The New Customer Journey

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Original customer journey model vs. new model

The purchase funnel is a core concept in digital marketing.

Original model

The original purchase funnel model, which illustrates the typical journey most customers take toward a purchase, is brand-centric and assumes a natural flow between its various stages.

In reality, the customer journey is more complex than that and, increasingly, marketers need to adapt the model to take account of this complexity. It’s important that this new and improved customer journey is reflected in your digital strategy.

New model

The new customer journey consists of a continuous loop of exploration and evaluation where people review and consider their options and move back and forth between them until they’re ready to take action. While the original model suggests that consumers move from interest to consideration and straight on to conversion, the new model sees consumers move from interest to consideration and then back to interest and on to consideration multiple times before they move to the next stage, which is conversion or purchase.

This looping mechanism helps us understand the nonlinear nature of many purchase decisions. As it’s a continuous nonlinear loop, it also highlights the challenges that marketers face when it comes to attribution and evaluating marketing touchpoints. The new model includes a grey area or “messy middle”, which allows for a certain amount of uncertainty or ambiguity in the purchase journey. This, of course, reflects the reality that most marketers face when it comes to measuring and optimizing their campaigns.

The changing role of customers

The complex nature of the new purchase journey is largely driven by the fact that customers now have constant access to an unending supply of information about products, services, and brands. They can take a long time to explore all the available options – or they could decide to purchase instantly. After all, in the digital age, buyers can move from awareness to purchase instantly, at the click of a button!

This can make the funnel concept seem irrelevant or outdated. However, whether it’s long and complex or shorter and more straightforward, customers still pass through a series of stages on their purchase journey, and marketers can benefit from using this structure.

The new customer journey is certainly unpredictable! As a digital strategist, what you require is a customer-centric framework that adapts to less predictable journeys. And that’s exactly what the new customer journey model aims to do.

Measuring the customer journey

Traditional methods of measuring the customer journey don’t always give you the full picture. That’s because user data isn’t always accurate. In addition, although the data can reveal what a person did, it can’t tell you why they did it. You can use buyer personas to better understand the motivations of your customers and to bring their journeys to life.

Social proof and power of now

In reality, the purchase journey is fluid and nonlinear. It’s also influenced by external events.

• For example, it’s influenced by social proof, a concept that involves people seeking out reviews or recommendations before making a purchase, to confirm that other people have found value in that product or service.
• It’s also influenced by the growing demand for instant gratification, known as the power of now, whereby consumers expect to find a product, receive information, or make a purchase instantly.

As a digital marketing strategist, your goal is to make an impact on the customer’s decision-making process when they are most receptive to your message.