One of the defining features of inbound marketing is that businesses can use automated workflows to help guide the buyer’s journey. Before exploring how this happens, let’s first shine a spotlight on the buyer’s journey, since it’s a relatively recent concept.
Understanding the Buyer's Journey
The buyer journey (a.k.a. customer journey) is an evolution of the traditional sales funnel. Essentially, the buyer's journey is used to nurture leads. Instead of targeting customers based on their position in the funnel (i.e. top, middle, bottom), the buyer’s journey aims to usher customers “forward” through three phases of an integrated process: awareness, consideration and decision.
In this respect, the buyer’s journey puts customers in a position to purchase, whereas the sales funnel is about trying to “make a sale”. Since customers far and away prefer the former, and are often repelled by the latter (think of the stereotypical – yet often accurate – car dealership sales experience), the buyer’s journey is a far more effective concept that leads to more sales AND happier customers (i.e. more loyalty, more referrals, less buyer’s remorse, etc.).
How Automated Workflows Influence the Buyer’s Journey
With the above in mind, we can shift over to automated workflows, and look at 4 specific ways they help guide the buyer’s journey:
- Customers can be automatically segmented based on where they are on the buyer’s journey. This is far more effective than treating all your customers the same way.
- Customers can be automatically ushered and nudged into taking desired actions – such as downloading an eBook or watching a webinar – which, in turn, provides business with valuable information on their intentions and mindset (i.e. customers can be “gated”).
- Customers can be provided with desired content automatically (i.e. there is no need to manually email an eBook or other product/asset).
- Content and messaging can be automatically refined or/or personalized based on information collected through the gating process (through the use of elements like tokens, smart content, etc.).
At the same time, while not exactly a workflow as such, businesses can automate analytics and tracking, so they can clearly see what content is working for which customer group/groups. This is valuable intelligence can be applied to current campaigns in order to optimize results and shape future campaigns.
Pulling it All Together for Customer Success
The best and simplest way to take advantage of automated workflows, and use to them to usher customers forward through the buyer’s journey, is through a comprehensive inbound marketing platform with marketing automation such as HubSpot. Leap Clixx is a certified Gold HubSpot partner, and we use it for all of our clients, as well as for our own purposes -- and the results are outstanding.
Learn More
To learn more about automated workflows, the buyer’s journey, or any other aspect of inbound marketing contact us today. Your consultation with us is always free.
Topics: Inbound Marketing
