The Difference Between Buyer Journey vs. Customer Journey

March 18, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

You’ve probably heard a lot about consumer lifecycles and the different terms used to describe said lifecycles, such as buyer journey and sales funnel. They can be a little overwhelming and a little confusing. You might even wonder why some terms seem to describe the same thing, such as buyer journey and customer journey. Don’t be fooled–the buyer journey is very different from the customer journey and it’s important that you know what the difference is. The following is a breakdown of the buyer journey vs. the customer journey.

The Buyer Journey

As we’ve previously discussed, the buyer journey makes up the stages that a consumer goes through up to their decision to purchase a specific product or service from a specific company. This includes the awareness stage, during which they realize that they have a problem; the consideration stage, during which they identify the solution to their problem; and the decision stage, during which they decide what product or service is the best solution to their problem.

The Customer Journey

During the buyer journey, the consumer doesn’t become a customer until the end of the very last stage (the decision stage). However, your relationship with your customers doesn’t end the moment they’ve made a purchase. The real success of a business depends on return customers, after all. This is where the customer journey comes into play.

During the customer journey, you should focus on further developing relationships with your customers through regular engagement. Building relationships will help to increase trust in your brand, which, in turn, will improve customer retention.

[Read about how to use the buyer’s journey to create great content]

But getting customers to purchase your products and services again isn’t the only goal. You’ll want to establish customer loyalty, which means that they will only buy those products and services from you–and, eventually, will turn to your company for whatever needs you can offer solutions to.

Nurturing Customers into Brand Ambassadors

Once you’ve managed to build that loyalty, you’ll be able to nurture that customer into a brand ambassador. Consumers tend to trust other consumers much more easily than they trust companies, which is why brand ambassadors offer so much value. Keeping all of this in mind, the following are a few tips to help you nurture your customers through their customer journeys:

Initiate engagement following purchases – It’s important that you initiate contact with customers as soon as possible following a purchase. Many businesses use automation to send emails thanking customers for their purchase and even recommending similar products (in an attempt to cross-sell or upsell).
Send them relevant content – Continue nurturing your customers by sending them emails with content that is relevant to their engagement history (including their purchases and website behavior). The content you send should be informative and should help improve their brand experience. For example, tips on how to use the product that they purchased or general content relevant to their purchase.
Request and listen to feedback – Send your customers surveys or request that they leave reviews. Listen to what they have to say. Customer feedback is valuable to improving your business and can help you improve your relationship with your customers as well.
Reward referrals – You can encourage your customers to become brand ambassadors by implementing a referral program. For example, you can offer a discount for every customer that they refer to you.

The difference between the buyer journey and the customer journey is that the buyer journey leads up to the purchase whereas the customer journey continues following the purchase. It’s important that you have strategies in place to accommodate consumers during both journeys to help ensure the success of your business.

A Guide to the Decision Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

March 13, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

After helping consumers learn about their problem and how they can solve it, you will want to present your product or service as the best option for that specific solution. It’s at this point that consumers are in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the last stage, the stage in which you close the sale. However, there’s still work to be done. Although the consumer has decided on a solution by this stage, they have yet to decide on a product or service or the vendor that they will purchase from.

During the decision stage, they will be doing research into the products and services that they are considering as a solution to their pain point. They will also research vendors that provide those products and services to determine if they are trustworthy. For example, if the consumer has decided to purchase a new computer, they may be looking to answer the following:

The pros and cons of different brand computers
The type of warranties offered by different computer vendors
The expected lifespan of different computer models
The different features of different computer models
Customer reviews of different computer vendors

Creating Content For The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You’ve done a massive amount of work to help nurture your leads through the first two stages of the buyer’s journey. You’ve done so by publishing a variety of different types of content addressing the awareness and consideration stages. At this point, you’re trying to get your leads over the finish line. This is why you need to have content that presents your brand as a trustworthy and reliable vendor and your product or service as the best option for their specific needs.

How do you drive website conversions throughout the buyer’s journey? Find out by clicking here.

