Core Concepts – Path to Purchase

A huge mistake people make, in all walks of life, is getting away from Core Concepts.

You see this in athletes. You see it in dieters. And you, and I, see it in businesses all the time.

When a business loses track of a Core Concept, they falter. And they fall. And sometimes they die.

One such concept that a business can lose is the Process of Buying.

The path a Customer must go on in order to buy is their Process of Buying. And we must be able to interact with the customer on every single step if we want to succeed.

Super simple. But often forgotten.

The Process of Buying

I break down the Process of Buying into Four Parts. Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

At each of these steps we have a strong chance to make an impact with the customer.

Awareness

People at the Awareness phase are not ready to buy. But considering this is where we get a lot of our business, we should not avoid the people at this phase. In fact, this is the best time to nurture a relationship.

This is when people are just looking for information. They have become aware of their problem and are looking to learn.

Someone at this step would do a search like ‘What is Seo’.

This person is clearly not ready to buy. They just became aware that SEO might be a problem they have.

But if you have a ton of laid back information for them, information that will take them from unaware to aware, they will think of you as the authority. You will be the place they go when it comes to next steps on the Journey, as long as you’re present.

Interest

Now you have the customer’s interest. Or, at least, someone that is interested. Sometimes it won’t always be the same customer, just a person at the same spot on the journey.

Either way, this customer now has some information. They learned about the subject at hand. They learned more about their problem. And, hopefully, they learned that you are a good place for their solution.

Now the customer is interested. Not only did they learn more about their problem, they learned how you can treat that problem.

We get to now give them more specific information. Information that leads to actual solutions, actual action (you know, buying). If we hammer all new customers with this level of information, when they are still looking for information, they will be turned off. They will look elsewhere.

A good start here are longer pieces of content. We get to show off our expertise and we get to stand (higher) as an authoritative figure. This is good. Downloadables and topical emails fill this role, too.

Desire

This is the first part of the process that is more about deciding to buy instead of searching for information. Here we actually get to switch our focus to more product and sales (or services) oriented content.

The better we nurtured our relationship with this customer the more receptive they are to the product based content. Just think about it. Who are you more likely to buy from? A person that just spams you all day with sales. Or the person that has given you a ton of pertinent, sought after information and then, only once you show interest, do they start their sales pitch.

Pretty easy question.

Long form sales copy is a lost art, but right here is when it is super effective. It takes a lot of experience to do it right, but once you get a customer here on their journey, you will have an absurdly good conversion rate.

Action

Now is the time to buy. We want to make sure we are giving our customers every possible chance to buy, without ruining the relationship we just built.

There are two ways we can get our customers to act. Landing Pages and Call to Action Emails. We get to make these super salesy, too. Now is the time to sell, sell, sell.

The reason we get to be salesy. And the reason we get to send our customers Landing Pages and Call to Action Emails is because of the journey. We’ve walked them through this process the whole way. We have only given them what they wanted.

And now they want to Act. Now they want to buy. We get to give them an avenue for that. They specifically asked for this. And we’re just giving it to them.

Think how different this is from a company that just hammers and tries to sell to you the second you find their website.

The journey we’ve constructed is what makes our actions so different.

Clarity

One last point that is important is clarity. Our posts, emails, long form copy, and so on must be clear as to what it is. Remember when we wanted to write informative, fun stuff for the people just finding us?

But also authoritative stuff for the people farther along on the journey?

These topics must be clear so people can find the content that best matches them. Make sure your titles and descriptions accurately express what your content is about.

And when you buy traffic, make sure the Keywords for people just looking are leading to right pieces of content. Mixing this up is an absurdly expensive mistake.

When you craft a customer journey from start to finish that promotes growth you will be able to accept all kinds of customers, no matter where they are in the process. This is a simple, core concept that so many have forgotten. And you will be rewarded for not forgetting.