The Customer Journey – a Marketing Term
Customer buying behavior has changed over the years. In the past, a single advertising channel was often enough to trigger a buying impulse. Today, your potential customer frequently switches channels on their way to the purchasing decision. They switch between offline and online media during their Customer Journey. The first contact with your company, product, or service could have been through a billboard, but the purchase could be made via your website. Thus, the Customer Journey represents your customer’s “itinerary” from the first contact to the purchase and connects all touchpoints with your offer.
Customer Journey Shaped by Many Touchpoints
Many touchpoints occur randomly through a friend’s recommendation or a click on a Facebook ad. These initial contacts rarely lead to a purchase. They generate awareness and may spark initial interest. But the actual need to buy the product often only develops through further contacts with the product. Therefore, customer behavior in the Customer Journey is still based on the AIDA principle (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), but the buying process today is much more complex. It can take hours, days, weeks, or sometimes much longer. It depends on the product and, of course, the customer. The Customer Journey for very high-priced, durable goods can extend over several years, while seasonal items typically show a much shorter buying process.
Customer Journey in the Example of a Fashion Mail Order Business
For a customer in the fashion industry, the Customer Journey might look like this:
An interested person, here named Felix as an example, becomes aware of the new fashion outfits through an online campaign. In the next few days, he passes by a poster with the new seasonal items and briefly notices the campaign. Three days later, he finds the new catalog from the mail-order company in his mailbox and goes directly to the website. Due to the variety of offers, Felix still cannot decide on a purchase and abandons the order process. In the following days, the products he viewed are offered to him through retargeting. As a new customer, he also receives a 20% discount. This encourages him to click on the ad. He lands on a landing page that only displays the advertised products. Since the offer is limited, Felix decides to buy directly and places the order. In this example, Felix had five touchpoints during his Customer Journey before completing the purchase on the website.
Possible touchpoints include platforms from traditional advertising (print, outdoor, radio, and TV spots), direct marketing (mailings, inserts), and online marketing measures. Recommendations from friends, acquaintances, or colleagues can also be part of the Customer Journey. It becomes clear how difficult it is to determine which medium influences the customer/consumer the most. However, by continuously, consciously and unconsciously, confronting the customer with the brand, the likelihood of them choosing the product increases.
Your Contact Person for the Customer Journey and Its Touchpoints
Speak with Tanja Hensler (hensler@trebbau.com, Tel.: 0221/37646 – 330) about the numerous variants of cross-media dialogue in your Customer Journey. The possibilities are diverse, we offer many different touchpoints – both offline and online, national or international. Learn more about cross-media marketing.