While this means that some of the content you’ll want to have available on various channels (from your website to social media to your emails) will need to be promotional, you can still provide more informative content as well. Types of content you’ll want to offer during this stage include downloadable white papers, case studies, use cases, which show off the benefits of your products or services. You’ll also want detailed product or service videos that include video demonstrations if possible.

Also, you will want to showcase exactly why they should choose to purchase from your business. This should be done by publishing customer reviews on your website and by encouraging reviews on social. You should consider creating customer testimonials as well–video testimonials tend to be extremely effective during this stage.

Creating Reasons to Choose Your Company

Last, but not least, give consumers a reason to choose your product or service over another brand. You can do so by offering a free trial of your product or service or a free consultation. This way they will get in touch with you. Services like Netflix and Amazon offer free 30-day trials. People jump on the chance to take advantage of such services for free and often end up purchasing the service in full at the end of their trial as a result.

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the third and last stage. You’ll want to encourage consumers to choose your company’s product or service by not only promoting your products and services, but also by informing the consumer about your products and services as well as about your company. The goal is to convince them that they can trust your brand. It’s also to show them that your product or service will meet their specific needs more so than any other option out there.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

What is The Buyer’s Journey?

March 4, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

The general goal of every business is to attract consumers and turn them into customers. The process that a consumer goes through before they make a purchase is known as the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey has become a lot more complex over the years, especially since the advent of Internet. This is because consumers no longer rely on businesses to hold their hands and to guide them through their buyer’s journey. As a result of digital media, consumers can now navigate much of their buyer’s journey on their own. This also means that everyone’s buyer’s journey is different.

As a business, you will need to meet the needs of the consumer as they move through their buyer’s journey. You’ll need to be able to do this at every stage of their journey in a passive manner until they are ready to be engaged. This may seem like a challenge, but it’s what the entire concept of inbound marketing is built around.

We will be going over the different stages of the buyer’s journey, but before we do, it’s important to understand exactly what the buyer’s journey is and why it’s so important.

What is the Buyer’s Journey?

The buyer’s journey is the process a consumer goes through to research a product and to come to a decision to make a purchase. The buyer’s journey typically begins when a consumer realizes that they have a problem but don’t know what the solution to that problem is. For example, maybe they’ve stained their white carpeting with wine. They don’t know what the best solution is for getting wine stains out of their carpeting, so they will begin doing research online.

This research usually begins with a simple search on Google or other search engines. They will read up on possible solutions through articles and blog posts or view videos on the subject. Through this research, they will learn what products can help solve their problem. They will read up on the different products offered by different brands. The buyer will look into those brands to determine how reputable they are based on a variety of factors. They may contact that brand directly, download a free offer, or sign up to an email list through the course of their research.

The Buyers Journey Explained Stage By Stage

At this point, you would begin building a relationship with them by nurturing them through the sales funnel. At the end of the sales funnel, once they’ve reached the end of the buyer’s journey, they will make their decision and choose a product to buy. This process is split into three main stages:

Awareness stage – During this stage, the buyer realizes that they have a problem. They will begin doing research to figure out exactly what their problem is and what the cause of their problem is.
Consideration stage – At this point, the buyer has defined their problem and its cause and are doing research into the possible solutions to their problem.
Decision stage – The buyer now knows what the solution to their problem is and are comparing products or services as well as different companies to identify the best solution.

The Importance of the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey may seem long, but the fact is, you’re meeting them halfway through it. The idea of inbound marketing is that you make available a wealth of valuable information (through different forms of content) allowing the consumer to do the majority of their initial research on their own.

However, this means that it’s extremely important that you understand every stage of the buyer’s journey. This is because you’ll want to make sure that you have content available that will be helpful and informative to the consumer no matter what stage of the buyer’s journey they’re in or what channel they’re on. You will also need to be able to identify the stage of the buyer’s journey a consumer happens to be in so that you know when to engage with them.

The buyer’s journey consists of numerous stages that make up the research and decision-making process of a consumer. It is the process that the entire strategy of inbound marketing revolves around, which is why it’s so important that you understand what it is and why it’s important.

