How does your sales and marketing teams build a go-to-market strategy for your products or services? Often, it will be the leads inside a CRM pipeline that informs how the marketing budget is spent.
This can work. Developing existing leads often does lead to more sales, but it is not a very comprehensive plan for the continued development of new sales. Also, what do you do it there is nothing of value in your CRM at present?
One way to create a more structured marketing and sales plan is to think about what your ideal customer looks like. What is the buyer persona? You can even create several buyer personas to reflect different types of customers and then use these personas to explore how your sales and marketing team should be appealing to these customers.
Creating buyer personas There are three main factors, or types of information, to consider when creating buyer personas:
Demographic: All the basic information about your customer — such as their age, gender, occupation, civil status, location, and education. This gives you a better understanding of where and who they are .
Psychographic: This explores the interests and hobbies of the customer. What are their values? What are their goals in life? Do they engage in religious worship or local politics?
Technographic: What devices do they use to interact with brands? Do they use social media and if so, which channels? Do they engage with ecommerce brands in addition to traditional retail?
Based on these factors, you can now create some sample customers and then consider how would your company reach out to that customer. How do you create awareness and interest in your brand for this specific person?
The customer journey: Traditional vs. modern views It is worth understanding the customer journey when undertaking this planning exercise. There is a traditional view of a customer journey , which speaks to a five-stage relationship focused on awareness, consideration, purchase, service, and loyalty.
This was always a step-by-step journey that started with step one and progressed through each of the steps. A customer must first be somehow made aware of the product through a marketing campaign. Then the customer will search for more information as they consider the product. They make a purchase and possibly need post-purchase help from the customer service channel. After this, there is the planning required to ensure the customer stays loyal.
The modern journey is very different and as you build and test your buyer personas, it is important to consider how we are no longer operating in a linear world where a customer will ask about a product only after seeing an advert for it.
Today the customer journey is a dynamic, circular, and interconnected experience shaped by digital tools and social interactions . Customers now navigate multiple touchpoints in non-linear ways, often looping back and forth between stages like awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase engagement. Simply stated, non-linear touchpoints mean your customers can enter the journey at any stage and jump to any stage without needing to pass step-by-step through ordered stages.
Here are the key elements of the modern customer journey:
User-generated content: Customers are increasingly relying on reviews, testimonials, and shared experiences from online contacts. Opinion can be both positive and negative and can instantly influence the views of other customers.
Price comparison and research: Blogs, customer forums, and price comparison sites allow products to be easily compared side by side. Customers generally trust comparison sites more than brand-led marketing.
Social engagement: Interaction between customers and brands on websites and social media platforms at any point in the customer journey — before a purchase or long after one. This can happen at any time, so there is no timeline or correct time this happens.
Brand conversations: Deep engagement directly with other fans of specific brands — often in communities facilitated by the brand. The Harley Owners Group is a good example.
The purchase is the beginning, not the end: A focus on post-purchase experience can strongly influence loyalty and repeat purchases — this is where your efforts begin. You can’t relax because you got the sale today.
Impulse: Ads and offers can be personalized for a single customer, brands can create flash sales that last just for an hour, and online trends can all trigger impulse purchases.
Modern customer journey considerations In this circular customer journey model, there are some specific considerations that must be applied when modeling the buyer personas :
Awareness is influenced by friends’ recommendations, viral content, or third-party endorsements.
Consideration often involves iterative research, feedback loops, and social validation.
Purchase decisions can be fast-tracked or delayed by immediate reviews or emerging doubts.
Advocacy from loyal customers feeds back into awareness, restarting the cycle.
After you build out your buyer persons, testing them is a great way for your business to think carefully about how to reach a specific target audience. But bear in mind that the modern customer journey is more complicated to influence because many reviews and comments are published by one customer and consumed by another.
Brands need to adapt so they are present and in the same community as their customers. They must also be consistent and transparent across all touchpoints, creating seamless, personalized, and memorable interactions throughout this circular journey.
For more information on social selling strategies and building buyer personas, please click here .
