A Business Owner’s Guide to Diving into the Customer Value Journey

Using the customer value journey in your marketing turns leads into valuable customers. When you optimize this journey, you’ll differentiate yourself from competitors while maximizing customer loyalty. You'll empower your marketing campaigns if you take the time to understand and improve the customer journey. 

Here we'll review the customer value journey and what it entails, giving your long-term marketing efforts a clear direction. 

Understanding the Customer Value Journey 

This journey is a fundamental blueprint and is the most critical step to take toward optimizing your marketing strategy  

In the customer value journey, people who start out as total strangers to your brand evolve into high-value customers and, ultimately, brand promoters. Think of the process as building and nurturing a relationship with audiences. 

Look at it this way: People want to get to know one another before getting married; they don't marry someone right after the first date. During that first date, you also want to avoid spending the entirety of it talking yourself up without focusing on the other person. Otherwise, you won't likely get a second date. Instead, devote time to understanding your audiences' wants and needs and building a mutually beneficial relationship. 

To encourage your audiences to convert from strangers to loyal brand promoters, your relationship must benefit both parties. In developing this relationship, your marketing also must meet prospects where they are along their journey based on their unique needs at each stage. 

The 8 Stages of the Customer Value Journey 

If you want to connect with your audiences and get real results with your marketing, it's important to understand the main stages of the customer value journey. 

At this stage of the customer value journey, prospects come across your brand and offerings for the first time. During the awareness stage, you must leave the best possible first impression, with the goal of future engagement. You can increase awareness and recognition in many ways, including organic search engine results, paid search ads, video ads, and referrals. 

The next stage of the journey involves engaging audiences who are now aware of your brand and offerings. There's no shortage of channels to use for increasing engagement. You can connect with people using social media marketing, blog posts, website content, and videos. While it may take a while for people to move beyond this stage, top-quality and relevant content marketing strategies will accelerate the journey. 

You’ve now earned the trust of prospective customers over competitors, leading these prospects to seek more information about your brand and your products or services. At this point, you can start requesting contact information and start converting people into leads. At the same time, you should ask for these details in exchange for something of value to your leads, including eBooks, weekly or monthly newsletter subscriptions with helpful tips, or other pieces of content. 

This stage is about converting people into valuable leads by offering additional value while encouraging them to devote more time and energy to your brand. For example, you could offer a free trial or demonstration that gives people a more hands-on experience with your offerings. In other cases, you might get people to schedule virtual meetings or connect more directly through other means. 

Continue to impress your audiences with additional offerings and opportunities to be loyal brand fans. The customer journey doesn’t stop after the first purchase, so keep the excitement flowing at this stage. 

You’ve affirmed the value of your brand, and customers are pleased. At this stage, you can meet or even exceed people's expectations with the help of additional compelling offers, which will help maximize their initial purchase value. 

If you manage to satisfy your customers with your offerings, they'll dig even deeper into your brand while letting others know about the kind of value you provide. This stage will involve converting customers into brand advocates who are more likely to develop into promoters. 

Once people start getting involved in brand development and contribute their value to your brand, they will have reached the promote stage. This gives you the perfect opportunity to maximize loyalty through rewards programs, referral programs, social media sharing opportunities, and other resources. 

Optimize the Customer Value Journey with the Help of a Media Partner 

Want to get the most from your customer value journey and turn audiences into loyal brand promoters? You must have effective digital marketing that addresses every stage. The experts at Mid-West Family Springfield will help you get the best results from your next marketing strategy to optimize the customer value journey from start to finish. 

Consider a multi-channel media partnership if you’d like to discover how to take full advantage of the customer value journey to connect with your audience at every point.