Stevens & Tate to Speak at Leading Age 2019 Annual Meeting & Expo

March 1, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Events, Speaking Events /by Stevens & Tate

Steven & Tate President, Dan Gartlan and Internet Director, Nicole Wagner are set to speak at this year’s Leading Age 2019 Annual Meeting & Expo. Both Dan and Nicole will share their Marketing expertise that senior living and aging care professionals can use to enhance their organization’s success.

The sessions will take place as follows:

“Four Actionable Strategies to Improve Marketing Results”

By Dan Gartlan on Tuesday, April 2nd (4:00-5:00PM)

Learn how to define your Marketing objectives in attainable terms so that you can achieve your sales and occupancy goals. Additionally, gain an understanding of the fundamentals of four interconnected Marketing strategies so that you can tell your brand story in a way that emotionally connects with prospects. Finally, recognize the positive impact of measuring activities, progress, and future indicators to drive success for your entire inbound marketing program.

“Congratulations! You’ve Launched a Website-Now What?”

By Nicole Wagner on Wednesday, April 3rd (2:45-3:45PM)

Understand how to improve and evolve the brand messaging and user-friendliness of your website, and discover how to keep increasing your website’s exposure so that you can regularly attract high quality prospects. Also, learn how to continually track and evaluate conversion points throughout your website to ensure they are working effectively in turning visitors into leads.

By Nicole Wagner on Thursday, April 4th ( 8:00-9:30AM)

Know how to use online content to draw visitors to your website and convert them into qualified sales leads, as well as explore ways to use social media to strengthen your brand in the eyes of prospects. Furthermore, consider an effective engagement strategy to nurture your prospects through the buying journey up to their decision-making point.

Event Information

When: April 2 through April 4th, 2019

Where: Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center, Schaumburg, Il.

Click here to register!

Learn more about Stevens & Tate’s speaking services.

What’s Trending in Marketing For March 2019

February 28, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Trending /by Nicole Wagner

Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day.The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

The 5 Best Ads of the 2019 Super Bowl

Bud Light, Burger King, HBO, Amazon and Hulu commercials kept things the most interesting during this year’s SuperBowl. These brand’s video ads were the ones to get the most laughs and positive reactions from viewers at home. Watch the commercials and read more about the success of these commercials at AdWeek.

Google to close Google+ after 7 years

Google recently announced it will be closing down the consumer version of Google+ in April, disclosing a privacy bug. Google said “the consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement,” adding that “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.” Get more information about this at Search Engine Land.

Amazon Introduces ‘Amazon Moments’, a New Way to Deliver Loyalty Programs

Amazon has just launched Amazon Moments, a cross-platform solution that allows marketers to create cost-per-action (CPA) loyalty campaigns that can be made available off of a brand’s website or app. Delivered as an API, this platform lets marketers create campaigns aimed at driving a specific action and, based on the user completing the action, delivers customer rewards in the form of digital and physical products available on Amazon. Marketing Land goes in to greater detail concerning what the new loyalty program entails.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Learn About Using HubSpot Lead Flows to Improve Conversion Rates

A strategically placed pop-up can actually make it easier to convert your leads. In fact, a recent study showed that pop-ups convert 1,375 percent better than traditional opt-in forms. If you do decide to use pop-ups in an attempt to convert leads, then you should be sure to use HubSpots’s Lead Flow feature.

Check Out the Importance of Implementing Marketing Dashboards

At this point in time, most businesses realize how important data is and how analyzing the data that they collect can provide valuable insight into the performance of their marketing tactics as well as into how their audience behaves. The challenge lies in making those metrics easy to access and easy to read for everyone in your company so that everyone can act on them appropriately. Fortunately, tracking data is easier than ever with the use of dashboards.

Read About a Guide to the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

When it comes to addressing the buyer’s journey, making sure that you have content available that addresses the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey is vital if you expect to draw in potential customers. If you try to skip this stage, you will end up losing a substantial number of potential leads. These leads are still looking for basic information and aren’t ready to make a purchase yet during the awareness stage.

