Understanding The Customer Journey Chapter One: The AC/DC Principle
Definition: The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand. Instead of looking at just a part of a transaction or experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer.
Brand Publishing by nature is rooted in how you, as a brand, interact with your customers and potential customers. It goes without saying then that understanding how that customer would navigate his or her own purchasing process is an important step toward marketing excellence. I plan on writing more about this topic specifically but wanted to start but simply introducing the concept (above) and giving it some basic definition to help you navigate this important step.
The AC/DC principle is a fantastic foundation guide to getting you started and it breaks down like this:
The “A” stands for Awareness. Your target audience will identify their problems or questions and start searching for answers. At this stage, they’re becoming aware of their options that solve their current challenge and perhaps even becoming aware that they have a problem in the first place.
The first “C” stands for Consideration. Customers will start considering things like “What technology they will need to use” to solve their issues uncovered in the awareness stage. They will also consider which solution providers can potentially help them.
The “D” stands for Decision. Customers have gone through the evaluation process and are ready to make a purchase.
The second “C” stands for Customer (you can even add another A for Advocate). You as a solutions provider now not only have a new customer but hopefully have an advocate to lean into when establishing your brand moving forward.
All of the stages require different pieces of content and brand publishing actions to make an impact.
For example, your customer, let’s say an engineer, is reading about potential issues around water quality and it’s a content piece YOU wrote (win). He is generally interested in the message (win) because it’s relatable (win), none-salesy (win) and interesting (win). You follow up with another piece of content relating specifically to the original piece he was engaging with (win). He starts to view you as a market leader (win) that can help him (win) and wonders if his water quality options are worth looking at further (win). He then starts to access and engage in content that is more specifically tied to your brand and your products (BIG WIN) and eventually becomes a customer (BIG WIN). Post purchase he is a contributor to your mid-stage content development by giving specifics of his experience with your brand (win).
By understanding his journey you are able to develop content in a way that maximizes your ability to influence him at EVERY stage of his BUYER’S Journey. Smart Marketing is about making an impact at every stage of their walk towards a purchase and it all begins with one word … Understanding.
Image credit: "AC/DC," Alias 0591 © 2013, used under an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/