a better understanding of how the customer operated, the vendors they were using and any problems the prospect was experiencing. Perhaps these discussions took place over lunch. This helped you to build a relationship all while positioning your capabilities as a viable alternative to their current process. If your products were new or unique, it allowed a prospect to compare their current system with the one you were proposing.

How Discovery And Compare Take Place Today

Not surprisingly, things are different today. The web changed how we buy and sell. And from a customer journey perspective, how a prospect progresses through the discovery and compare steps changed most significantly. Although it’s still possible to connect with a prospect and personally guide them through each step of the journey, it’s far more likely that at least the discovery and compare steps occur online.

To maximize your success, you must identify and optimize the online resources that connect with the customer journey. Here’s why:

Connecting With Your Customer’s Journey

Without the basics - an effective website with useful content - you will disconnect from the customer journey. So how do you reconnect?

The best way to understand how a prospect interacts with you is to develop a customer journey map. A diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your company.

Start by identifying your ideal customers and determine.

Overlay the goals of the discovery and compare stages:
Determine the interactions a prospect takes as they self-educate, become aware of capabilities and start to narrow the field. Define the tactics that enhance their journey. The most common options include:

Website Local Listings Brochures Blog Case Studies Articles White Papers

Newsletter Events/Presentations Advertising Testimonials Case Studies Feature Lists Pricing Sheets

Understanding the touch points and developing strategies that link with prospects as they advance through the decision making process make it more likely they'll progress to the next stage. And when you connect at each stage of the customer journey, you increase the odds that more prospects turn into paying customers!

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