Does Direct Marketing Have A Role In Inbound Marketing?

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Visual and Voice Search Are Revitalizing The Role of SEO

The component parts of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy may have remained consistent for the past couple decades, but their definition and purpose have changed entirely. Driven by trends like visual search and voice search, the industry’s scope has expanded and evolved into something more dynamic. This delivers on a genuine consumer need. According to a report from Slyce.it, 74 percent of shoppers report that text-only search is insufficient for finding the products they want. Read more about visual and voice search at Search Engine Land.

Nielsen buys Sorensen Media, boosting Addressable TV

Recently, Nielsen announced that it will acquire Sorensen Media as a a means of providing an all-encompassing addressable TV ad delivery solution. Addressable TV advertising allows marketers to “address” specific consumers with customized advertising messages. By the year 2023, it is estimated that nearly 250 million Smart TVs with addressable capabilities are expected in the market. As read in Marketing Land, Nielsen plans to combine Sorensen Media’s addressable TV platform with its Gracenote automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to “help deliver on the promise of addressable TV advertising.”

Digital ad spending to top traditional for first time

Digital ad spending in the U.S. will exceed traditional ad spending in 2019, according to a recent forecast. Much of that share will come from Google and Facebook, with Amazon gaining speed from behind. The report predicts that digital ad spending will make up more than two-thirds of total U.S. media spending by 2023. Find out more about the growth of digital ad spending at Marketing Land.

What marketers should know about Hulu’s new ‘pause’ ads

A few weeks ago, media platform Hulu unveiled a new “non-intrusive, viewer-initiated” ad type that is displayed when viewers pause the show they’re watching. Hulu is currently testing the ad with Coca-Cola and Charmin, and expects to make it generally available for select content by next quarter. Read more about “pause” ads at Marketing Land.

Stevens & Tate Named By Top Digital Agency As One Of Year’s Best Agencies

February 25, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Press Releases, Public Relations /by Stevens & Tate

We had a fantastic year in 2018 and we’re off to a great start this year, especially since receiving increased recognition for our success as a digital agency. In fact, we are incredibly proud to announce that we’ve been chosen by Top Digital Agency for their 2018’s Excellence in Branding, Agency of the Year list!

About Top Digital Agency

Top Digital Agency is an online platform that’s dedicated to connecting companies from around the world with top quality digital marketing agencies. With their help, the search between companies and marketing agencies to find one another is made easy, in addition to forming successful partnerships worldwide. Every year, Top Digital Agency releases a list of digital agencies who have not only excelled on their platform and shown exceptional capabilities, but have also proven to be on the cutting edge of their industries and markets. We are honored to earn their recognition and will continue to strive towards being the best digital agency that we can be, with the goal of making their list again in 2020!

Choosing Stevens & Tate As Your Digital Marketing Agency

When working with a digital agency, you’ll want to choose one that you can trust and depend on. We don’t just see ourselves as a marketing service, and we do not believe in a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, we focus on building long-term relationships with our clients. We emphasize the importance of clear, respectful communication and understand that every company has different needs. You can expect for us to go to great lengths to tailor your marketing strategy based on the specific needs of your business, while also staying up to date on all of the latest marketing trends and techniques.

It’s our dedication to working closely with every one of our clients that has earned us such a positive reputation throughout the industry, and it’s why we earn recognition from such highly-regarded sources like Top Digital Agency. In fact, that’s not the only recognition we’ve earned this year. We also earned a third award from Clutch, a platform that collects feedback and reviews directly from clients.

We are very excited to be named on Top Digital Agency’s annual list of agencies for the year and can’t thank you, our clients, enough. Our reputation is the result of the successful collaboration with our clients, and we want to thank you for taking the time to leave feedback about our services. 2019 has been incredibly kind to us so far, and we can’t wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for us and our clients!

