The buyer’s journey is a unique path that consumers take to purchase a product or service.
What are the three stages of the buyer’s journey?
When businesses evaluate a prospect’s decision-making process, they break it down into three stages:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
Each stage presents unique challenges for customers that can shake their resolution to buy. It’s your job to eliminate as many of those roadblocks as possible. You must also observe how prospects respond to every step of your sales cycle so you can continue identifying and knocking down obstacles.
The awareness stage
The first buyer’s journey stage is all about the potential customer’s pain points. In the awareness stage, the prospective buyer knows they have a problem that needs a solution. For instance, a jogger whose headphones keep falling out of their ears while they’re exercising.
At this point, the solution isn’t immediately clear. The jogger could go with any number of solutions to their problem. They could find a cheap DIY fix that keeps the headphones in perfectly. Or, they might call the manufacturer and get their headphones replaced. They might even consider not listening to music while they run.
The bottom line: During the awareness stage, every solution is on the table. The consumer knows they have a problem, but they don’t know about your company or your products or services. While they may take a few steps toward finding a solution—such as performing a Google search or soliciting advice on social media—they don’t know what that solution is yet.
During the awareness stage, buyers are at the top of your sales funnel. You can make yourself visible by publishing blogs, landing pages, ebooks, guides, and social media posts. Given that the potential customer is focusing on their pain points, your content should be, too.
The consideration stage
As people research solutions to their pain points, they begin to see their options. This is when they enter the consideration stage. If our jogger posted on social media to ask for help with the headphones that keep falling out, they might get tips for quick fixes, suggestions for better headphone brands, or links to useful third-party accessories.
In the consideration stage, buyers actively identify and consider potential solutions. Say our jogger likes their headphones and decides they don’t want to buy new ones. As they search for other possible solutions, they begin to consider the pros and cons of each one. And that ultimately leads them to the decision stage.
This is the center of the sales funnel, where you should use your unique value proposition (UVP) to show how your solution stands out from the rest. Create engaging and educational content like case studies, blogs, demos, and white papers to further emphasize your UVP.
The decision stage
In the decision stage, buyers choose the product or service that will solve their pain point at the right price. Our hypothetical jogger, for instance, became aware of their problem and considered various solutions—now they’ve decided to buy a third-party accessory for their headphones. They’ve made a decision, but they haven’t made a purchase yet.
This is usually the stage where sales reps have the most interactions with potential customers. Even if a prospect has decided to buy something, it doesn’t mean they will. They probably still need to consider a few factors, such as paperwork, warranties, customer support options, implementation and maintenance costs, etc.
Prospects are at the bottom of the sales funnel and ready to buy a product or service. The content you offer during this stage should be crafted to meet any sales objections that typically arise at this point, whether they’re related to pricing, contract length, supply concerns, and so on.
A buyer’s journey example
Let’s say a company sells online file storage and organization software. Their ideal buyer is a frustrated CPA who spends too much time searching for their important documents and client information.
When the CPA enters the awareness stage, they do some research on Google. The file storage company has SEO-optimized content that targets the CPA’s pain point, and it pops up near the top of the search results page. The CPA clicks on the blog post.
As the CPA reads more content about the problems they’re experiencing, they start to see the need for organizational solutions. That’s when they enter the consideration stage and begin looking through different options. At this point, the file storage company should focus on their unique selling proposition to make their product stand out. The content on their website—the “About Us” page, online catalogs, FAQs, and case studies—will all be helpful in illustrating their value.
After learning more about what the file storage company does, the CPA decides to enroll in a free demo. During this process, the CPA and sales rep have multiple phone meetings and email exchanges to discuss pricing, contracts, scalability, and other issues that may influence the CPA’s decision to make a purchase.
Perfecting your buyer’s journey
Every piece of content should be suited to the consumer’s needs and optimized to make the information easy to process. Plus, there should always be a clear and compelling call to action, which moves the prospect to the next steps in the buying process.
Bear in mind that it may take you a few tries to find out what content works best and where it should appear during the buyer’s journey. A simple CRM platform can help you make those determinations.