A while back, I wrote a blog post about the Buyer’s Journey and how you can use it to build a dedicated following of customers.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Over a few blog posts, starting with this one, I’m going to take these concepts out and arrange them neatly on a shelf so you can see how they all work together.
I’m starting with the early buyer’s journey stages because most people don’t think about those. They’re all excited to get to the part where the buyer knows who they are and what they offer. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.
In reality, we all start at the beginning of every journey, with a single step.
A Quick Reminder of The Hero’s Journey
If you’re a fan of Star Wars or The Matrix, you already know this story.
Our hero is living an average life, doing the things they do, until something happens to expose them to a greater problem in the world, which calls them to action of some sort.
Luke is a moisture farmer who meets R2D2 and C3P0, then encounters Ben Kenobi.
He joins Ben on his quest to deliver the droids to the Rebel Alliance after his aunt and uncle are murdered by stormtroopers, freeing him from family responsibilities.
Neo is an average guy, searching for the answer to the question, “Who is Morpheus?” He meets Morpheus and his crew, then chooses to take the red pill and discovers life isn’t what he thought.
Our hero goes through several tests as they travel along their path. This leads to a face-to-face encounter with their ultimate ordeal, which changes our hero forever.
Along with this ordeal comes a treasure of some sort, either physical or spiritual. As the hero travels back to the “ordinary world,” they bring this treasure with them to share with their community.
The Hero’s Journey story appears in every culture on the planet in one form or another. The phrase was coined by anthropologist and author, Joseph Campbell, famous for his book, “Hero with a Thousand Faces,” among other books, stories and theories.
I blew through this quickly because there’s a lot of research out there about The Hero’s Journey and I covered it in my original blog post.
A Quick Reminder of The Buyer’s Journey
Since I’m doing recaps, I should cover the buyer’s journey as well.
The reason The Hero’s Journey resonates so strongly with all of us is, it’s a story in which we can see ourselves as the hero.
We’ve all been through this struggle in our lives. Most of us, more than once.
We all understand that to truly move forward with our lives, we must make difficult choices, struggle to achieve, overcome the ordeal, and emerge victorious.
This can be anything from leading your Little League team to victory against your team’s greatest rival, to scoring higher than you ever expected on a major test, to graduating at the top of your class and getting the job you always wanted.
We go through this cycle over and over in our lives.
It turns out, we go through this every time we look for a solution to a problem in our lives.
That’s when we start going through the buyer’s journey stages. Each of those stages brings us to a different sort of victory, finding a product or service that solves our problem and brings us peace, comfort, and security. (There are a lot of other emotions wrapped up in this solution. I’ll cover them as we go through the cycle.)
Fortunately, we all start our journey in the same place.
The Buyer’s Journey Stage 1: Unaware
We all start this buyer’s journey stage in a state of blissful ignorance. We’re totally unaware that we have a problem, much less that we need to solve said problem.
We’re living our normal, everyday lives and we haven’t received that call to adventure yet.
I think it is a failing of marketers everywhere that we don’t take this into account.
We all assume that, if a person finds us, they’re looking for a solution to their problem. Or, perhaps they know they have a problem, but it’s not a big enough itch to scratch yet.
Eugene Schwartz, famous ad man and renown copywriter listed the 5 stages of awareness in his 1966 book, Breakthrough Advertising. He wanted to show how easy it was to convince a potential customer that your product or service is the solution to their problems, based on their stage of awareness.
Unaware is stage 5 in Gene’s system and it’s the hardest phase of all.
Why?
Because you have to educate your potential customer about the problem they have, as well as how your product or service can solve that problem.
Imagine trying to convince someone who lives in a place where it rains all day, every day, that their house might catch on fire.
This idea is ludicrous to them. All they see is rain. Water not only puts a fire out, having too much of it can prevent a fire from starting in the first place. If everything is water-logged, how would a fire start?
Yet we know there is always the potential for a fire, especially inside where it’s warm and dry.
Your job, as a business-owner and marketer at this buyer’s journey stage, is to start the process of educating your potential customer.
This is not a time for crazy scare tactics and speaking as though your potential customer knows who you are, what you offer and how you can solve their problem.
Instead, this is where you introduce the actual problem and how it can affect your potential customer.
The Buyer’s Journey Stage 2: Attraction
This is where the hero hears that call to adventure.
They become aware that there is a problem that affects them and they need to do something about it.
Eugene Schwartz calls this stage “Problem Aware,” meaning your potential customer is aware they have a problem, but they don’t know who you are. They have no idea that you have a solution to their problem.
This is the buyer’s journey stage where people start searching for information. Ideally, it’s also where they find you and start to realize you may have a solution that will help them.
At this point in the buyer’s journey, your potential customer is likely to resist.
They may not feel like their problem is severe enough that they need to solve it right now. They may still be in denial about their problem, because they don’t see themselves represented in the information you’re presenting.
Your job at this stage is to guide your potential customer toward the information they need to see themselves reflected in the story you’re telling.
For both of these buyer’s journey stages, you do this with content that is designed to attract your ideal customer’s attention, including:
- Blog posts (like this one).
- Information pieces or “advertorials” that present objective information about the problem and potential solutions (including yours).
- “Get to know you” pieces that show who you are, what you do and what you stand for.
However, you choose to present this information, you need to keep it related to your ultimate goals. If you lure someone in with a click-bait style headline, then talk about something totally unrelated, you set yourself up as untrustworthy and risk losing potential customers.
Moving Your Customer Toward Conversion
Your goal in putting this content out into the world is to attract your potential customers and guide them through the buyer’s journey stages toward giving their email address in exchange for information that will help them understand their problem and see how to solve it.
For some people, this will be a slow process. It may take weeks or months for them to join your list. For others, it will happen with just a few contact points.
Keep the tone and feel of your information accessible to everyone. Acknowledge that your readers are taking the first steps on their journey and don’t assume they know everything you know. Link to other blog posts or articles (yours and others) that will help your readers understand what you’re talking about.
Most of all, welcome your readers into your Tribe. They may not join right away, but they’ll get there eventually.
When they are ready, you want to make sure you have an appealing piece of information that will convince them to join your email list.
I’ll talk more about that next week.
Meanwhile, if you’re stumped on what to write for content, whether it’s blog posts or emails, I recommend using my list of 30 Subject Lines to Get Your Subscribers Opening and Reading Every Email for inspiration. Click on the button below to get your copy now.