A Brief Guide to Sales Lead Generation

February 22, 2019/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

While your ultimate goal, when it comes to marketing online, is to increase sales both in the short term and over the long term, increasing sales won’t be possible unless you generate leads. As such, the success of your inbound marketing efforts are going to revolve around your ability to generate new sales leads. Without new leads, you can’t obtain new customers, which means the growth of your business will be severely stunted. Keeping that in mind, the following is a brief guide to using inbound marketing to improve sales lead generation.

What Is Sales Lead Generation?

A lead is basically a consumer (or company if you’re a B2B business) that shows some level of interest in the products or services that you offer. Engaging with a lead tends to be more productive than engaging with someone who isn’t a lead (for example, cold calling people from a list you’ve obtained or trying to hand out pamphlets to people about your product on the street).

Because you have a better chance at closing a sale when engaging with a lead, you’ll want to generate as many leads as possible. To do this, you will need to attract potential leads to your brand, whether it’s to your website or to your social media page, and find a way to convert them. This is done by giving them a reason to be interested in not just your products and services, but also your brand in general, and by encouraging them through calls-to-action to sign up to your email, give you a call, or fill out a form (to name a few examples).

Once you’ve captured your leads, you can nurture them through the sales funnel, eventually turning those leads into customers (and hopefully, loyal customers).

Ways To Generate New Sales Leads

The following are a few inbound tactics you’ll want to implement in order to generate new leads:

1. Create blog content

Setting up a blog and regularly publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to your brand is an excellent way to generate new leads for a number of reasons. The following are just a few ways that content can help generate leads:

Relevant calls-to-action can help capture leads who are reading your blog content.

Quality blog content builds brand authority, which increases the amount of trust the public has in you. This means that leads will be less hesitant to provide you with their personal information when filling out forms.

Quality blog content is more likely to be shared by your leads on social media, providing it with more exposure to more potential leads.

Properly optimized blog content can help bring more leads via organic traffic from search engines.

Similar Article: How to Have a Successful Blog

2. Run PPC ads

PPC (pay per click) ads can be incredibly effective for attracting highly motivated leads. Many businesses use PPC ads on search engines like Google and Bing to find leads who are already in the advanced stages of their buyer’s journey and are looking for specific solutions to their needs or problems. PPC ads can help attract these leads and drive them to your website.

3. Offer free trials

Consumers who are looking for potential solutions to their problems or needs will be attracted to the opportunity of signing up for a free trial, especially if they are under no obligation to buy. It’s an excellent way to draw leads who aren’t quite sure what product or service they want to go with (in terms of brand) or even whether it will fulfill their specific need.

4. Engage on social media

Engaging on social media by taking part in community discussions or posting comments on relevant topics can help you attract leads. You can ev

en post contests that are relevant to your brand that require users to follow you in order to participate. Your followers are leads that you can continue to nurture through social media engagement and that you can drive towards your website via content and other offers.

5. Implement a referral program

An undervalued method for sales lead generation is by getting current customers to do it for you. You could implement a referral program that rewards customers for referring leads to your brand with discounts or other similar rewards.

As important as sales lead generation is, it’s not always about generating as many leads as possible. Yes, the more quality leads you generate, the better, but not all leads are of high quality. For example, you can technically buy leads. The problem with this is that the leads you’re purchasing may not even be familiar with your brand, which means that they may not even have the problem or need that your solution is attempting to address. Focus on generating your leads organically and you’ll create a much better chance at converting them.

The Importance of Implementing a Marketing Dashboard

February 20, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

At this point in time, most businesses realize how important data is and how analyzing the data that they collect can provide valuable insight into the performance of their marketing tactics as well as into how their audience behaves. The challenge lies in making those metrics easy to access and easy to read for everyone in your company so that everyone can act on them appropriately. Fortunately, tracking data is easier than ever with the use of dashboards.

What Are Dashboards?

Dashboards are apps or platforms that collect all of your KPIs (key performance indicators) and critical metrics onto one easy-to-read display. The information is pulled from multiple data sources, often both internal and external. The data displayed on a dashboard can be viewed at any time and in real time. Essentially, they act as real-time reports, eliminating the need to wait until the end of the month to receive an analytics report from your marketing department.

