A customer journey is an entire engagement that a customer has with a company. It takes into account the entire interaction process, from brand exploration to purchase and beyond. The focus of the customer journey is not solely on transactions but on how the customer feels after experiences with the brand.
To improve the customer journey it should start in the process of documenting the whole customer experience. Be sure to have a deeper understanding of each buyer stakeholder’s needs and goals at each point, as well as the specific actions they take after seeing an advertisement.
How Customer Journey in the Online World Works?
People spend a significant amount of time on the internet. The majority of users spend an average of 7 to 8 hours a day online. This can include a variety of online activities, ranging from checking email at work to commenting on a social media post. Fortunately for marketers, you can meet your target users no matter where they are online or what they’re doing. So here’s how the customer journey works in different online channels.
- Social media
People use social media to connect with friends, relatives, and businesses more than 28% of the time. Bear in mind that over 80% of this action takes place on a mobile device. Many are taking advantage of this opportunity to reach out to their audience through digital display ads on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as the users browse their feeds and connect with brands.
It takes up approximately 24% of an average online time of a person checking and sending emails. Inboxes earn more engagement than any other marketing platform. Lead nurturing emails and newsletters are excellent ways to establish a trustworthy relationship and improve the customer journey with your audience.
- Website
About 23% of a user’s online time reading blog posts, interactive content, eBooks, and business reports. Businesses target particular audience segments with high-quality content that leads them down the sales funnel on websites where consumers are most likely to visit. This improves the customer journey on the website. To make this strategy even more effective, businesses often tailor their content to address specific pain points, interests, and trends relevant to their target audience. For example, incorporating topics like what employees value in companies can resonate deeply with professionals seeking information about workplace culture or career growth. Providing such focused content not only builds trust but also establishes the business as a thought leader in its industry, encouraging users to engage further.
- Watching videos online
As video marketing is on the rise, there’s approximately 19% of a user’s time online is spent watching videos. It gives marketers a range of ways to target consumers, including video overlay advertising, display ads surrounding the player, and more.
- Online shopping
Online shopping is currently on-trend, since before the COVID-19 pandemic happens, and will probably stay on-trend even in the future. Around 6% of the time is spent online looking at new products and services. This can vary from small products like accessories to big purchases like an in-ground pool. Post important content consistently to stay top-of-mind with the audience, and use effective calls-to-action to boost conversion rates.
- Research
There’s a short amount of time spent searching for information in search engines. Though this tends to be a small amount of time, it indicates that much of the time spent online occurs after the initial research. You may be able to come up with great ideas and produce amazing content that ranks on the SERPs, but if you don’t cultivate the traffic and maintain a relationship, you’ll be missing out a lot.
Reaching out to customers when they’re on the Internet requires engaging them in their online activities. This is needed to preserve those relationships and drive a potential customer down the sales funnel toward being a loyal customer and give an extraordinary customer experience!
