#102 - Buyers Journey: Marketing Messaging That Drives Sales

Show Notes

Whether your business goal is to get more leads, build a sales funnel or increase conversions, content plays a crucial role in guiding people through the buyers’ journey. 
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In this episode, Nola Boea and Lori Vajda share tips and examples so you can match your messaging to your prospective buyer’s stage of awareness. From videos to images to blogs, content helps your prospective customers and leads learn about you as a brand, gather information about your products and services. It also helps you, as a business, position yourself as an expert in the marketplace.

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In This Episode You’ll Learn 

• Stage 4 (consideration) of the ‘Buyer’s Journey’, what it means for your marketing messaging.
• Using keywords that match how your ideal buyer searches online during this stage.
• Different tools for creating content that tips the sales in your favor.

Key points Lori and Nola are sharing in this episode:
(04:32:99) In the buyer’s journey, as a business owner, this is how you can view content at each stage, including examples. 
(08:28.24) What marketing messaging is critical to have on your business website for stage 4 in order to guide your ideal customer.
(11:50:19) An example of how prospective customers evaluate your business and move from stage 2 (Problem Aware) through to stage 5 (Most Aware) to purchase.
(14:58:69) Here are 7 ideas you can use to move your prospective buyer to the final stage.

Resources 

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Transcript

00:00:00] Lori: You're likely familiar with the saying, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. And while that makes sense when it applies to life, it's not the case when it comes to your prospective customers. Actually, both the journey and the destination are important. In fact, understanding your buyer's journey can help you get prospects into your sales funnel, converts leads into sales and create loyal customers. Miss the mark on any of those stages and you're likely to lose potential buyers. Stay tuned friends, because in this episode, we are focusing on one of the most important stages in the journey, the Product Aware Stage. Come learn what you need to know and how you can create the right kind of messaging to close more sales.

[00:00:46] Announcer: You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast, where time-strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business you love in as little as three hours a week.

[00:00:57] Nola: The Buyer's Journey is really about the steps a person takes when buying a product or service. We all go through the stages, regardless of how small or large our purchase. One way to think about these stages is to view them to the lens of experiences. The first three stages are considered the pre-purchase experience. From a sales perspective, each is critical in their own unique way, because each gets you one step closer to the final stage, which is bingo. making the purchase. Lori, you have a recent example you could share about our experience. Don't you?

[00:01:33] Lori: Yeah. You and I did a photo shoot together, which we worked with a wonderful photographer. But I want to explain how using our story works in each stage. And to get started just to reiterate Stage One is called the Unaware Stage. And as the name applies, your potential buyer is unaware. In our case, before we started to look for a photographer to do the photo shoot, we didn't even know that was a consideration. 

[00:02:04] Nola: It was not even a possibility, because we were not in the same city. 

[00:02:08] Lori: Absolutely. So we would fall under the Stage One. From a marketing perspective as a business owner, don't try to create content for a potential buyer who's unaware that they could benefit from your services. It's a waste of time. And it's this reason that we want to highlight that at every stage in the journey, there are two goals happening. One is the prospective buyer and two is the business owner. If at any stage, one of those goals is not pertinent or not paying attention, it's not worth your time. So from a Stage One, your prospective buyer has no goal. Only you as a business owner have a goal, which is why you don't want to waste your time trying to convince somebody they could benefit from you when they're not even interested.

 And now in Stage Two, the only reason that we were in the Problem Aware Stage is because you were coming to Austin for a few days, and we saw this as an opportunity. You and I don't have any photos of the two of us together. As a matter of fact, when we started our podcast, we were in two separate cities, but also, it was at the start of COVID. So we created a whole podcast around DIY photo shoots and that's what you and I did. And that's what sits on our website. So as Stage Two, I now needed to find a photographer and I had no background in meeting anybody because again, it was COVID and I hadn't been out networking or any of those things. So we needed a photographer and we weren't even clear yet what type of photographs we would want. Did we want headshots? Did we want lifestyle photos, which is what you and I often talk about? Did we want something that was called a branding photo shoot?

[00:04:04] Nola: It's so true. We didn't really know what was out there. I mean, up to that point, the only photos we had together were Zoom screenshots, right?

[00:04:11] Lori: Exactly. Oh, yeah. When I started the search, Nola, we were two weeks out and you were only going to be here for two days and one of those days was not available. So we had one day and two-weeks’ notice to find somebody. We had a lot to do in a short period of time.

