What is a Customer Journey?

Every user has a different customer journey which consists of different stages: Awareness, Acquisition, Onboarding, Engagement, and Advocacy. Whether you focus on a certain stage more than the other is also highly dependent on the business objectives. Some customers might not go through a linear journey and touch every stage, therefore the marketing approach should be personalized according to customer behavior.

In the awareness stage, the user is familiarizing themselves with the brand while researching information about its products or services. As an online business, you should develop strategies to guide them toward the next step, which might include targeting them through paid advertising or properly done SEO.

In the acquisition stage, the visitor is becoming a customer. This is a very important step in establishing a long-lasting relationship with the customer, so you need to find a way to keep in touch with them. You invite them to subscribe to your Newsletter in order to keep them updated with the latest arrivals and promotions, in order to make them come back for more.

Once they have subscribed in the acquisition stage, they agreed to stay in touch with your brand, therefore you need to establish the direction of the relationship by sending welcome email campaigns with product recommendations based on their interests and letting them know how the communication will go and how frequently they will receive marketing emails or newsletters from your shop.

The engagement stage is perhaps one of the most important steps in the customer journey. This is when you create value and provide the customer with a personalized brand experience, in order to keep them curious and engaged. It is a creative process, which can be done through email marketing campaigns, a personalized on-site user experience, for example, using a recommendation engine or behavioral pop-ups, as well as multi-channel marketing campaigns, such as SMS and Push.

Finally, advocacy is the last stage and the moment when you ”reap what you sowed” during the engagement step. Happy customers tell others about their experiences so you should encourage them to share their experiences with other peers. This translates into a customer-centric approach because it is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain new customers.

The marketing funnel highly relies on the customer journey, as it helps online stores to properly market their products and services to customers at the right time and stage of the marketing funnel.

To provide a clear example, a customer who does research on a product is at the beginning stage in the customer journey, while a customer who reached the check-out page is at the bottom of the marketing funnel or at the end of the customer journey, so both of them might require different communication approaches.

The customer journey should have a central focus since it improves lead generation and conversion opportunities, generally supporting a more effective marketing strategy. Having information about the customer journey can also improve the customer experience and can indicate whether they become loyal customers through repeat purchases.