Tactics

There are tons of different tactics dashboards out there that you can integrate into your system. This can range from email dashboards and website dashboards to search dashboards and social media metric dashboards. While these types of dashboards are often effective in displaying certain metrics, they don’t typically paint a whole picture. They may show you how your tactics are performing individually, but they don’t show you how they are impacting your company’s revenue cycle. It’s why you should implement a marketing dashboard.

The Benefits Of Using A Marketing Dashboard

Tactics dashboards can be useful in that they showcase soft metrics (engagement, awareness, interactions, etc.). However, you’ll want a dashboard that can also display hard metrics (such as the internal rate of return and the net present value of your current campaigns) along with online marketing metrics (such as bounce rate, total visits, click-through rates, etc.). It’s why you’ll want to use a marketing dashboard. The following are just a few more reasons why integrating a marketing dashboard will be hugely beneficial for your business:

Similar Article: Preparing Your Marketing Strategy For 2019

Customize your dashboard to your needs

Instead of being limited by tactics dashboards, a marketing dashboard allows you to customize what KPIs and metrics are displayed. You can then pull what you deem to be the most important of your social media, email, and search metrics so that they are visually represented on one single display.

Track the performance of your marketing efforts

A properly optimized marketing dashboard will make it easy to see how your marketing efforts are performing or underperforming in real time. This can be from engagement on social media to lead generation on your website. Not only can you identify how individual tactics are faring based on your KPIs and metrics, but you’ll get an idea of how well your overall strategies are performing as well.

Keep your team on the same page

One of the challenges of running a business is that many of your executives and employees aren’t always on the same page. If everyone has access to your marketing dashboard, everyone–including personnel in your marketing and sales departments–can see what’s working and what isn’t. This makes it easy for company-wide communication to take place. This can result in more effective adjustments to marketing and sales strategies to improve performance.

Allow for more informed decision making

Being able to see how your marketing campaign is performing in real time allows you to make adjustments to your strategies and tactics on the fly. In thepast, simple reporting would only tell you how you’ve done. The use of marketing dashboards gives you the chance to make more informed decisions on a daily basis. In turn, this can reduce the cost of your marketing efforts and improve their impact on your revenue cycle.

While a marketing dashboard can be considered a real-time report of your marketing activities, it’s much more than that–it’s a decision-making tool. The potential success of future marketing campaigns depends heavily on your ability to collect and analyze your company’s most important metrics and KPIs and determine how your marketing efforts are affecting your revenue cycle. The best way to do this is by integrating, customizing, and optimizing a marketing dashboard.

How Behavioral Marketing Can Increase Sales

February 14, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Behavioral marketing is a form of marketing that’s based on how a lead or customer behaves. You can find out how a person behaves through the use of website analytics, search history, browsing history, social media interaction (such as the type of content they engage with or post), web cookies, and more. This type of information can give you much more insight into a lead or customer, which, in turn, gives you the opportunity to target your marketing efforts more effectively. In fact, if you leverage your behavioral data successfully, it can even help you increase your sales. The following are four examples of how behavioral marketing can increase sales:

1. Suggesting Products Based On Purchase History

Looking at what customers purchase can give you an idea of what their needs are and how you can position yourself to meet those needs in the future. For example, if they’ve purchased a certain product on more than one occasion, then you can inform them about any promotions for that product if you have them with a good chance that they will jump on the opportunity. If you release an upgrade or updated version of a product that a customer has purchased in the past, you can inform them about it. You can also use their purchase history to identify ways that you can upsell and cross-sell other items. Many businesses will use ads or send emails recommending products directly after a sale in an attempt to cross-sell.

2. Targeting Leads Based On Product Views

You may notice a lead looking at certain products or services on your site but never going through with the purchase. The fact that they are looking at these products means that they are looking for something specific. If they’ve looked at a product multiple times, then it means they’re likely interested in your specific offering as well. You can encourage them to make the purchase by sending them content that highlights the benefits of the product they were looking at or by sending them a special discount code for that specific product to help give them a push towards making a buying decision.