[00:04:31] Nola: That is so true. Now, as we move forward in describing this Stage Two, where we're deciding, okay, we need, we need a photographer, just keep in mind as we go through this. You're looking at it as prospective buyers and prospective business owners. Now as prospective buyers, our goal was to become aware of what services were out there. And like you said, in a short period of time and in our area and available. While, as a business owner, the goal of the photographer is to drive awareness that they're there, they're available. And providing information that lets prospective buyers know what kind of photography they provide. And so from a marketing standpoint, here was an opportunity for them to let their website visitors like us see their work in the form of a really professionally made portfolio online and have a opportunity to evaluate their services.

[00:05:27] Lori: Absolutely. So in Stage Two, because you're only Problem Aware, I was doing a Google search in the beginning. That looked for a lifestyle photographer. One website in particular, the photographer had curated their portfolio by headshots, lifestyle, family, and a section on branding. And I was curious at what the branding was about. So, um, they used their website very well to draw me in and to also give me some information that I just didn't have.

[00:06:01] Nola: Which is a great example of how to provide content in this stage, this stage Two of Problem Aware. Examples of content would be. In addition to the portfolio, which actually was very informative, there could be things like information in the blog posts. You might have a checklist that prospective buyers could use to help evaluate their needs. Just to learn more about. the whole experience of taking photographs. And in our case, one of the questions is, do we need lifestyle photographs like we were talking about, or do we need branding shots, and was one better than the other? And we looked to that content to give us that information.

[00:06:42] Lori: Exactly right. Organic keywords can really help your website be found by prospective buyers as they're doing their keyword search. So my initial keyword search was lifestyle photo shoots. Once I saw the branding on there, I then expanded my search by looking at photographers that did branding photo shoots some branded products, others branded products and services. In the case of the photographer, their product is their images. Their service is the photography that they take. 

So, as I said, doing that search online, that took us to Stage Three, which is Solution Aware. I had done enough research at that point to look for a photographer that did headshots and branding shots and lifestyle shots, or at least two of the three. Headshot and branding, headshots and lifestyle. And in one case, my search actually found a photographer that had a mobile van, Nola. In which He came to your house and he had decked out his van.

[00:07:53] Nola: It was so cool. He had this whole mobile studio. 

[00:07:57] Lori: Yeah, he could do headshots in it. He could do lifestyle images in it. And he could also work in the environment that he traveled to. So that could be outside or if he was at a business or a home, he could go inside their home. So, yeah, I put him as a last resort. His photographs were okay, but I thought, wow, he's got everything that we may need. Because I was specifically searching for photographers who could do photo shoots that included headshots, branding and lifestyle. Which now moved us into the next phase of the journey, which was Product Aware Stage or Consideration. So, because I knew what I was looking for in Stage Three, I was now able to evaluate who would be a photographer that we would want to work with. That meant comparing 12 photographers that we considered good enough to great and narrowing down our selection. We did this by sending out emails asking for specific information. And because we were on a limited timeline, it was easy to evaluate photographers simply based on who would be available to take photos on one particular day.

[00:09:15] Nola: Yes. Like you said, you emailed the photographers, but what the photographers didn't realize, was you had scoured their website, you had read their information. We had had conversations and evaluated the portfolios, and it's only in that contact, that email contact, that they know that all of that forethought really worked.

[00:09:39] Lori: that's exactly right.

[00:09:40] Nola: so, again, to look at this from both angles. In stage four now, as the prospective buyer, our goal was to become familiar with the products and services. Now we also needed to understand packages they had available and the difference between them. So we could compare and decide what we needed. And, as a business owner, the goal of the photographer was to help us be able to differentiate the features and the benefits of hiring them as opposed to anybody else. Their job was to provide content that would help us to see why their company should be the one that we chose. In our case, they did this in a few ways. One obviously was a user-friendly website. they were beautiful websites and they had to be because of the business they were in. They had portfolios that we felt were truly representative of the kind of work they did. And the final products of their work. One of our top choices offered an e-book on branding as an opt-in and you found that getting that information was worth trading your email for that e-book.

[00:10:50] Lori: As a matter of fact, Nola, that e-book was on branding, as in posing for professional photos. And what I found was once I got in there and signed up for that download that put me in her opt-in system. So now I get emails from her. the information she provides is very helpful, but it's again, from the client standpoint, right, from the customer standpoint.

