All Buyer Journeys Are the Same. Right?

Buyer journeys help teams within your company predict buyer behavior so that you can better anticipate their needs and guide them to the next best step in the buyer and customer journeys. What makes buyer journeys slightly more complex is that not every shopper begins the journey in the same way or with the same motivation.

These differences create a need for specific drivers. What content or offer will move the new-to-you customer to purchase? What benefit convinces the returning customer to come back and continue purchasing your product?

Essentially, the point of mapping the buyer journey is to identify places along that journey where and when:

• The content needs to change to meet the customer’s needs at each step.

• Interactive features or tools need to be highlighted, featured, encouraged, and available.

• Purchase options need to surface, and the right actions to purchase or find a store are available and easy to find.

• Calls-to-action and next best steps need to be more contextual.

Without mapping, teams risk losing customers because the one-size-fits-all approach isn’t engaging the specific motivators that drive different customer segments or adequately getting them through the journey quicker based on their context and behavior. Buyer journey maps offer businesses the opportunity to better understand the customer conversation so they can meet them where they are and guide them toward a solution.

Where Does the Buyer Journey Begin?

The entry points into the buyer journey have evolved to extend far beyond brick-and-mortar stores. Think about the last time a large kitchen appliance or major electronic broke at your home. Did you begin looking for a replacement by starting an internet search, walking into a store, or visiting a specific brand’s website?

With e-commerce, there isn’t a single front door, because not every buyer journey starts directly on your site. E-commerce and omnichannel marketing introduce many ways into a shopping experience.

Some journeys start beyond the e-commerce site through a general search, a targeted online ad, digital signage, or a TV ad. Social media presents another increasingly important entry point: sales through social commerce accounted for 18.5% of online sales worldwide in 2023, and that number is expected to steadily grow.

Online marketplaces present yet another popular starting point for buyers. Amazon alone accounted for 40% of ecommerce sales in the US in 2023 (not to mention 80% of marketplace sales). Acting as the modern version of a big-box store, shoppers can begin researching products in great detail via marketplaces without even visiting a product’s specific brand site.

Knowing that the traditional front door has changed, brands must determine how to adapt their measurement and organization to track what good is in terms of a successful customer journey, because depending on how they arrive, the journey will unfold differently.

Understanding Buyer Motivations

Many companies speculate on how their customers behave without understanding or measuring their actual behaviors or motivations. Without this data, teams risk spending too much time focusing on strategies that won’t yield positive results. For instance, if only 5% of your buyers are returning shoppers strictly purchasing replacement parts, but a majority of buyers are net new, focusing on curating the net new buyer journey is a more strategic way to drive sales.

Buyers have different motivations and approach the purchase process from different perspectives. Some know exactly what they want and their preferred company to buy from. Other buyers might want to shop around and research their options. These buyers could land on your site through a web search, and that journey and discovery process is very different from someone who knows your brand, goes directly to your site, and buys your product.

Shoppers are motivated by discounts, convenience, their immediate needs, impulse…the list goes on. They also value personalization, as 81% of shoppers said they prefer companies that offer personalized experiences. In each of these instances, brands can tailor the customer journey to supply each type of shopper with the product information, content, and offers that meet their unique needs and guide them to the next action.

Product Categories Impact Buyer Journeys

There’s certainly an underpinning of awareness-consideration-decision or some variation of the traditional purchase path through all customer journeys but depending on the complexity or size of the purchase, the consideration (or shopping) stage is more nuanced.

Customers shopping for low-cost, inconsequential items will likely add to cart without needing to investigate the product further. But someone buying a sectional sofa, for example, won’t necessarily be incentivized by a “Buy Now” button. The difference in cost and product longevity alone makes the furniture purchase a bigger commitment and therefore, the buyer journey tends to be more complex.

The furniture shopper’s mindset is more focused on exploring all of their options in order to maximize the investment they’re about to make, so they may take weeks to narrow down the right product. This buyer will likely require more touchpoints (such as more product information, educational content, or customer assistance) throughout the consideration stage before making a purchase.

But there’s also the possibility that if the conditions are right, they could make an impulse purchase. Mapping the customer journey helps marketers prepare for all of the potential paths to purchase and present the best possible options or logical next steps at each point, ultimately ending with the customer clicking “Buy Now.”

Some people might argue that a one-size-fits-all buying journey could then apply for all customers of a specific product, but that isn’t the case, either. There could be a different purchasing journey for a returning customer vs. a first-time buyer vs. someone who abandoned their cart and is coming back to purchase — their intent, and that context, can matter significantly.

Identifying through those unique journeys the opportunities for targeting or personalization allows teams to create a seamless buying experience for each category of shopper within a specific product category.

Are Your Journey Maps Gathering Dust on a Shelf?

There are organizations that do everything right in terms of developing buyer personas and mapping buyer journeys for each one. But for too many teams, the usefulness of the buyer journey maps ends there, simply because they don’t actively integrate the journey across their operations. The key to maximizing the usefulness and effectiveness of your buyer journeys is to map measurement onto the journey.

Measurement isn’t exclusive to marketing and sales teams. Product, UX, customer support, management, and shipping are just some of the teams that can benefit from the specific customer details offered from the buyer journey, and in turn provide feedback to continually improve buyer journeys.

Consider the customer shopping for high-end athletic shoes. Data from earlier stages in the buyer journey may show that this type of shopper responds well to virtual try-on features, so an AI-powered, AR viewer guides them through options that fit their needs or wants, based on both the information they enter and on what others with similar likes/preferences ultimately purchased.

The buyer can take any number of actions from here: add a shoe to the cart, abandon the cart and trigger a reminder email, continue to shop so they reach the threshold for free shipping, or consult the chatbot about the return policy. In each instance, facilitating the next step of the journey requires input and expertise from various departments. The resulting action can be used to create more personalized and streamlined experiences for future customers, provided that teams are clear on how their contributions support the overarching journey goal.

Crafting buyer journeys that meaningfully contribute to a better customer experience can be complex, especially if you intend to implement changes manually. But with the right partner, your team and customers can benefit from optimized and data-backed buyer journeys sooner than you think. As an Adobe partner, our team at Rightpoint can guide you through customer journey optimization using powerful tools like Adobe Journey Optimizer. Contact us today to get started.