Customer Value Journey

The customer value journey is the step-by-step process that attracts potential customers and hooks them in, ideally converting them into loyal customers that keep coming back. It’s a straightforward idea that has several steps to follow:

• Awareness is the first step, as of course people need to be aware of you and your business before they can become a customer. This step involves advertisements, blog posts, social media posts and all other means of getting the word out.
• Next is engagement. You need to hold the attention of your audience, especially in the current market where information is at an all-time high and attention spans at an all-time low. It’s about beginning a relationship with your customers, getting them to emotionally involve themselves with your products or services. You need to keep their attention lest it wander off somewhere else.
• After this comes the step where you ask them to subscribe, with them giving you their contact information in order to allow you to send them further communication. It’s the idea that they can fill out a form and you send them something in return, but be aware that in the age where people are bombarded with free content you need to stand out.
• Conversion comes next, which is where they become a customer – sampling your wares.
• Next, you want to excite them and make them associate your business with good feelings. 
• After this comes retention, where they become a repeat customer.
• Finally, you ask them to share the word and they eventually become a promoter of your brand, product or services.

Using customer experience to increase ROI

The final few steps are key to increasing your ROI from the customer value journey. By using the consumer and their positive experiences as a springboard, you can spread the word to other potential customers and widen your net, without your own advertisements necessarily reaching them. This can be in the form of share buttons on order confirmation pages, suggestions to post on social media about your great services, etc. The average person is happy to do this, but will require some persuasion to do so as early in this stage they won’t be likely to do it off their own initiative. 

Once the consumer has progressed further, they’ll become a loyal customer who promotes and tells people about your brand, both because they believe in it and because you can offer some sort of incentive to those who do. There are reward programs you can offer your promoters, for instance small rewards when a friend signs up using them as a referral. These offer a great ROI as you can get another consumer hooked on your brand without much inconvenience or even engagement on your side, in the beginning.