Let’s face it: many businesses don’t really have a clue on how their customers end up being their customers. What mix of experiences do these customers have to go through for you to win them over from the competition? And how can you be sure that your marketing automation is working effectively?

Before we talk about why having a proper understanding of what your customers go through can be beneficial to you, let’s first take a look at some fast facts about marketing automation.

• According to the Marketing Automation Report published by TFM Insights, almost 4 out of 10 marketers leave repetitive tasks to automation while they work on creative tasks, like planning and strategy.
• Based on the same report, 30% of marketers use automation to improve customer targeting, while 10% use it to improve customer service.

Automation can be a godsend to marketers who want to connect with a global audience. But, if you still haven’t spent time getting the specifics of YOUR buyer’s journey sorted out, then you may be flushing all those resources down the drain.

What is the Buyer’s Journey?

The buyer’s journey is an overview of the stages that your potential customers go through before finally making a purchase from you. This concept applies to the broad field of marketing, not just in email automation, so having a clear understanding of the basic stages of the buyer’s journey will allow marketers like you to make your automation workflow more seamless and effective.

Of course, different companies have distinct buyer’s journeys, but almost all have the same three basic stages: awareness stage, consideration stage, and decision stage.

Let’s take a closer look at each one below, along with some examples on how you can improve your marketing automation based on the different stages of the buyer’s journey.

3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey

While these three stages are the backbone of the buyer’s journey, you can further break them down to create a unique buyer’s journey for your own target audience once you get a grasp of the basics.

1. Awareness

The awareness stage is the first stage where your primary aim is to educate your potential customers—not of your brand, but of the problem/issue affecting them.

It’s the first stage, so don’t worry about bringing your brand front and center. You’ll have plenty of time to do that in the later stages, once you’ve established yourself as a credible authority on the niche or topic of your product.

Because you need to educate your potential customer, most of the marketing automation strategies in this stage will focus on building informative, entertaining content such as blog posts, e-books, how-to videos, webinars, etc.

2. Consideration

Your potential customers are now aware of the problem—which means they’ll start looking around for reviews from people who had similar issues. They’re now considering their options—hence, the consideration stage.

Here’s where you, the marketer, lay out the features of your product in such a way as to attract those who are a good fit for it and weed out those who don’t suit your brand.

Marketing materials here are more brand-oriented, such as FAQs, case studies, testimonials, and webinars that aim to highlight the features of your product.

Here’s a good example of an email for the consideration stage by Magnolia Market, an online shop selling home decor goods:

This next one aims to inform and entertain, as the team behind dating app Hinge put on their creative hats and even wrote a poem that just makes you wanna find someone to share a hug with—using their app, of course!

3. Decision

The decision stage is the last stage in the buyer’s journey. Also called the purchase stage, here’s where you give your potential customers a little nudge, to make sure they press the “Order Now” or “Subscribe” button.

All that’s left to do is to provide a free demo of your product, for example, to give them a first-hand experience of why your brand is the best fit to solve their problems.

Since this is the last stage of the buyer’s journey, social networking app Meetup gave it all their got and crafted a really personal message to win their customer:

Once you understand the basic structure of the buyer’s journey, then you can improve your marketing automation based on your own unique buyer’s journey, so that there’s little friction as possible from each stage to another.

Want to get a better idea of how a marketing automation workflow looks? Check out these examples for building excellent automations in ActiveTrail!

Read more:

5 Incredible Ways to Build a Highly Engaged Email List

ActiveTrail Automations in Practice (Part 3 of 4) Making Business Personal

3 Reasons Why People Aren’t Opening Your Emails and How You Can Fix This