For businesses, understanding the customer’s journey is paramount for company success. This also rings true for public relations agencies, where there are always clients who seek better bussiness-client relationships.

Essentially, the customer journey is the path a customer takes from initial awareness to post-purchase evaluation. Understanding the customer journey helps businesses to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their customer experience, discover opportunities to improve their sales process, and optimize the touchpoints that a customer has with a business during each stage of the journey. These touchpoints may include interactions with a business’s website, social media pages, customer service representatives, and physical store locations. 

The Stages of the Customer Journey

The customer journey can be broken down into several stages. The first stage is awareness, which is when a potential customer becomes aware of a product or service. The second stage is consideration, which is when the potential customer considers whether the product or service is right for them. The third stage is decision, which is when the potential customer decides whether to purchase the product or service. The final stage is post-purchase evaluation, which is when the customer evaluates their experience with the product or service.

The Awareness Building Stage

Building brand or product awareness helps businesses to ensure that customers are aware of their product or service, leading them to be more likely to consider it during the consideration stage. There are several ways to build brand/product awareness, including: 

Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating valuable content, such as blog posts, videos, and social media posts, that provides information about a product or service. By creating high-quality content, businesses can establish themselves as experts in their industry and build trust with potential customers. 

Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing involves promoting a product or service on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. By using social media, businesses can reach a large audience and engage with potential customers. 

Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers, such as bloggers and social media personalities, to promote a product or service. By partnering with influencers, businesses can reach a highly targeted audience and build credibility with potential customers.

Examples of Building Awareness to Optimize the Customer Journey 

There are several examples of businesses that have successfully built brand or product awareness to optimize the customer journey. 

Apple
With a brand that is instantly recognizable, apple achieved their success through creating high-quality products and marketing them in a way that emphasizes their design and user experience, as well as establishing themselves as a leader in the tech industry. 

Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a company that has built a strong brand that is associated with happiness and fun. By marketing their products in a way that emphasizes these values, they have established themself as a beloved brand around the world.

Nike
Influencer marketing is one of Nike’s biggest strengths. Through partnering with athletes and other influencers, Nike has been able to build credibility and trust with potential customers. 

Common Misconceptions

There are several common misconceptions about building brand/product awareness to optimize the customer journey. These include: 

High Expenses
Many businesses believe that building brand or product awareness is expensive and requires a large marketing budget. While it’s true that some marketing tactics can be expensive, there are many cost-effective strategies that businesses can use to build awareness. These include the use of social media strategies, creative digital campaigns, or mutual collaborations with certain influencers that charge little to no fees. 

Awareness Building is only for Big Businesses
Some businesses believe that building brand or product awareness is only necessary for big businesses with large marketing budgets. However, building awareness is important for businesses of all sizes, as it helps to establish credibility and trust with potential customers.

Difficulty in Measuring Awareness
Some businesses believe that building brand or product awareness is not measurable, and therefore it’s difficult to determine its effectiveness. However, there are many tools available, such as website analytics and social media monitoring, that can provide valuable data about the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. 

Limitations

While building brand or product awareness can be a powerful tool for optimizing the customer journey, there are limitations to keep in mind. 

It’s Not a Quick Fix
Building brand or product awareness is not a quick fix for a struggling business. It takes time and effort to establish a strong brand and build awareness, and businesses should be prepared to invest in this process over the long term. 

It’s Not a Guarantee
Building brand or product awareness is not a guarantee of success. While it can help to establish credibility and trust with potential customers, businesses still need to provide a high-quality product or service to succeed. 

It’s Not a Replacement for Customer Service
Building brand or product awareness is not a replacement for good customer service. Businesses still need to provide excellent customer service to ensure that customers have a positive experience and are more likely to return.

Conclusion 

The first stage of the customer journey is the awareness building stage, representing an important customer journey touchpoint where the customer first gets to know a business’ brand or product. Without effective awareness building, customers will not even get to begin their journey with your business. Business should take meticulous care in ensuring they have effective elements to build powerful awareness building, taking reference from the success of other companies who have established a powerful awareness building stage.

The awareness building stage is only the first stage of the customer’s journey. What comes next is the consideration stage, the decision stage, and finally, post-purchace evaluation stage. As we want to empower all of you with practical knowledge and insights, we cover all these stages in different blog posts.

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