Why A Buyer's Journey Holds The Key To Your Digital Marketing Success
Jul 18, 2016
10 min read
The methodology mentioned above is referred as Inbound Marketing that includes attracting strangers on the internet, converting them into leads, and eventually into delighted customers. But the real question is how do you attract these strangers and earn their trust in order to form a long-term customer relationship? The answer is content. Great content will always attract information seekers who are lurking over the internet to find information about a product or service and make a decision.
Before creating the great content, it is important to understand and define exactly who you’re creating it for. Now this is termed as Buyer Persona- the people who are your target audience and you want to sell your products or services to them. Once you understand who your buyers are, you’re ready to create steps for buyer’s journey.
What Is The Buyer’s Journey?
Not all people think alike. Same will be the case with your different types of buyer persona, and the next step that you’ll want to take is to map each persona with the buyer’s journey. HubSpot defines the buyer’s journey as a detailed research process potential customers go through before reaching or leading up to the purchase decision. In layman’s term, what questions, problems or opportunities do your potential customers have that could be answered or solved by using your product or service? The content you create will be designed according to various stages defined in your buyer’s journey. If you don’t know about the important lifecycles of a buyer’s journey, how will you create content to mould the decision of buyers in various stages of the journey in your favour?
There are three common and important lifecycles of any business:
1. Awareness Stage
Prospect’s realize about their needs or encounter some problems that needs to be resolved. They start researching(on the internet) to more deeply understand and define their problem. They also look for solutions online.
2. Consideration Stage
Prospects have clearly understood their need or problem and now are juggling through options of products or services that best suits their needs. They are committed to researching and understanding to reach to a conclusion.
3. Decision Stage
In the final lap of making a decision. But before doing that they need to be doubly sure about whether they are making the right decision or not. Hence, they look for second, third or ‘n’ number of opinions of other people who have witnessed the products or services by a company.
4. Mistakes most Digital Marketers make
Most companies and their marketers concentrate their effort or the bulk of their online content on the decision stage( Buy Now, Join our club and get one membership free!, etc.). What most marketer leave behind is the focus on other stages of the customer lifecycle, that mostly answer the customer’s question-why? Inbound Marketing(a type of digital marketing) does encourage the marketers to create content for each stage of the buyer’s journey because it’s critical for long term success. It helps build trust and frames your company as the industry leader in the product/service segment that your company caters to.
A Dummy Example Using Content for Buyer’s Journey Client: Video Production Company Startup Persona: Marketing Head
Awareness Stage:
In this stage a business owner is trying to find various marketing solutions available but wants to find a unique one- one that resonates with his potential customers.
Question: What type of online marketing solutions will move my company forward?
Content that could be helpful: Checklists, whitepapers, and ebooks on different ways businesses or other startups could benefit from Introduction Videos, Brand idents, etc.
For example: tips for startups for creating engaging content for their social media channels.
Consideration Stage:
Now the business owner knows a bit more about engaging content through video and wants to know more about other options.
Question: Video could be a great solution for telling our company story. What type of other video options are there? What is the video process?
Content that could be useful: Case studies featuring client success, webinars, and infographics. For example: The Video and Production Process explained.
Decision Stage:
The owner is ready to make a decision that he’ll move forward with a video production company that would brand his company. The content will be produced to showcase his company better than all the rest.
Before doing that he looks for online reviews and ask some direct questions from the video production company.
Questions: Why you do video best? Are you right for me?
Content provided by the video company: Culture-focused blog posts by internal employees. Video demos, feature checklists etc. For example: How to prepare for a video shoot checklist.
Understanding the questions asked by your various buyer personas helps you better map out the content for each stage. Hence, it is very important to understand the buyer’s journey for your digital marketing success.
How Can Artificial Intelligence Assist DTC Companies With Inventory Management?