What’s Trending for January 2019

3. Targeting Customers Based On Purchase Times

Data that identifies when someone purchases a product can be just as valuable as knowing what the product was that they purchased. For example, if they tend to make their purchases on the weekend, then you’ll have a better chance at reaching them with promotional offers that can spur action on the weekend than during the week. If they only make purchases at the beginning of the month, then you know that this is the best time to engage as well. The same goes for the times at which they make their purchases.

4. Following Up On Abandoned Shopping Carts

There’s nothing worse than an abandoned shopping cart. It means you fell short right before the finish line. The customer may have forgotten to check out (which can happen if they were distracted) or may have had second thoughts. You can use this information to follow up by sending out a reminder that they have something in their shopping cart or by sending an offer to help sweeten the deal (such as a special deal on shipping or a free trial) that can help give them a gentle push them over that finish line.

Behavioral marketing is effective because you’re relying on information you’ve gathered about how your leads and customers are interacting and engaging with your brand. This kind of information makes it easier to act in an effective way. These are just four examples of how the use of behavioral marketing can help to increase sales.

Using Customer Segmentation To Improve Engagement

February 12, 2019/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Once a lead has made a purchase and has become a customer, your job isn’t over. The most successful businesses are those that turn their customers into repeat customers–and this requires you to continue building the relationships that you’ve already established through regular engagement. However, as your business begins growing, it’s going to become more and more difficult to keep track of all of your customers and to meet their individual needs. To deal with this challenge, you should implement customer segmentation.

What is Customer Segmentation?

The strategy behind customer segmentation involves using the data that you’ve collected on your customers, including the information that they have provided, their general behavior on your website, the way they’ve engaged with you, and their purchase history, to divide them into different groups so that you can effectively target different groups within your audience at a time.

For example, if you sell pet food, then sending out a promotion for new dog food to customers who only own cats isn’t going to be an effective way to encourage them to make another purchase. If you’ve segmented your customers, you can send that same promotion to a customer that actually owns a cat or that has bought cat food in the past.

Customer Segmentation Examples

The following are a few customer segmentation examples to give you an idea of how to leverage your customer data to segment your customer lists:

1. Demographics

You can obtain customer demographic information via surveys and opt-in forms. This information can be helpful for segmentation for a number of reasons. For example, if your business sells a product that comes in an affordable model as well as a luxury model, knowing which customers fall within a high household income bracket will be helpful. Additionally, the way you engage with your audience may differ depending on their age. Certain types of messaging will appeal more to college-aged adults than senior citizens, for example, and they will likely have different pain points as well.

2. Geographic location

Segmenting your customer list based on where they live can be very helpful for a number of reasons. First off, you may have store-specific promotions. If you have multiple locations throughout the state or throughout the country, then you’ll want to make sure you’re targeting customers that can actually take advantage of it. Secondly, you may have products or services that are specific to certain parts of the country. For example, you may sell heavy-duty winter clothing. Even if you’re an online retailer, targeting customers who live in warm climates where it doesn’t snow will be ineffective.

5 Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using in 2019

3. Purchase patterns

Knowing when your customers are making their purchases and what they are purchasing can help you segment them into groups that you can target to improve sales even more. For example, some shoppers may be hesitant and may regularly leave products in their shopping carts without checking out. You could send them a special offer or discount code to help encourage them to see the purchase through. Grouping together customers based on when they make their purchases (on the weekend, in the evenings, on certain holidays, etc.) can help you time your interactions more effectively as well.

4. Device used

Tracking what devices your customers used to make purchases or to view products can be helpful in providing the right offers at the right times. For example, customers who are using mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, to make purchases are most likely doing it away from work since most people who browse during work hours do so on their computers.

These are just a few ways that you can implement customer segmentation to improve your ability to engage with existing customers using the data you’ve collected on them. Successful customer segmentation will greatly improve your marketing efforts as a result.