What is a buyer journey and why nurture long-term relationships with your audience?
The concept of the “experience journey” first appeared 25 years ago in the Harvard Review in 1998. This is not a new concept.
Your audience includes existing and prospective clients. These are your buyers. Long-term relationships mean repeat buyers.
A prospect is on a buyer journey. A buyer’s journey ends in a sale or a new client. Preferably the buyer journey of your prospect results in a loyal client with the opportunity to consolidate and develop the relationship further.
Have you given much thought to the composition of your audience? What are the key demographics?
As an example, known to be “technology natives“, millennials – by definition born between 1982 and 1994, are not that young anymore. The oldest of them is currently 42 at the writing of this article. That makes this digitally savvy generation the young professionals of the day.
These are the people setting up a home, getting married, laying down traditions, buying the family home, getting a family doctor, a dentist, and all the local neighbourhood services that make up the day-to-day living experience.
Today’s young professional families might be the technology natives but nowadays the majority of people have a mobile phone and this means access 24/7 to online content.
Did you know people in the UK look at their phones every 12 minutes?
According to a recent Uswitch study that analyses evolving trends in the UK,
people in the UK check their smartphones, on average, every 12 minutes of the waking day. Two in five adults (40%) look at their phone within five minutes of waking up, reaching 65% of those aged 35 and under. Similarly, 37% of adults check their phone five minutes before going to sleep, with the comparable figure for under-35s rising to 60%.
[Hiley, Catherine “UK mobile phone statistics, 2023” Uswitch, February 2023]
This would indicate that many of us, including a significant portion of your audience, are faced with multiple content pieces daily. Your audience will search for information on you and watch and listen to what you say about your products and services and from there they will assess whether or not this is the experience they want to have.
What is Content Experience?
Content experience is the overall experience of accessing, consuming, engaging with, and responding to a stream of brand content – across diverse devices, platforms and channels, through the journey from prospect to customer. Successful content experiences deliver a high degree of relevance, personalization, timeliness, consistency and convenience; by focusing on a holistic approach that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Based on this information, do you think it is worth investing in your content?
There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that audience experience with content helps build their picture of perception surrounding your products and services, helping your audience to understand and appreciate what they can expect. Put simply, your content greatly influences the decision-making process involved in turning a prospect into a client.
You can build trust with your audience through quality video, sound, and voice. This includes a well-written script, a storyboarded video, and a voiceover and soundtrack that fits with the picture you want to build in the mind of your prospect and client.
In our next article…
In our next article, we will elaborate on the types of content and at which stage of the buyer journey their introduction might be more relevant and create the greatest impact.