Artificial Intelligence (AI)emerges to have piqued everyone's interest. The percentage of investors buying artificial intelligence equities reflects this, and the number is steadily advancing. AI is witnessed as a secure port in logistics and inventory management disciplines after a long storm at sea. Large businesses confront significant issues in managing their warehouses and ensuring a smooth movement of goods in and out. To assemble your firm, you must consider several paramount elements that will affect inventory management. You constantly manage space optimization, inaccurate forecasting, customer happiness, and inventory levels when working with stock. These characteristics are unavoidable. It's impossible to keep track of everything without the suited technologies. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can assist your company in suitably supervising inventory. COVID-19 will significantly influence customer shopping behavior through 2022 for DTC enterprises. Many of the purchasing habits developed in 2020 will remain constant, despite the availability of vaccines and the removal of restrictions on social gatherings. Consumer behavior is altering, which needs a modification in how DTC brands accomplish business. A wider preference of solutions is now unrestricted thanks to developments in AI-based inventory management. In 2020, customers disbursed $861.12 billion online with US corporations, up 44% over 2019. Throughout the year, grocery businesses transitioned from exclusively depending on foot traffic to offering various delivery options to customers. Due to this huge transformation, supply networks, operations, and retailer gross margins were all put to the test. Businesses built strategic acquisitions in March (last year), anticipating increased ultimatum for specific categories and commodities as buyers fretted. To respond quickly to order spikes and uphold service standards while opposing rising costs, retailers must build a supply chain that is both resilient and agile. Challenges Solved With AI In Inventory Management Artificial intelligence in inventory management can eliminate inefficiencies in present procedures by offering a predictive approach and diminishing errors via automation. Inventory management procedures nowadays are fraught with hardships and inefficiencies. It is primarily carried out manually, which takes a protracted duration. Likewise, inaccuracy is a considerable risk, negatively influencing corporate operations. Multiple enterprises have the challenge of resolving these issues without raising operating costs. Furthermore, how can you meet consumer demand while simultaneously guaranteeing that the appropriate product is available at a suitable time and location? By using an AI-enabled forecasting system, businesses may overcome these impediments and reap the benefits of artificial intelligence in inventory management. Inventory management vends with various challenges to identify the most appropriate explanations. Let's go over each of them to get to the bottom of the problem. 1. Challenge One: Carrying Too Much Inventory An inferior inventory setup is one of the most rudimentary challenges in preserving an eCommerce business model. Industries must maintain track of inventories to deliver goods to an accurate place in real-time. The quality and quantity of the goods need to be tracked often to keep the customer's focus on the transaction. DTC merchants routinely. overstock inventory to meet customer expectations and provide a smooth experience. This overstock increases storage and logistics costs while maintaining availability. When products deteriorate and expire, these can become even more formidable for grocery retailers. Using algorithms and machine learning, businesses utilizing AI to align business goals can diminish surplus inventory while enhancing customer satisfaction. As a result, supply planners may reasonably comprehend service and cost alternatives that can assist them in setting suitable stock levels and free up millions of dollars in working capital. 2. Challenge Two: Wrong Inventory Location The lack of a method to track in-store products/equipment is the primary reason for this situation. Identifying a certain product for sale from inventory requires a significant amount of labor, and finding a product among thousands of goods is extremely difficult. Selecting the wrong material slows down sales and lowers consumer satisfaction. A business that runs out of critical supplies risks losing consumers. If a direct-to-consumer company claims to have it, it must be able to deliver it to the customer's selected location or channel. Stock placement errors resulted in increased markdowns at locations with excess inventory and missed sales at locations with no inventory. Many retailers' end-to-end inventory management procedures are labor-intensive and time-consuming. With an AI-enabled system, DTC organizations may transport goods between facilities and channels quickly and effortlessly. Data correction services and a location planning strategy are two basic automated techniques that help businesses analyze and resolve prior problems. 