PPC Agency Blog Series: Brand Awareness + The Customer Journey
Last time in the brand awareness series, we explored what brand awareness is, and a few of the ways companies can incorporate brand awareness into their advertising efforts. This week, our creative design agency wants to push this concept forward. That’s why we’re introducing the idea of the customer journey. What it is and how it fits into our previous exploration of brand awareness. When it comes to advertising, all of your efforts work together to increase your visibility and, ultimately, your sales and leads.
What is the Customer Journey?
In marketing, the customer journey is the way that a customer sees and interacts with your business. This can begin with an advertisement on Facebook, then lead to them scrolling your website or social media, and then eventually making a purchase. Thinking about the customer journey for online efforts is not that much different from how you would consider the journey of a customer shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. A store must catch someone’s eye and draw them in, and online ads are no different.
What story are you trying to tell, and how do you want people to react to your brand? You must consider how your brand looks to the customer at first glance, then what that customer sees as they read or watch an advertisement for longer. Then if you catch their attention for long enough, you’ll need to carefully design your website in a user-friendly and inviting way.
HubSpot writes, “Salesforce reported that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products. From the time a customer is introduced to a product to when they purchase it, they go through the buyer’s journey.”
See our example of a customer journey below and get a visual of how we help our clients with this concept.
With more and more small businesses competing with bigger companies, it’s extremely important that you set yourself apart and gain the customer’s long-term trust. People want quality products, yes, but they also want to feel as though they are making smart buying decisions and not wasting time or money. That’s why the customer journey is such a powerful tool.
Read through more of our articles for additional tips about advertising.
How Does the Customer Journey Relate to Brand Awareness?
Now that we’ve discussed the idea of a customer journey, it’s time to talk about how it fits into brand awareness. Since brand awareness helps to get your brand’s name and services out into the world, it’s a major step in the customer journey. After all, how can someone take action, buy something from your website or hire your services if they don’t know about your brand in the first place?
Brand awareness is not only the first step in the customer journey; it must also be a continuing process. Once you’ve turned someone into a customer, that brand awareness transforms into brand loyalty, and gaining that brand loyalty comes from your products and services and the continued reminder that you’re here for your customers, that you know what they want and need. Doing that comes from advertisements, email funnels, brochures, promotions, and marketing as a whole.
One of the final pieces of the customer journey – after seeing an ad, clicking the ad, scrolling your website, being served a retarget ad, etc., is the final solution you present to a customer’s problem. Why do they need your product or service? What’s the ultimate problem that you are solving for them if they buy your product? Figuring this out at the beginning will help assist your advertising efforts and the way you approach brand awareness at the start.
