If you think your customer’s journey begins once you know about it… you’re entering the game WAY too late. Let's talk about what you need to consider when strategizing your customer journey in the age of digital marketing.

• Conversions are not step 1

In a 2018 study, CSO identified that “more than 70% of B2B buyers fully define their needs before engaging with a sales representative, and almost half identify specific solutions before reaching out”. If you aren’t taking steps to meet your customers and prospects where they are when they begin their journey, you are missing a critical time in their decision-making process.

This is where social media, geo-location marketing, and paid search awareness campaigns come in. Your marketing goal doesn’t always need to be to achieve a conversion. Sometimes being top-of-mind, via awareness campaigns, can ensure that if your product or service ever solves someone’s problem or disruption, they think about you first.

• Customer journeys are not a straight line.

The days of setting up a standard funnel for customers to move through, like a conveyor belt, are gone. All customers are not created equal and marketing cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. Today, with multi-device touchpoints and a tidal wave of digital advertising, prospects can bounce around like a pinball machine, before and even after you’ve begun your conversations with them. Review sites, social media, in-app media, video ads, and social media mentions should all play a vital role in the journey you anticipate when you plan your customer journey strategy. Let your touchpoints stretch wide across the digital landscape and incorporate all of the places in your prospects' ecosystem.

Look for places you hadn’t normally planned to be like forums, they’re not dead yet, SMS campaigns, and in some relevant apps. When Nextdoor launched its advertisement opportunities many regions sold out within days. It’s time to think outside of the paid search box.

• Personalization matters. 

Marketing guru Neil Patel states “that in a recent survey, 90% of users found personalization appealing, and 80% said they’d be “more willing to do business with a company that offers personalized approaches”. People are tired of being advertised to… but mainly because they’re so used to seeing advertisements that have nothing to do with what they need or want. Advertising noise is only noise if you don’t associate with it.

At the end of the day, all marketers are competing for valuable time in front of people. But we need to remember that they are people, individual people, with individual needs and digital habits and preferences. By harnessing more natural spaces we can connect on a more personal level and come to a mutual understanding about the ability to solve a problem much earlier on in a customer’s buyer journey. Let’s start the conversation sooner and make it organic. People helping people.