3. Challenge Three: Uncertainty About The Amount Of Required Inventory Managing a large inventory using manual paper-based techniques will not help your company develop. As sales volume and inventories rise, lack of digitization and ineffective inventory management processes will only deliver unsatisfactory outcomes. Due to unexpected demands, customers may be disappointed; opportunities may get debilitated; or inventory may be overstocked, not to mention the additional costs of meeting the unexpected demand. Successful inventory replenishment needs to anticipate demand changes rather than react to them. Each company's inventory replenishment process is unique in its manner. Supply chain planning software can assist you in meeting revenue targets and selecting the optimal inventory combination through: Optimization for omnichannel Supported bills of distribution and bills of materials True lead time Forecasting by season Automation of inventory strategies How Artificial Intelligence Aids Inventory Management Data Mining And Information Conversion Into Solutions Artificial intelligence is exceptionally reasonable in the field of data mining. AI systems can gather and evaluate data in real-time to transform it into actionable information. As a result, introducing artificial intelligence into the inventory management system allows the company to change more quickly and find better solutions to the problems. DTC businesses may better understand their customers' expectations by gathering, aggregating, monitoring, and analyzing each client's data and interests. It allows them to develop more successful strategies, predict customer requirements, and deliver adequate products. Inventory Replenishment Planning When it comes to fulfillment forecasting, predicting demand is more difficult than projecting supply. Because each data set has uncertainties and anomalies to account for, data science is critical in anticipating allocation. Both supply and demand statistics can show anomalies, as both are prone to rapid fluctuations. People's decisions concerning how and when they purchase items must be considered in this customer-oriented paradigm. Inventory management solutions that use artificial intelligence to assess consumer fulfillment preferences and purchasing activities might help retailers increase stock levels. Stock Management Safety Businesses used to maintain their inventory at a set level or percentage. It entails establishing a minimum expense point for walk-in sales not included in eCommerce or other fulfillment methods. In today's ever-changing consumer demands and multichannel engagements, generalized information is no longer sufficient. Inventory levels are dynamically adjusted to utilize and adapt to incoming demand. By automating inventory rebalancing, we can bypass two major issues: Due to overpromising and underdelivering on inventories, brand loyalty has dwindled. Overspending might result in a financial loss. Companies employ predictive rules to access inventory in stores and warehouses to meet seasonal customer and profit demands. To achieve profitable omnichannel outcomes, DTC organizations must be able to proactively balance fulfillment costs against service to optimize return on investment, improve customer experience, and increase recurrence purchase behavior. Estimated Arrival Time To meet and exceed customer expectations, DTC merchants must comprehend the quantity and location of inventory. In today's highly competitive market, the ability to communicate with clients and the projected product delivery time is becoming increasingly valuable and necessary. With the help of improved quality of these models, DTC businesses must be able to stimulate and evaluate the performance of each calculation. Regardless of cost or time, each decision will be based on the company's priorities. Conclusion Artificial intelligence in inventory management makes warehouse, stocking, and other associated activities more automated. It can assist with physical tasks such as transferring and tracking items and more complex situations requiring increased knowledge to ensure error-free planning or client demand projection. Using an AI may be an unnecessary expense if the firm is small. As the volume of operations and data expands, manually managing inventory management processes and safeguarding the company from errors becomes increasingly complex. If you still have any suspicions about what's most appropriate for your company, contact our experts for a free consultation. Our competent and experienced team at Saffron Edge will assist you in determining the ideal solution for your needs. To contact us right now, please go to Saffronedge. ...
