Many business owners use a customer journey model to understand how customers interact with their business. This is essentially a framework that maps out all the various stages someone will need to go through to become a loyal customer. Once you have a good understanding of the customer journey, you can then harness it to focus your marketing resources and grow your business faster.
Different frameworks appeal to different people, and there’s no right or wrong model. It’s all about finding one that works for you and your business. A simple one you might find useful is the See > Think > Do > Care model. Here’s how these four simple words can transform your marketing.
Understanding The Journey
SEE: Reach Audience
This stage is about making sure people are aware of your business. The goal here is to reach new people in your target audience, and let them know how your business can improve their lives.
THINK: Build Consideration
This stage is about encouraging people to consider becoming customers. The goal here is to build trust, and help potential customers find all the information they need to make a purchase decision.
DO: Drive Action
This stage is about convincing potential customers to take action. The goal here is to make it as easy as possible for people to engage with your business, whether that means contacting you or making a purchase.
CARE: Increase Advocates
This stage is about turning customers into advocates for your business. The goal here is to encourage brand loyalty, which can influence customers to make repeat purchases, or recommend your business to others.
Creating The Plan
For your business to thrive, it’s important to keep a healthy number of people in each of these four stages. Overall growth requires more people to be aware of your business, thinking about your business, engaging with your business, and advocating for your business. If one of these stages is neglected, the others will suffer.
So how do you grow the number of people in each stage? We recommend turning it into a simple three step marketing plan.
- Identify a key metric that lines up with each stage of the customer journey.
- Identify a specific milestone that you’d like to reach for each of these metrics.
- Identify a clear method or tool you will use to achieve each milestone.
Let’s dive in to each step in a bit more detail.
Step 1: METRICS
Here are some example metrics that you could choose to measure for each stage of the customer journey.
SEE
- Website Visits – Total number of visits your website receives each month.
- Social Media Reach – Total number of people reached on social media each month.
- Ad Views – Total number of times your ads are seen each month.
THINK
- Email Subscribers – Total number of email subscribers in your audience.
- Blog Views – Total number of views on all of your blog/information pages each month.
- Visits Per User – Average number of website visits from each individual person.
DO
- Revenue – Total revenue made through the website each month.
- Leads – Total number of form submissions or phone calls generated through the website each month.
- Conversion Rate – The percentage of website visitors who make a purchase or contact the business.
CARE
- Repeat Sales – Total number of sales that came from an existing customer each month.
- Online Reviews – Total number of reviews on platforms like your Google Business Profile.
- Referrals – Total number of new customers who were referred by existing customers.
Step 2: MILESTONES
When it comes to setting targets for each metric, it’s important to be both specific and realistic. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, and don’t be too vague. Don’t be afraid to start small, it could be as simple as increasing a particular statistic by 10%.
Once you’ve decided on a milestone, the most important thing is that you keep referring back to it, rather than setting and forgetting. A well-known adage in the marketing world is that what gets measured gets managed. The point of this exercise is to make sure the right things are getting measured. Check back once a month to see how you’re doing.
Step 3: METHODS
Now that you have your metrics and your milestones, it’s time to choose a method you will use to achieve each one. There are a number of digital marketing tools you can use for a range of different purposes. Here are nine methods that you might want to use to achieve your goals.
- Awareness Ads
Showing ads to people who may not know already about your business or what you offer. These are typically shown on social media, YouTube, or the Google Display network, and are targeted to people with particular demographics or interests. - Search Ads
Showing ads to people who are actively looking for what you offer. These are typically shown in Google Search, and are targeted to particular keywords that people are typing in. - Remarketing Ads
Showing ads to people who have interacted with your business before, usually to encourage some kind of action. This could include those who have been to your website, engaged with your social media profiles, or signed up to your mailing list. - Website Optimisation
Improving your website to make it more helpful and easier to use for users. This also includes making changes to help your website show more prominently in search engines. - Website Content
Adding new content to your website, or improving existing content. This can include writing blog articles, how-to guides, or other information that can help website visitors to make a purchase decision. - Business Profiles
Creating and maintaining online business profiles to spread your online presence. Various free profiles can help you show up on places like Google Search, Google Maps, Bing Search, or Apple Maps. These are also incredibly helpful for getting online reviews, which can strongly influence purchase decisions. - Email Campaigns
Sending out newsletters or promotional emails to your mailing list. This can help with converting people into new customers, driving repeat sales from existing customers, and building brand loyalty. - Social Media Posts
Posting on social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. The purposes of this can include engaging with your followers, building trust, staying top of mind, or growing brand loyalty. - Promotions
Offering discounts, deals, or packages. This can obviously be used to drive more revenue, but can also be helpful for incentivising other valuable actions such as email sign ups.
Now it’s time to bring it all together. For each step in the customer journey, you should have a clearly stated goal in the format of: Grow METRIC to MILESTONE using METHOD. You might even want to fill out your plan in the form of a table. See below for an idea of what this might look like, with example metrics, milestones, and methods filled in.
| METRIC | MILESTONE | METHOD | |
| SEE | Social Media Reach | 10,000 per month | Awareness Ads |
| THINK | Email Subscribers | 2,000 | Remarketing Ads |
| DO | Conversion Rate | 3% | Website Optimisation |
| CARE | Repeat Sales | 30 per month | Email Campaigns |
Measuring The Results
Now that you have a plan in place, it’s time to put it into practice! By breaking it down like this, with four metrics to watch and four methods to influence them, it will simplify your marketing process, and ensure your resources are going towards the right place.
Try mapping your overall profits alongside the progress of your marketing plan to see if there is a clear correlation. If you think things could still be improved, you may need to try focusing on some different metrics.
By taking the time to understand your customer journey and set clear, achievable goals for each stage, you’ll create a marketing roadmap that’s far easier to follow, and far more effective. The See > Think > Do > Care model keeps your efforts aligned with how people actually interact with your business, helping you focus your energy where it makes the biggest impact.
If you’d like a hand building or refining your own plan, the Dubzz team is here to help you turn insight into action, and keep your business moving forward.
