Your relationship with your customer shouldn’t end at the bottom of the pre-purchase marketing funnel when they make their first purchase. Instead, you should open up the funnel after a person purchases and focus on customer retention (Post-Purchase Marketing Funnels). What is the journey like after a person buys from you?
By opening up the original marketing funnel into the new model, you can build deeper connections with your customers to drive repeat transactions and generate even more customers through existing ones. There are two stages of post-purchase marketing funnel: Loyalty and Advocacy
Loyalty
There’s a huge upside to emphasizing customer retention in your marketing funnel: more money in your pocket. Why not give discounts to your loyal customers to encourage them to purchase more from you? If you have customers that absolutely love your brand and are happy with their first purchase, they are more than likely to buy from you again.
Primary goal: To retain your customers and instill loyalty by delighting customers with helpful content and awesome service.
Do: Give helpful information, send educational content relevant to your customers. Cross-sell and up-sell. Highlight new promotions.
Don’t: Stop interacting with your customers or adding value.
When a customer buys from you, continue to nurture that customer instead of dropping communication. Remind them to leave a review in order to get a discount on their next purchase. Encourage them to take more action such as reading a recent blog post or participating in a giveaway contest.
Advocacy
Advocacy happens when your customers become fans of your brand. Not only are they loyal and continue to buy from you, they also constantly tell their friends about you and brag about you on social media. According to invesp, word-of-mouth marketing results in 5x more sales than paid media and people are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend.
Primary goal: To turn your customers into fans who talk about your company and refer you to their friends.
Do: Connect with your loyal customers, keep delighting your customers with awesome content and service, collect feedback.
Don’t: Forget about your customers.
Have you made a purchase because it was recommended by a friend? Getting customers to advocate for you has become that much easier with social media. Linking your social media accounts to the checkout pages on your website will direct loyal customers into following you on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter whereby they have the ability to share your posts with their friends.
Uber and Lyft use referral codes as a means to drive advocacy and it works tremendously. Customers of these ride-sharing apps were given referral codes so that they can recommend a ride to a friend in order for both parties to receive a discount. So if a friend uses a unique referral code for their first ride on either Uber or Lyft, they will have great savings and at the same time, the referrer also receives a discount. This marketing strategy is a win-win scenario in many peoples’ eyes. The number of new users on these apps grew dramatically compared to other marketing alternatives as a result.
Consider incentivising your loyal fans to brag about you if they don’t already!
Build Your Own Marketing Funnel
If you’ve made it this far then you should have all of the info needed to create your own successful marketing funnel. Here’s a quick how-to manual on getting started:
Identify your target customers by building customer personas. Truly understand their demographics, consumption behaviours, needs and wants, and challenges in their lives.
Understand and identify your business’ sales cycle. Is it 5 days? 30? 60?
Build out strategies for each stage in your marketing funnel or buyer journey. What platforms will you use? Can you expect to reach your target market in those media? How often will you reach them there?
Craft ads and content to attract and nurture your target customers. Have materials ready for each stage and explore new opportunities to engage with your target customer.
Research what competitors are doing currently and examine ways you can improve upon their strategies. Are there pain points that these competitors aren’t addressing? Do you have a unique value proposition that sets you apart from the competition?
Go back to your marketing funnel and adjust your strategy if needed based on your research.
Launch your funnel and associated marketing campaigns. Incorporate all the different mediums at your disposal (email, social media, search engine marketing, word of mouth, etc.)
Measure success at each stage of the funnel and use analytics to justify any pivots or adjustments to your plan. Set goals for each stage and evaluate if you are meeting your desired targets.
Test new strategies if you are not meeting your desired targets. It can be as simple as adjusting your ad copy or offering free content such as a whitepaper or ebook about your product.
Continue to nurture your loyal customers so that they advocate for you!
Mapping out a buyer journey can be difficult and will take time. You won’t get it exactly right on the first attempt—and that’s fine! The sooner you test out your marketing funnel, the sooner you will realize what works for your business model and what doesn’t.
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