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Why Marketing Your Business During Covid-19 is in your Best Interest
We are currently going through one of the biggest pandemics of the current generation that brought a standstill to businesses and operations worldwide. The deadly Novel Coronavirus has affected more than 171 countries and is now posing as one of the biggest threats to human civilization. Many countries have gone under total lockdown and the lives of its people have come to halt. Source: pexelsSince technology is playing a pivotal role to back us up during such times, companies are now working remotely to ensure the continuous workflow, despite the supply chain gets interrupted, imposed social distancing, and deteriorating economic conditions - Hence, causing some serious inconvenience to most firms. Businesses worldwide are following certain protocols to ensure the safety and welfare of their employees and are working from remote setups. However, that is only one part of the ordeal. Due to the uncertainty of the situation and economic slowdown, a lot of businesses are either putting their operations and marketing on hold. We wanted to write this piece for you so that you don’t follow the trend and can see how you can combat this outbreak situation and take the best option for your business.Let’s get started! Cement Your SERP positions Source: pexelsOrganic Marketing is a marathon and it will help you now more than ever to stay ahead of your competition. If you look at search trends and impressions on Google, you will often see a decline in trends and this would lead to a lot of your competitors to stop their marketing efforts. While paid marketing and other channels that give you a faster return in exchange for a steady supply of investment in Google or Facebook, SEO can provide higher visibility for the long haul at a far lesser cost comparatively. What's more, when the situation improves and businesses resume their marketing services, you’ll already be in a far better position by then while others strive hard (and spend a lot more) to reach the top. Revamp Your Website When you’re seeing a decline in lead volume and overall traffic and there is not much that you foresee you can do to serve your customers as well, take that time to analyze your website and revamp it. Website redesign and development take considerable time and with slow business trends, you can go aggressive into revamping your complete site before things start to pick up. We are working with a lot of eCommerce and medical and cosmetic industry clients and helping them rebrand their complete businesses so that they can have a fresh new website or portal when business picks up again in a few months. Update Your GMB Page GMB page for any business is a must-have. It showcases your business address, working hours and customer reviews besides company updates and images. There are many countries where businesses are allowed to operate on special hours. The special and advanced tools available on Google My Business Profile can help you in informing your customers regarding the changes made in your organization. All you need to do is update your business description and change the working hours. Then you will need to share Google posts with everything updated and make sure that your contact information is right so that customers looking to contact you can find you easily. An updated GMB page also ensures better local search visibility through hyper local and local SEO marketing. Outreach Now for the Future If you are not able to decide whether to reach your customer during this deadly outbreak then you will need to consider the nature of your business, your past relations with customers and the main motive behind this reach. If your customers are used to hearing from you through emails, SMS and other digital media communication channels then you should never cut off this bridge of communication. But you will need to stay away from any type of cheap disaster-related ads. You can also engage with content marketing experts who can help build connections with strong influencers during this phase for your business. Influencer marketing takes time and nurturing to produce results. So, now that the fast-paced life and busy schedules have come to a stand-still, you can find it far easier to connect and build up these strategic relations that can help you build your brand. Link Detox If you are running an online business then you must be aware of the importance and value of removing unnatural links from your digital presence. You will be surprised to know that just a few weeks ago, a website was manually penalized by Google but as the website removed the 1900 unnatural links, it jostled to the top 3 positions in the Google search engine ranking. Yes, unnatural links can be the biggest obstacle between your website and top search engine ranking. You need to understand that unnatural links are not always intentional and can be present on your website because of many reasons. Just go through any simple guide of unnatural links and learn how to remove them OR you can get in touch with our link building and auditing experts to get them removed. Conduct Webinars To Stay Connected Are you planning to introduce products, prototypes, services, or even simply hosting online education classes, tutorials and consultations, webinars are the way to go. Webinars offer a seamless virtual conferencing experience where you can interact with thousands of users and talk about your product, services or subject matter. Source: pexels According to a few studies conducted worldwide recently, this is the best time to start your webinar plans. If you are in the B2B field then webinars in the current lockdown can prove to be a magic wand for your business as a huge chunk of people prefer webinars over any other content formatting for learning. If you are completely new to webinar then you will need to do a little bit of research for sure. Use Video Conferencing To Stay Connected:Opting for video or tele-conferencing calls over physical meetings or gatherings is surely a better option in the current situation. You can use video and audio calls to ask customers and employees regarding their experience with your product or service. Even if you want to transcribe the audio, you can do so by using tools like Otter.ai. Later, you can use this data for press releases, blog posts and other types of content. All the information gathered through video calls and audio calls will act as a rich source of inside information for your content. If you’re like most businesses these days trying to optimize your work and team efficiency from the safety of your homes then try integrating various project management and performance optimization tools that can help you stay in touch, monitor the tasks, and ensure your team and project productivity is always optimal despite the distance. We human beings have an indomitable spirit and we have surpassed many challenges in the past. This pandemic too shall pass and we need to find simple and effective solutions to ensure that our family, friends and business stay afloat no matter what. So, if you’re interested in learning about remote working or marketing ideas on how to sustain and grow your brand during these troubling times, contact us today and we’ll be more than happy to help you, as always! Stay home, Stay Safe! ...
