Do you know your customer's decision journey?

In the late 1990s and mid-2000s, I remember my auto sector client telling me that the job of advertising was to get customers into the dealer showroom and generate test drives of the advertised (new) vehicle. The industry’s rule of thumb then was two test drives will convert into one sale. But the number 2:1 did change by the time we hit the early 2010s; it became more like 3:1 or 4:1. Auto companies doubled up on test drive generation and encouraged (even incentivised) dealers to give more and more test drives. In the case of one brand, the number hit an absurd 100:1. Dealers played along and made extra money on every test drive. Come the mid-2010s, test drives were no longer doing the magic. Car customer was changing and there was a need to understand what was happening.

The article “Customer Decision Journey” first published in the June 2009 issue of McKinsey Quarterly created a new way to understand what was happening to customers as they go about buying products and services. The article also added a new term or acronym to our marketing lexicon — CDJ. How is the customer changing? In the past, a customer identified let's say four models of cars to check out. They would visit four showrooms, take test drives and pick one of them. But something changed in the late 2000s. The article points out that the decision journey is no longer a simple three-step process but is a cycle. Brands can get added or dropped at various stages. Take the case of the potential car buyer. She may pick four models. And after test driving two, she may visit a car-comparison website. That visit may create a new wish list of car models. Of the first four brands, two may be dropped, but two new models may be added (the research behind the McKinsey journal article showed that customers tend to add 2.2 car brands to the initial 3.8). And this process can continue till purchase happens (Moment of Truth). After the purchase a lot will depend on the chosen car brand how the customer will behave the next time around. The article says that the journey is like a loop with four stages: initial consideration, active evaluation, moment of purchase and post-purchase experience.

What do marketers do? From just managing test drives or whatever may be the metric in their industry, they need to now understand the CDJ (Customer Deci­s­ion Journey) and its many stages. Then they need to create cam­paigns and communication program­mes to engage with the customer at various st­a­ges of their journey. This may involve bei­ng present in mass me­dia to drive awareness and knowledge. An active dealer network that provides test drives but also captures customer data. A follow-up system that ens­ures that the brand does not fall off the radar. A vibrant digital presence in the most critical websites visited by prospective customers and so on.
 

The market research industry has developed tools to map customer decision journeys. And ad agencies/digital agencies are ready with their own processes for engaging with the customer at various stages of their journey. But that has led to a new problem.

All brand managers, irrespective of the level of involvement of the customer in the product category, want to map decision journeys and engage with the customer at every touch point. For example, should an energy drink or a toilet cleaner brand be active in social media? Should it invest in search marketing? Does influencer marketing make sense?

In the recent Harvard Business Review article, “What you are getting wrong about customer journeys”, Ahir Gopaldas and Anton Seibert say that brands have to un­derstand their category dynamics before creating campaigns to eng­age customers in their journey. In their 2 by 2 matrix, they categorise what brands do to engage their customers as effortless-effortful vs predictable-unpredictable. For a coffee shop brand customer engagement should be effortless-predictable; simple messages like the day’s wea­ther or traffic would suffice. But for a health/fitness app, the engagem­ent may have to be effortful-unpredictable; something that the custo­mer will find new and stimulating.

I would like to add that understanding the CDJ of your customer is critical. You also need to understand the CDJ of substitute and complementary products. It may also make sense to see how you can map your marketing communication activities to the CDJ. But before you press the button on the ten things to do to engage with your customer, you need to pull back and decide what are those two or three must-do activities. You may want to run experiments, or test some of these in specific geographies of India before you roll out the campaign all-India. Often, just a few key activities are all that you need to ensure that your brand does not become a leaky bucket that keeps losing customers at the last stage. In the case of high-involvement high-investment products like automobiles, test drives may still be very important. But just betting on test drives may not drive your sales numbers. Understanding your customer’s decision journey and engaging with them at just those critical stages will be vital.

The writer is an independent brand coach and a best-selling author. 

His latest book is Spring — Bouncing Back From Rejection. He can be reached at ambimgp@brand-building.com