Marketing in a Minute – Episode 23 | Ahmed Moaaz
People often do not buy the first time they see you. They discover, compare, hesitate and return. Map that journey and give each stage the message it needs.
Buying is often more than a first impression
A customer who sees an ad and buys immediately is only one kind of customer. Many journeys take longer: someone discovers you, becomes interested, compares options, becomes convinced and buys. Afterwards, they may return or recommend you. This is the customer journey, and understanding it changes how you build campaigns.
Five stages of the journey
- Awareness: The customer discovers that you exist, or recognizes a problem they need to solve. Reach campaigns and broad educational content can play a role here.
- Interest: The person starts paying attention: following a page, watching a video or reading an article. Useful content helps sustain this stage.
- Consideration: The customer compares alternatives, prices, reviews and other people’s experiences. Genuine testimonials and honest comparisons can help.
- Decision and purchase: The customer needs the remaining obstacles removed and a real reason to act: a relevant offer, clear returns terms or easy payment.
- After purchase: Delivery, support and follow-up affect whether the customer returns, recommends you or regrets the purchase.
What happens when campaigns ignore the journey?
Some campaigns treat everyone as though they are ready to decide: “Buy now with 20% off!” appears in front of someone who has only just discovered the business. Direct-response offers can work for people ready to buy. For others, the message may arrive before they understand the product or trust the store.
The result can be a high acquisition cost and the mistaken conclusion that advertising does not work. The underlying issue may be that the campaign jumps to the end of a conversation before starting it.
How do you match a message to each stage?
- For awareness: Discuss the problem, not only the product. A healthy-food store might ask “Why is your diet not working?” The immediate aim is recognition and relevance, rather than a purchase.
- For interest: Demonstrate knowledge and build trust through tips, explanations and genuine customer results. Give people a reason to remember you.
- For consideration: Answer comparison questions before they are asked. Why is the price set that way? What makes the offer different? What do customers say?
- For decision: Remove the last barriers with clear guarantees or returns terms, suitable payment options, stated delivery expectations and a genuine reason to buy now, not false pressure.
- After purchase: Thank the customer, explain how to use the product and send a relevant reminder at an appropriate time. This connects with the retention and repeat-purchase topics in episodes 19 and 20.
How can you find where customers get stuck?
Map the numbers available at each stage:
- How many people does the advertising reach? This helps describe awareness.
- How many visit or engage? This provides an interest indicator.
- How many add to basket or ask about price? These can signal consideration.
- How many complete a purchase? This measures the purchase step.
- How many buy a second time? This helps assess the ongoing relationship.
Investigate the transition where the largest meaningful gap appears. Plenty of views but few visits may point to the ad. Many visits but few basket additions may point to the product, price or page. Full baskets without completed purchases bring us back to cart abandonment. Use context and your own previous results rather than treating one ratio as a universal verdict.
A worked example
A monthly campaign produces 100,000 views, 3,000 website visits (3%), 150 basket additions (5% of visits), 60 completed orders (40% of baskets), and 15 customers who return for a second purchase (25%).
Suppose comparison with the store’s own history suggests that the basket-addition stage is the main opportunity. The next investment may be clearer product photographs, visible answers to common questions and genuine reviews rather than more advertising. Raising basket additions from 5% to 8% would increase orders from 60 to 96 if the same 3,000 visits and 40% basket-to-order rate held. It is a planning illustration, not a guaranteed outcome.
The journey is not a straight line
Reality is less orderly than a diagram. Someone who has known the brand for months may jump straight to a WhatsApp purchase. Another customer may buy on day one and disappear. A third may compare options for weeks. The stages are a thinking tool, not a fixed law. They remind you that an audience contains people in different situations.
The journey also varies by product. Buying a meal may take minutes. Buying furniture or an expensive course can take weeks, conversations and research. Higher price and greater personal impact often call for more information and patience.
A common mistake: one metric for every stage
Judging an awareness campaign only by immediate purchases can cause you to stop useful work. Each stage needs a suitable measure: reach and its cost for awareness; engagement and time spent for interest; questions and basket additions for consideration; orders and acquisition cost for purchase; and return rates for the ongoing relationship.
A content campaign may build a relevant audience before producing sales. That is a reason to measure it over an appropriate journey and period, not a reason to assume future sales are guaranteed.
A ten-minute exercise
Review the last ten customers who bought. Ask them, or review the records: how did each first hear about the business? How many encounters came before purchase? What finally convinced them?
The actual journeys may differ from what you expected. A supposedly secondary channel may have introduced several customers. Those interviews can help you reconsider priorities using real customer evidence rather than assumptions. Ten real journeys are a more useful starting point than an elaborate map based only on guesses.
Summary
The customer journey is a reminder that selling is a relationship, not only a button click. Match content and messages to the customer’s stage, then measure transitions to find where the journey becomes difficult. You can build a better buying experience by answering the question each stage presents, rather than repeating “Buy now” to everyone.
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