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Sales are essential for any business, but the constant pressure on sales teams to find new customers and sell more products fails to recognize an even greater revenue driver. While acquiring new customers, increasing sales, and upselling are important, believing that these are the sole avenues for revenue growth is misguided. This mentality can be observed in both startups and large corporations. So, why is this narrow focus on acquiring new customers a concern, and what can be done to change this thinking?
Most entrepreneurs recognize that their business must seek to solve a problem or fill a void in their markets. Through launch and funding rounds, as founders prepare and present their pitch decks outlining their paths to revenue, detailed emphasis is placed on building a customer base and continuing to grow that base. However, not enough time is spent on the journey their potential customers will take between the first measure of awareness and making a purchase.
Related: 8 Ways You’re Destroying Your Personal Brand Without Even Knowing It
How your brand is failing your customers
A customer’s journey with a brand begins with the first brand awareness, considering purchasing from that brand, the actual purchase and then moving into loyalty and advocacy of that brand. Building a customer journey map and having a strong understanding of the most fundamental touchpoints in a customer’s journey is vital. Without this, too many missed opportunities will impact sales and customer loyalty over time.
The most fundamental touchpoints in mapping the customer journey, including understanding why customers are buying, their negative experiences and how positive experiences can turn customers into advocates, are some of the most valuable insights a business must research and implement.
Without an actual customer journey strategy adequately developed and implemented, it is just a matter of time before failure within the brand will occur. What does this failure start to look like?
Below are eight common signs of customer journey failure:
1. A brand without an actual strategy for awareness
A straightforward way to tell if your company has no strategy for awareness is if it’s too dependent on its sales team without first building an awareness campaign and key messaging strategy. All the pressure to create a customer base is placed on sales without the apparatus to build awareness efforts continuously.
2. Awareness is not built around the right messaging
Your customer’s problems, needs and/or demands are not being met. No or few efforts are placed around the problems solved, solutions offered or experiences that make a difference. Instead, messaging is all about product features and benefits.
3. The reason to purchase your product is not compelling enough
Moving from awareness to consideration, there is not enough of a compelling reason to continue to purchase. Two versions of this can occur: either no purchase is made at all, or a single purchase is made, and no value is defined in the purchase process to continue driving continued purchases. Additionally, there may not be any supporting messaging to push for continued purchases.
4. The path to purchase is too complex and has too many barriers
Unfortunately, complicated purchasing processes are too common. From too many layers, too many steps within those layers, confusion on delivery and end result, timelines, the list goes on. Without a clear, concise, and simplistic purchase experience, too much confusion can arise, reducing the value of the purchase.
5. The purchasing process underdelivers, underpromises, or does not align with messaging
The most significant sign of this is not meeting expectations, especially when expectations were set by brand messaging. If the process presents surprises, is inconsistent, or does not take feedback on the purchasing process seriously, this part of the process can derail the entire experience.
6. The brand has no clear incentive process to drive brand loyalty continuously
It is not enough just to drive repeated customer loyalty. If no campaign is created to consistently tell the loyalty stories, additional awareness will not be created. Further, keeping loyalty is in jeopardy without clear incentives.
7. Not having a thorough strategy review every quarter of brand advocacy
Too many businesses miss out on the benefits of a strategy review. Conducted correctly, a purposeful quarterly review will help determine market shifts and changes needed to build awareness, ensuring the other steps are seamless and build upon one another.
8. Direct the brand advocacy efforts to ensure it is being heard. Too often, advocacy messaging is missed and not presented consistently enough to make an impact.
By noticing customer journey failure early, brands can realign (or reassess) their customer journey strategy and ensure they are not failing themselves and their customer base. By working through an honest evaluation of the brand and competitive offerings in the market, a unique differentiator, compelling key messages, and a robust and consistent process of driving awareness to purchase and repurchase can be built and streamlined. With a continuous strategy review, customer journey success is maintained and scaled.
