Making sense of consumer purchase journeys

IT‘S A DIGITAL REVOLUTION

connect with brands and each other, how marketers have to adapt their thinking to these changes, and how getting it right means spreading your message seamlessly across media.

In the old days, we recognized the importance of the purchase funnel, driving affinity within each segment then hitting these segments with some rapier-like advertising. But the sheer diversity of devices we own today and the amount of information

As I’m sitting watching TV one evening I catch an advert for yoghurt that makes me laugh. It ends with a call to ‘sing along on Facebook’ and as I have my laptop open in front of me, I do a quick search and find the ad in Facebook’s video section. After emailing it to a friend whom I know will enjoy it too, I click on the information page and find a link to the main website, where the list of other yoghurts looks appealing. A quick click through to a supermarket’s site tells me the price of the yoghurt and the following week, it finds itself in my shopping basket.

A perfectly integrated purchase journey has just taken place, one that many marketers would be proud of. And it highlights some of the key changes in the way that people

MAKING SENSE OF CONSUMER PURCHASE JOURNEYS

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SOURCE: interworldstats.com

UK Online Population

Consumers may be up for grabs. Make sure you’re discoverable.

The first step in the purchase journey is discovery – a dangerous phase because this is when the consumer will become aware of your competitors and the likelihood of disruption to the purchase journey is high. The best form of defense is to make your advertising, and the trigger, contextually relevant – this is when I’m sitting on my sofa at home and actively taking steps towards my yoghurt purchase because the advert has appealed directly to me.

available to us about what we buy means that the consumer journey is far more circular and frequently doesn’t involve any brand-to-consumer interaction at all.

It’s a big challenge for marketers, and though the questions are fundamentally the same: ‘How do I ensure my product is selected? How is it purchased? How can I ensure my competitors don’t get in the way?’ It’s the answers that need revisiting. What, for example, is the role of mobile search, should I invest in a tablet website? The research involved to answer these questions brings a vast amount of data to the fore, data that has led GfK to formulate completely new research techniques to track, analyze and present a holistic picture of the journey consumers will take across categories as diverse as FMCG to technology.

SOURCE: GfK Purchase Journey – Motor insurance

Aware of fewbrands at

start

Discover brands through Search

Consideration set formed Purchase

Use journey data to disrupt consumers heading for competitor offers.

Within the discovery phase you have a great opportunity to run defense and offense at the same time. Recognizing exactly how your consumers search for products and how many searches they conduct over how many sessions can be a compelling way to benefit from your competitors’ media spend, allowing you to benefit from competitors triggering the purchase. Building keyword investments around this consumer behavior enables you to begin going on the offense and disrupting consumers heading for competitor products.

Far better though, is to optimize your keywords to kick in precisely when the customer needs the most reassurance - at the end of the journey when they may be tempted to run a last minute check. Buy these keywords and you’ll focus your marketing budget to hit at precisely the right moment.

Ensure you keep your consumers by understanding their goals.

So, you’ve successfully steered your product through the discovery phase. Hopefully the customer will now visit your website and be delighted with what she sees. If she doesn’t, she won’t be back.

At this stage you need to understand your consumers’ goals in visiting your content. By doing so, you can pinpoint the areas that are working well and those that need further investment to boost their content and give visitors what they need. And this may be applied to your partner sites as well as your own.

RECOGNIZING EXACTLY HOW YOUR COMSUMERS SEARCH FOR PRODUCTS AND HOW MANY SEARCHES THEY CONDUCT OVER HOW MANY SESSIONS CAN BE A COMPELLING WAY TO BENEFIT FROM YOUR COMPETITORS’ MEDIA SPEND

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Interestingly, the type of information that consumers seek on your website will change as they progress through the journey. It is not enough to direct a potential customer to your homepage hoping that they find the right content. Therefore, landing pages have to be optimized to ensure that the consumer receives the content they are expecting.

Consumers are integrated, you must be too.

This is where we see the advantage of a smooth consumer journey with all elements integrated; across devices, access, media and touchpoints – online as well as offline - really pay off. Of course, the consumer doesn’t care how this is achieved, as long as the journey is seamless.

Our connected world will add complexity & opportunities.

So my journey, which started with catching a TV advert, through the trigger that led me to Facebook and the product website, to sharing and price checking, and finished with the consumption of my delicious yoghurt, was actually one of optimizing content, optimizing conversion and increasing the propensity to purchase.

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CONTACT:

GfK. Growth from Knowledge

Will Youngman T +44 20 7890 9428 | M +44 7929 [email protected] or visit www.gfk.com

IN OUR MULTI-DEVICE HIGHLY CONNECTED WORLD THE QUESTIONS MARKETERS NEED TO ASK ARE FUNDAMENTALLY THE SAME (…) IT’S THE ANSWERS THAT NEED REVISITING.

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SOURCE: GfK Purchase Journey – Tablets

Pre-Purchase Research by Channel