[00:11:15] Nola: Which as a customer, helps us realize that, Hey, she gets where we're coming from. She's seeing how we want to position ourselves in branding. And we can assume that she has some expertise in this. And by providing that e-book to help us do personal branding or company branding better through poses and, and photography, she has elevated herself as an expert in that niche. So, yeah. Yeah. And notice that was only one photographer that did that, which really helped her differentiate herself, helped her stand out.

[00:11:48] Lori: Absolutely. So in stage three, we had 12, photographers that made the good enough to great. In stage four, we narrowed that down to five photographers that were going to be available on the one day that we had available. So from there, four of those photographers responded to my inquiry to talk to them. And of those four, one was not going to be available. Three were available. So that actually is what moved us into Stage Five, right? The Most Aware Stage. Here, your prospect is aware and now they're trying to make a decision about who's the right fit for them. As an entrepreneur, your potential customer is pretty much ready to make the decision and buy the package. So all they need is a little nudge from you and that's where that phone call or demo can really be important.

[00:12:50] Nola: Absolutely. I mean, in our case we had three, we could have easily picked any one of 'em and it was up to what they had to offer from that point on, that would help us make our mind up. 

So in this Stage Five, the Most Aware Stage as the prospective buyer, our goal was to feel a relevant connection to the photographer, as well as their products and services. We wanted to see how well did we resonate because they're going to have to bring out the best in us. Now as a business owner, the goal of the photographer was likewise to make that meaningful connection. And here was their opportunity to convince us that they were the ones to choose. That they had the best offering, the best quality and the best value, not necessarily price, but could give us the best value for what we were paying. And for us a big key in making that decision was getting a fast response to our email asking about their availability, and being willing to immediately schedule a time to talk about their approach and how they shoot and, how they work with us and to actually make that emotional, that personality connection. So we wanted to know what was included in their packaging and pricing. And we also wanted to know, Hmm. do we see ourselves working with this person? Ultimately of the three that you sent an email out to. Two responded right away, you had conversations right away. And actually, we did hear back from the third one, but it was right after we had just sealed the deal with one of those other two. And I'm pretty sure there's a lesson in that.

[00:14:34] Lori: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, all that was really left was to decide which photographer to go with. So hopefully friends, you can see the importance of both understanding the buyer's journey and what's important to them, as well as how you can inform those decisions as the business owner at every step of the way. 

So now we want to talk about what you can do to take your prospective buyer closer to that purchase. So in the Stage Four Product Aware or Consideration Stage, what we know is that based on research, at least 60%, probably more, of customers will want to get in touch with you. Many that will be via email. Some that might be, they just call your business. Your job is to make sure that you as the business owner or whoever's answering the phone, or if you have sales people that you can answer the following questions. So you want to think in your mind here is what somebody who calls me, here's what they're going to want to know.

[00:15:40] Nola: Mm.

[00:15:41] Lori: We've got four questions here. The first one, you want to be able to think, what type of solution is my ideal buyer searching for? Remember when I started the search, it was putting in lifestyle photography or lifestyle photo shoots. It was only when a photographer had curated branding from lifestyle that I included that in my search. So from a buyer's perspective, I'm looking for that information. If you offer that, you would want to be thinking about how do you explain to your buyer that you offer those different types of services? 

Question number two. How does your target client educate themselves on available solutions? Usually, you start with the closest keyword as a buyer you can think of. In my case, it was lifestyle photo, but later it included branding and it included headshots. So I was Googling to find out who offered that in an area that was close to where I lived.

Number three. Do you know the pros and cons of the alternatives available to them? Again, I didn't know what branding photos were about. And when I started looking for that, I realized that some photographers took photos of actual products like t-shirts and pens and that kind of stuff. And some did personal branding. So their photos looked different and they separated that out from lifestyle. But I also learned from looking at portfolios that some of those lifestyle photos really included branding photos. So as a business owner, if you know what your buyer is searching for, you can think about what is the benefit I need to educate them on for my business and my products and the services that I offer during a conversation, whether that's a conversation via email or a conversation during phone or video.

And the fourth question is, how does your customer decide what's the best option? Again, from a sales perspective, as a business owner, if you can address that in the conversation, it will help inform what makes you the better choice over your competition.

[00:18:06] Nola: Remember, you don't need to name the competition because they'll be aware of the competitor now instead.

