Don't Overlook Your Website (Pt. 2)

Use your website the right way

In general, most times, how you use something informs how you set it up. Therefore, you should strive to drive people to and through your website. 

You can achieve this by using all your marketing to push people to your website, where they can gather information and even make a purchase right there.

It is also very important to align with your customer’s journey as they go from being aware of a potential problem/pain/challenge to the point where they buy something.

Customer journey explained

A persona goes through a definite cycle when buying something, namely:

Awareness

The general knowledge about a need that your prospect has to meet, a pain they are trying to solve, or a problem they are trying to overcome.

Interest

They now know a little bit more about their need, they have defined it and are starting to think about how they can solve it.

Consideration

They are starting to look at potential solutions to meet their pain or solve their problem. 

Evaluation

They have decided on your solution and want to evaluate it against preset criteria or something the industry has provided.

Procurement

They have made an intellectual decision to buy and need to make a financial investment, which is money exchanging hands and making a purchase.

Retention and Upsell

At this stage, you want to retain your customer and sell them more of what you have. Your role here is to find continual and additional investment.

How to align your website with your customer’s journey

As a customer is going through their journey, you need to align your website content with each step as follows:

Awareness

Pick a topic that is related to the problem/pain/challenge you are trying to solve. One way to do this is to have a neutral site that has a lot of information on either the industry or the pain/problem. This allows people to opt-in and learn more.

Interest

Have content such as ‘5 things everybody needs to know about X.

Consideration

Have content such as ‘How can my company solve your X challenge/pain?’.

Evaluation

You could have short demos, short videos with competitive differentiators, trials, and even webinars.

Procurement

Have Return on Investment (ROI) documents and content such as ‘How can you pay for this and proof your investment?’.

Retention and Upsell

Have content such as case studies and how customers are using and expanding. Case studies help in reinforcement and help people understand potentially new use cases.

In summary, use all your marketing to push people to and through your website. In addition, always align your website with the steps of your customer’s journey namely awareness, interest, consideration, evaluation, procurement, and retention and upsell.