The 9 Steps of the Customer Value Journey

It all starts with creating awareness.

But what exactly does this mean? At its most basic, this means showing up in search results. This is the very beginning of the flywheel where you’re targeting customers at first blush and casting a wide net to garner as many impressions as possible.

Advertisements, blog posts, events, word of mouth, and organic content, including “earned” content written about you and “owned” content you’ve written about yourself (learn the ins and outs of creating content here), are all productive tools in getting your content in front of people. 

You’re proving that your brand exists as a provider of solutions to your audience’s problems. The goal is to proactively offer answers for the questions they haven’t even thought to ask yet (learn more about our Answering Customers Questions methodology here), so your brand needs to show up in search engines, be served in ads to your target customers, and/or come up in conversations so that customers can discover you.  

This is your very first chance to establish your brand as a solutions provider. Think about the best channels for your brand. What are the most common ones your audience will be using? How can you introduce yourself?

If the customer value journey is a car, this is the gas in your tank before you hit the road.

Marketing Tactics Relevant to This Phase:

• SEO
• Content Writing
• Advertising
• Events
• Word Of Mouth

Engagement occurs when an “unknown visitor” clicks on your ad, likes your post, or follows a link to your website for the first time. They’re aware of your brand and interested enough to take an actionable curiosity in what you offer. This is the first step in them showing an evidential interest in your brand. 

Like every stage, you need to be keenly aware of how you’re conveying value to your audience and answering the questions they may not even realize they have. That’s the secret sauce to ensure their interest is maintained and their willingness to devote time and thought to learning more about what you can offer them.

Make a more active effort to further their engagement by introducing a call to action, like a prompt that invites them to subscribe to your channel or newsletter, receive more information, schedule an appointment, or fill out a contact form.

This is the first gear in building a relationship between your audience and your brand and continuing to establish intrigue. They don’t even know it, but they’re already well into their customer value journey and closer to converting from an active visitor into a paying or subscribing customer.

Marketing Tactics Relevant to This Phase:

• All of the above, keeping in mind, is this the most effective message? Am I answering questions and proving value?
• Effective Calls-to-Action (CTA’s)

You’ve successfully invited your audience through your door, not by promising them the moon, but by building a sincere relationship based on answering their questions, solving their problems, and creating inherent and intrinsic value. By doing so, you’ve established your brand as a source of positive influence and created a high-value and low-risk entry point for your audience.

At this point you’ve “identified” any of your unidentified visitors, either by establishing a direct relationship with them or by having them fill out a contact form on your website. The next step is to categorize them into one of your customer persona buckets and take them along the customer value journey again!

Restarting a known customer and the beginning of the customer value journey will provide invaluable insight into their pain points and provides a fresh opportunity for your brand to continue proving your value by attracting them to longer-term solutions.

One of the biggest hurdles of the customer value journey is behind you! You’ve earned a commitment from a customer and won their business by establishing yourself as a trustworthy solutions provider.

Next, it’s time to retain their business and earn their loyalty.

Marketing Tactics Relevant to This Phase:

• Successfully Completely All Previous Steps
• Quality CTA’s and Forms That Excite

This is a necessary bridge to convert your audience into advocates for your brand.

Assuming your customer is happy with your product, solution, or service and the way you’ve conducted business, chances are they’ll be very interested in doing it again.

Ascending can really be boiled down into this: it’s about repeating the Engage and Delight steps of the customer value journey until you’ve established a strong enough bridge to lead them to the next steps. The primary objective is furthering their loyalty to your brand and retaining/sustaining their business with you.

Ask your customer about their experience and what helpful or positive feedback they may be willing to offer. They could very well be inspired to give back if they feel loyal enough to you for the services you provided. Ask for a review or testimonial that shares their experience of working with you. 

Marketing Tactics Relevant to This Phase:

• Personal Testimonials
• Reviews
• Promotional Offers
• Maintaining Your Professional Kindness
• Following Through on Strong Work
• Continue to Prove Value Along the Way

The final step of the customer value journey. Ideally, the goal of this phase is for your brand story to become entwined in the customer’s story.

It proves that your customer feels so strongly about your brand that they see it as a necessary element to success for any business and could even go so far as wanting to make your offering part of their business. An example could be a customer or client incorporating your brand into their own business offerings as a partner or affiliate.

Bringing more and more customers to this final phase of the customer value journey is how you continue to grow and expedite your flywheel, and add even more loyal, advocating, paying clients to your roster.

Marketing Tactics Relevant to This Phase:

• Referral Bonus
• Partner Fees
• Compensation (ex. additional services for each referred customer)