[00:18:13] Lori: Absolutely. You know, in the two people that I talked to specifically, neither of them had mentioned their competition, but they definitely talked to me about their benefits and features of working with them, which highlighted what differentiated them over their competition.

[00:18:31] Nola: Yeah. And that's the way to do it, cuz you don't want to necessarily call attention to some competitor that somebody may not be aware of or even be considering. One of the challenges that a business owner struggles with is creating content that matches this stage. In part, because it feels like it's the right time to start promoting your business as the best solution, because you've got people already interested. They're obviously wanting to know more about you. So of course, you're going to start telling them all about you, right? Don't do that. 

Instead, you want to offer up content that will continue to help elevate your product or service in the mind of that buyer. It's not quite time. They are interested in you, but this is the time to offer conversation and content so that they can see how well you will be able to help them solve their problem. Your product or service should be among the options that you're explaining to the buyer. This gives you an opportunity to subtly position your company as the best solution. You also want the prospect to begin to get a feel for what it would be like to work with you. 

[00:19:36] Lori: So often when we think about content, the first thing that comes to our mind is a blog post or a website or an article. But really content encapsulates much broader 

[00:19:51] Nola: Channels 

[00:19:51] Lori: Channels, exactly, than those. And so I'm going to use again, our example. So initially content is in the form of an email. As a buyer. I reached out. As the business owner, they responded. So their email gave me some information, some provided links that I could go check out for specifics for what I was looking for. Some had in their email signature links to their portfolio, some had links to their website. Some didn't.

So you want to think about content from the written standpoint to include email. Some had very innovative, packages. So when I was looking at their packages, they showed the amount of images you could get, the time that the photographer would work with you, what types of shots were included. That's another form of content. One particular, photographer used her photos, in her portfolio, in her blog post to help the reader understand what her client was looking for. But at the same time, that led me to understand how she works. Very creative way of developing content. You had mentioned earlier, the e-book on branding that somebody had provided. Customer testimonials are a good form of content.

And you also want to think about the scripts that you need, whether you are, answering a phone call, it helps to script what that conversation is so that you, as a business owner can provide the information that the prospective buyer may be missing. In this case, one of the photographers said that they had a studio and they could set up a branding shot inside their studio, but they could also do outside shots. Or location shots. One of the photographers said that they could come to us. They could do branding shots, both in our environment or in our place of work, as well as outside. So that was a good example of them being able to address things that were important to us that I didn't even know I needed, but they did that because they were able to answer the questions I provided up above. 

[00:22:09] Nola: Remember your goal is to move people through the Buyer's Journey, into the final decision stage. But it's important to make sure that they're actually a good fit for you too. And this Product Aware or consideration stage, this is actually the best time to find out if they are a good fit. As they are evaluating you, you can evaluate them. Cuz not everyone who gets this far will actually be the right fit for you or your business. Or will benefit from the product or service you sell as you would want them to. And so it's okay to say no to a potential customer. And one other thing, ideally, every person would move through this Buyer's Journey. Exactly the way we described it above in a straight line. And that happened to us only because we had a very short timeframe. We didn't have a whole lot of wiggle room, but the reality is it is rarely so neat and tidy. More often than not, people will move through this journey in a non-linear fashion. Most buyers will jump around. They'll skip a stage. Sometimes they'll even go backwards and sometimes they'll get all the way to the decision stage only to decide that this is just not the right time, which also means they may start the whole buying process over again. So don't get discouraged. Your job is to plan for as many potential outcomes as possible. And the best way to do that is to create a content strategy that covers all of the stages of the Buyer's Journey. 

[00:23:45] Lori: Which is why, listeners, be sure to come back for Stage Five, the Decision Stage, where we are going to use our own example of how we decided the photographer that we chose, where we hope to help you offer up some unique ideas for tipping the purchase scales in your favor.

In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope it makes all the difference in you getting started on your business so you can create your best and most exciting life. If you found the information shared here today helpful, let us know by posting here, where you're listening, or on our Facebook page.

[00:24:24] Nola: Not sure how to turn your idea into a profitable side business? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact. We'd be happy to help you.

[00:24:33] Lori: Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode. And remember actions create results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day. Small steps, big effects. 

 [OUT-TAKE]

[00:24:54] Nola: …but also, how, what it would be like to work with you without being overtly salesy.
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[00:25:00] Lori: It was a long two sentences