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Building An Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy In A Few Hours!
The clock is ticking and businesses have got a very less time to actually analyze their marketing plans and optimize it according to the response they get from their prospects or existing customers. In a short time they can still get a team to do the job of Inbound marketing or outsource it to the Inbound Marketing agency, but the problem is they don’t know where to start and how long is it going to take them. For building an effective marketing strategy regardless of Inbound or Outbound marketing, it is important to know that what exactly a goal a marketing team of a company has in order to design a strategy. So for this we need the help of the sales team, and let’s say hypothetically that we need to generate 40 to 50 qualified leads per month for the sales team. The goal might be different for your company and it is upto your marketing team what goal threshold they set for themselves. After the time when we know exactly what is our goal now comes the strategy part for which following steps will be taken. Identifying the Target Audience Let’s say we are a social media management automation tool provider company and our target audience is freelance marketers, or an online e-commerce firm that needs such tools for its marketing team. The sales team says that if they get a demo request, they consider it a quality lead. So now we know who are target audience is and how they come under the category of quality lead. So your next plan of action is to identify the target audience for your company and how they can be categorized under quality lead. So Time estimated for this little activity of identifying our target audience is approx. 2 Hours. Where Does Your Target Audience Lives Online Inbound marketing is a vast superset of online platforms where you can perform your activity but limiting your efforts to where your target audience is present the most, is where you should make your first move. Inbound marketing includes platforms like social media sites, blog sites, search engines, or your own website. As soon as you make a big list out where you can find your prospects, like if you are a B2B company and will find clients on LinkedIn, so you should head there first. This activity will require the most time and effort and since it is going to be the bloodline of the overall strategy then we recommend that you spend time on this, let’s say approx. 4 hours should do Identifying Pains, Problems, and Questions Inbound Marketing in 2016 is all about building content around the questions, comments, problems or issues your prospects are expressing and then answering to these queries in the form of content. So in order to help ourselves that what exactly our audience is looking for on the web, we need to research over social review sites what kind of problems the audience is facing. You can also ask for help from your sales team to ask them about what is the most common problem prospects face or ask question about from them. At the conclusion of this activity you will be able to know that what frustrations, comments on blogs and things like that audience is facing. As you will have to visit at least 10-20 websites and copy-pasting the audience responses on them to your own master list this will take you another 2 hours. Now when you have got hold of the responses, you want to create content around it. So content that enticed most of the prospects or generated most responses is the first one you should look at creating it. Let’s say if it was blogs then create blogs with a frequency of 2-3 blog posts per week. Activities that need to be done: Brainstorming blog topics, ebooks, or webinar topics. Mapping out your content calendar for frequency of posts. This activity will take another 2 hours. Time estimated for this entire research activity is another 4 hours approx. Promoting the content Promoting the content that we just created is as important as creating it. We need the public to reach to our posts and in order to that content writers or marketers need to share it with them in maximum way possible. For this purpose, they might need to optimize it for search engines, or share it on the social media sites or blog sites. But this process can be made easier now since we know where our audience lives over the web. So share the content where you bound to catch the maximum eyeballs. For example if for a B2B company find most of it’s clientele on LinkedIn then share your content there. Times estimated for this activity is let’s one hour which should be enough since now you knew already where to promote your content. Your Strategy is Ready! We listed out a lot of work there but if done efficiently will help you in growing your business over the web and get qualified as well as quality leads. The total time spent or listed by us is approx. 11 hours and we suggest if you do work in a 8 to 9 hours a day shift then you should think of stretching a few hours more so that the from the next day you know where to start your work and where to finish it. This should set you up for months and if done efficiently we believe you can achieve wonders with Inbound Marketing. Good Luck! ...
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