275 | How to Improve Your Customer Journey with Jordan Kentris, A Good Day
Are your marketing & sales efforts focused on customer acquisition or customer retention? This quarter inside of Proof to Product LABS, we’ve been focused on sales strategies with an eye towards customer retention. Meaning, how do we get our existing customers to buy more frequently and in higher volume; and how do we get them to refer their friends?
In October, I led a training on customer retention that included some eye opening statistics about why it is so incredibly important to focus on keeping our existing customers happy and I shared specific strategies for how to nurture those relationships.
Today’s podcast episode folds nicely into this discussion topic—we pulled an excerpt from a past coffee chat inside of LABS with Jordan Kentris of A Good Day where we talked about enhancing our online customer experience and the steps a customer takes as they interact with us online.
Today’s episode is brought to you by our Proof to Product LABS program. If you’re looking to streamline your product based business and are looking for coaching & community support head to prooftoproduct.com/labs. Our vault of on-demand trainings runs deep but the incredible community, connections and collaborations are like no other. If you sell physical products, come join us—this space was intentionally built just for you.
In this episode, we mentioned a few resources that LABS members can access in the resources tab inside of Proof to Product LABS. These trainings include:
Optimizing our Digital Footprint (SEO & DMO) with Myrna Daramy
SEO of Product Based Businesses with Jessica Freeman
Exploring the Customer Journey
A customer journey is how a person interacts with your brand, it’s not the same as a purchase cycle, but simply is the broader lifecycle of a customer. How do they engage with your social media, what are they doing on your website, and are they reading your emails? Those are the types of things to consider when we talk about a customer journey.
The Before, During, and After of the Sales Process
The customer journey starts with how they discover you, to the first interaction with your brand, and potentially even to the point of purchase. It includes the before, during, and after experience of the sales process.
Pain Points & Needs
In addition to the positive interactions that a customer explores during the journey, you should also consider what would be a pain point or need for the client—what is their need and why are they inquiring or purchasing? This is generally in the before phase of the sales process. Identifying this need helps you to better navigate how you want to guide your customer on their journey to buy, because it will be different in every scenario.
How to Get Customers to Buy Your Product
If you’re just getting started in mapping out your customer journey with the intention of getting a customer to buy your product, then you may want to look at the purchase cycle. The most important thing to understand in this customer journey is how a person goes from hearing about your company to purchasing from you. Take a look at your entry points, like emails, search, referrals, socials, or retailers.
While there are multiple entry points, they likely guide users to your website, so that is a great place to start in terms of understanding how to get customers to buy your product. From your website, where do customers go?
Jordan’s Customer Journey
In Jordan’s own business, A Good Day, he does custom wedding stationery, where he has found that he has two distinct paths of his customer’s journey that lead potential customers to buy from him.
The first path of his customer journey is organic—customers who are getting married, looking for wedding invitations, and find him in a search. On his website, they learn about him and see examples of his work. The clear next path for them in the customer journey is to contact him to start the conversation.
The second path is through referrals from past customers or wedding vendors. Those individuals are sharing Jordan’s work through social media, yet the main CTA is to contact him, similar to his other customer journey CTA.
For the retail side of his business, the customer journey is a little more abstract than his custom wedding stationery journey. Potential customers are searching for a distinct product, like a funny birthday card, then finding him on Google or through a search. The next barriers that his customers have to overcome are price point, shipping costs, and product type. This can cause them to either purchase immediately or leave the site.
Barriers that Keep Customers from Buying Your Product
Now the barriers that Jordan’s customers experience are just a couple that many product-based businesses have to deal with. An additional barrier includes how clearly your navigation and pages are labeled on your website; you don’t want to confuse visitors with what you do or offer by trying to be too cute. Simplicity and clarity will go a long way on your website. Another barrier is a lack of storytelling—telling your story is valuable in a small business, because people who love to shop small enjoy knowing who they’re buying from. Filling those gaps explains the difference in your prices versus a big box brand.
Optimizing Your Website for Google to Improve Your Customer Journey
If you’ve realized that your navigation or even how you’re categorizing your products could be a barrier to purchase for your clients, now would be a great time to explore how you can further optimize your product pages for Google to help drive more traffic to your website. One of the most important elements for search engine optimization to consider is your product title, which also serves as your page title and H1 tag. This tells Google and any external linking previews what is being sold on the page.
Simple SEO Tips to Help Your Customer Journey
Since your Search Engine Optimization does play a part in the client journey in bringing potential customers in, there are a few things that product based businesses can do to improve their SEO. These tips include:
Review your Google Analytics to see what people are searching for to get to your website.
Create more content around keywords that are relevant to your brand that you want to be ranking for.
Improve your CTAs on pages that have high bounce rates.
Incorporate valid keywords into your product descriptions.
Look at how competitors and bigger brands are structuring their content and pages.
Improve your domain authority by sharing links to similar makers and products in blog posts and gift guides. Note: Ensure you’re not distracting your audience from making a purchase by including external links in important parts of your website.
If you enjoyed this episode and are ready to make improvements in your own customer journey, make sure that you consider your own business model, the steps it takes to get to know you, and how they purchase. Your customer journey will be something that is customized to your brand and your audience.
Today’s episode is brought to you by our Proof to Product LABS program. We hope you enjoyed this peek into one of our most popular Coffee Chats inside of Proof to Product LABS. Coffee chats in general are some of our best attended events because members get to share their knowledge, experiences and expertise with each other. Plus, we leave time for live Q&A, connection and collaboration. At Proof to Product, we truly believe that the more we share with one another the faster our individual businesses will grow—and these events are a piece of that. If you want to learn more about Proof to Product LABS, check out the full coffee chat with Jordan, or watch the trainings we mentioned by Myrna and Jessica head to prooftoproduct.com/labs.
Download These Quotables to Save and Share
MEET JORDAN
Jordan Kentris is the founder and creative director of A Good Day, a bespoke experience studio specializing in custom stationery, events, branding and user experience. Getting his start in advertising, he's spent the last 13 years building a foundation in digital & consumer strategy with a focus on enhancing user experiences across the physical & digital worlds. He launched A Good Day in 2014 to marry his passions for paper & user experience, working on a wide range of projects from small business branding & custom wedding invitations to website redesigns & digital transformations for large multinational brands.
CONNECT WITH JORDAN
WEBSITE: agooddayinc.com| INSTAGRAM: @agooddayinc | FACEBOOK: @agooddayinc | LINKEDIN: @jordankentris
Connect with Katie Hunt
Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.
Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct
you might also like:
