Examining Marketing Functions Alignment With Buyer’s Journey
There is a serious correlation between traditional marketing and digital marketing. That is why you should not abandon traditional marketing just because you decided to adopt a digital marketing strategy. In this article, I want to look at marketing functions alignment with the buyer’s journey. Follow me as we look at that together in this article.
Some of the marketing functions in traditional marketing include planning, awareness, conversion, retention as well as for analytics and optimization. When you look at that in relation to the buyer’s journey which includes awareness, interest, consideration, conversion, and retention.
You will see that they have some things in common. Awareness in traditional marketing is mapped to awareness and interest in digital marketing. The conversion is also mapped to the consideration and conversion stage of the buyer’s journey while the retention stage is the same for both traditional and digital marketing.
Please note that the parallel matching is to allow Marketers to know which areas they need to focus on when trying to woo the target audience at each stage of the buyer’s journey. This also allows them to use both traditional and digital methods in achieving the desired results.
When mapping the buyer’s journey, you will notice that planning and analysis and optimization come into play but they do not directly impact the buyer’s journey. They can be used as tools to develop content and strategy that will make the awareness and retention stage of the buyer’s journey to work.
#1 Awareness function
This takes care of the messages that will allow the organization to drive new buyers to the sales cycle and nurture them to maturity. By spreading the message through owned media, the organization will be able to attract consumers who have not previously know about the products and services. Such people can now make enquires and begin the journey.
Also, the awareness stage can also be used to attract existing customers to the sales cycle. They might create interest in the new products due to the way such products are presented through content. Such leads can quickly move from awareness to interest stage because they already know the brand but have not really allowed the sales messages to digest. This will arouse their curiosity and make them learn more about the products or services.
#2 Conversion Stage
The conversion stage is.marched to the conversion and consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. You should note that at the interest stage, the lead has not taken time to learn about the products and services that he is considering. He does not know yet whether the product can actually solve his problem.
The conversion is when you get the relevant content across to the target audience so that he can understand how the product can actually solve his problem. This can take the form of Influencer endorsement, trials, blog articles, whitepapers among others.
It consists of any contents that will move the consumer from the stage of a mere observer to someone that will actually research the product and make purchasing decisions.
#3 Retention stage
After the customers have made the purchase of the products or services, they might actually not be looking forward to coming back for repeat purchase. The retention is when you can actually work on turning customers to brand advocates. At this stage also it is very possible that the customers are still interested in the buyer’s s journey based on community engagement or his history with the organization.
Due to his lack of interest, the Marketer working on targeting users at the retention stage have to bring up conversions that will actually lead to selling new products and services to existing customers.
The organization also has to invest heavily in brand reputation so that existing customers can come back and make a repeat purchase. When a brand has a good reputation for customer satisfaction and engagement, it will be able to attract new customers and retain existing customers. The organization really need to work on their existing customers so that they can become brand advocates.
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