The Buyer’s Journey – EP 006 of “The Marketing Hub”

Do you have the right communications online to attract, inform and sell to customers on the buyer’s journey?

Lissa McPhillips from DynamicMarketing.ie is back on #themarketinghub explaining The Buyer’s Journey for B2B and B2C businesses, with some great analogies along the way.

The Marketing Hub series has experienced marketing professionals sharing their expertise, helping you to improve your marketing knowledge and grow your business. The host, Paul McDermott, owner of video agency, Social Video HQ is right there with you learning and hopefully demystifying marketing along the way.

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Transcript

Today’s topic is the buyer’s journey.

Welcome to The Marketing Hub.

I’m delighted to say we have Lissa

McPhillips from Dynamic Marketing back again,

and she’s going to talk to us about that. Hi, Lissa.

Hello, Paul, how are you doing today?

Not too bad, not too bad.

Technical issues aside,

know, I think it’s one of those days, Paul.

Yeah, it’s one of those days. We’ll get there.

So Lissa, can you tell us about the buyer’s journey? Sure.

So the buyer’s journey sounds very technical,

but it’s really the different stages that your customer

or your client will go through from first hearing about you

to buying from you to then hopefully advocating for you.

And it’s very important as a business that you’re aware

of that journey because if, for example,

you try selling your product or service to early on in the

journey before anybody even really knows about you,

then maybe people aren’t comfortable buying from you.

Equally, if you don’t ask for a sale

when the time is right, you could be missing a trick.

So at a very high level, you want to bring your customers

or your clients through awareness.

So knowing what you sell, what makes you different

from all the rest. Consideration.

Why should I as a customer buy from

you as opposed to anybody else?

And this is where your testimonies will come into play.

Decision making then,

Once somebody decides to buy from you as a business,

make it as easy as possible for them, really bring them

through a very easy process.

And then hopefully advocacy.

You know, once the experience is

great, we all know as consumers, as buyers, we will

then spread the word and we will actually work

on your behalf and and promote you within our cohort.

Yeah, that’s that’s what all

businesses want, we want those advocates out there.

And how long would this buyer’s journey take?

I suppose it varies from business to business, does it?

Do you know what it really does?

And I mean, if you think about it yourself as a consumer, social media

has really truncated the process as well because,

for example, you could be sitting

down of an evening

flicking through your social media feed.

You see a fabulous pair of red shoes.

You’re like, Oh my gosh, that’s wonderful.

You click on the website.

There are €30 €35, you think

I don’t really know that brand, but you know what?

I’m going to take a punt, they look gorgeous and you buy them.

Then the higher priced ticket items may take that little bit longer

because you want to make sure you’re buying from a credible source.

You would check out the testimonies that I referred to earlier on.

You might spend that little bit more time doing a bit of research.

So it really does depend

on the product and the price of the whole thing.

But at a high level, you know, it’s good to know the journey in itself.

Absolutely. And you are right because, you know,

if it’s a small ticket item, there might be a quicker purchase.

But if it’s a big ticket item, we’ve got to think about these things.

And just like. Exactly and there, there’s

more things to consider, you know?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And and also and would be much

of a difference between B2B and B2C journeys.

Yeah. Good question.

So high level, the concept is the same, but

consumer buying is very much emotional driven, right?

I spoke about the red parachutes, right, that would resonate with me.

I’ll be like, Oh, I love them, I got to have them,

or you and I with our paddleboards this summer, right?

We both saw that we lived in beautiful island

with great waterways.

Why don’t we grab this opportunity and get ourselves paddleboards?

So it’s very much emotionally driven.

The B2B buyer’s journey, then, can be slightly longer

because the sales process could be longer as well,

and you may find that there are more people

involved in the whole process.

So it’s important that as a business

you tone, you hone your messaging to suit each of the people

who will be involved in the journey in the sales cycle for you.

So, for example,

you might meet somebody initially who will actually be the end user

of your product or service, but they may not be the person who’s

actually going to sign the contract on the dotted line.

So you might need to just tweak your messaging slightly so that

you know you can bring everybody through that journey.

So it’s important as a business that you understand

the cycle and you understand each phase in the cycle

so that you can build your messaging to actually give your customers

your potential customers the message they’re looking for

Right. And I really understand that in B2B terms,

because you know that the the

the distance between attracting interest and getting somebody

to sign a contract in B2B, particularly on high ticket

value items, or customers who have a high CLV

and it takes a long time

and it takes of a lot of different points of contact.

So that that really resonates with me.

It can be. It can be.

And B2B,

selling is very much around relationships as well.

So it’s about building that relationship

and earning trust, and it’s about building up your own

visibility, your own credibility, the credibility of your business

and then bringing, you know, bringing people through the fact

that you can provide a solution to the problem they have.

That’s really good, Lissa.

And I think it’s it’s just kind of laid it out

very simply there about the journey,

and a lot of businesses can start thinking about

how they bring their customers along the journey.

So thanks for coming on today. Just before we go,

can you give us your website and your email just in case anybody

wants to get in contact with you?

Sure, thanks so much, Paul,

so it’s Lissa McPhillips from Dynamic Marketing.

You can find me on dynamicmarketing.ie

And you can find me, @lissa

And just to make things that little bit trickier.

It’s lissa@dynamicmarketing.ie That’s great.

Thanks for coming on today. Thanks for having me, Paul.