In this Mucker Growth Session, Tony Yang, Head of Growth at Mucker, walks through using a buyer’s journey framework to improve your customer’s experience and your conversion rates.
Common Buyer Journey Pitfalls
Understanding the buyer journey is critical to startups to enhance sales and marketing effectiveness, however many founders can get caught up in common pitfalls in sales and marketing approaches:
- Generic Outbound Messaging: Many founders send out similar outbound messages, seeking meetings with prospects while lacking personalization and understanding of the recipient’s needs. Low response rates (2-8%) from these messages illustrate the ineffectiveness of this approach.
- Demo Fatigue: In cases where a demo is successfully scheduled and conducted, prospects often express a lack of urgency, telling sales representatives to reach out in several months. This indicates a failure to connect underlying needs with the urgency of the solution being offered.
- MQLs Mismanagement: Simply handing off marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales without ensuring they were ready for engagement is not effective. This often leads to MQLs that don’t convert into deals.
Understanding the Buyer Journey
There is a distinction between the sales and marketing funnel and the buyer journey. The funnel is company-centric, focused on internal metrics and workflows for tracking prospects. The buyer journey framework centers on understanding how prospects make decisions and navigate their challenges. Establishing alignment between the funnel and buyer journey is essential for improved conversion rates.
There are a few key buyer journey decision frameworks, including the well-known AIDA model (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) out there, but some like AIDA can have challenges in their execution. Tony favors a framework introduced by a company called Serious Decisions, which has withstood the test of time and offers a practical approach to mapping the buyer journey.
Stages of the Buyer Journey
- Loosening the Status Quo: This stage aims to help prospects recognize their need for change, often by understanding the ‘why’ behind their challenges rather than focusing on specific products.
- Committing to Change: Once the need is established, urgency must be created. If prospects recognize the necessity for immediate action, they are more likely to engage with sales.
- Exploring Possible Solutions: After understanding the “why” and “why now”, prospects start considering potential solutions for their needs.
- Committing to a Solution: Prospects narrow down their choices based on their criteria and begin to evaluate solutions in detail.
- Making a Decision: Within this stage, prospects seek validation for their decision-making process to ensure they are making the right choice.
Successful messaging throughout these stages must always center on the prospect’s perspective and not on the company’s features.
Effective Communication Strategies
Creating effective communication strategies is critical to the buyer’s journey. Make sure to include:
- Value Statements: Use value statements that convey solutions relevant to each persona at each stage of the buyer journey. For instance, messages should illustrate the impact of the problems being faced (e.g., prolonged onboarding processes) and how they will be improved by the solution offered.
- Message Mapping: Mapping these value statements effectively across defined Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas ensures that the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
Lead Scoring Model
Lead scoring is crucial for prioritizing prospects. Lead scoring should identify fit based on criteria set for both company profile and persona. Engagement points should reflect the content they are interacting with rather than just generic actions like email opens or clicks. It’s helpful to define three score categories that align with steps in the buyer journey, classifying leads as they demonstrate engagement with relevant content throughout the funnel stages.
Practical Implementation
Implementation of the concepts discussed involves concrete actions:
- Take an inventory of existing content and align it with buyer journey stages.
- Use a spreadsheet to track which personas and ICPs each piece of content targets.
- Create a nurture program that guides prospects based on their journey stage rather than inundating them with promotional material.
- Regularly reassess content effectiveness and adjust strategies accordingly to address any identified gaps.
It’s critical to understand the buyer’s journey and create a robust framework to engage prospects. By aligning messaging, recognizing the stages of the buyer journey, and implementing effective strategies for nurturing leads, companies can substantially improve their conversion rates and overall sales effectiveness.
Thanks to Tony Yang for this overview of buyer’s journey frameworks
