Navigating the Buyer's Journey: Insights for Agencies

Hey everyone, it's Rob DeCosta here, agency owner and agency coach. And I'm excited to bring you another episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. Today I'm talking all about the buyer's journey and the importance for agencies to really understand their buyer. And I want to share some of the mistakes that I see agencies making time and time again in their marketing. Now, the buyer's journey is the process a customer goes through to to the point of purchasing a service from you. So the journey consists of several stages. These stages typically are broken down into awareness, consideration and decision. So that's what we're talking about today. And let's get on with the show. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. So in today's episode of the podcast, I want to talk to you about the buyer's journey and some of the mistakes that agencies make when it comes to their marketing. Now, the buyer's journey is the journey that your prospects take from when they first become aware of you to where they start getting to know, like and trust you. So they're considering should they buy from you and the final stages where they're making that decision to purchase. Now, as I said, I want to share with you some of the common mistakes I see marketing agencies make with their marketing. Now of course, that's quite surprising because you'd expect marketing agencies to be great at their marketing, but of course, it's the cobbler's shoes. We all know what we should be doing, but we don't always do it. I'm sure you'll be listening to this episode, nodding your head but actually thinking, am I actually doing all of these things? And the key mistake they make is they don't overlay their marketing and their outbound communications across these three stages of know, like and trust or awareness, consideration and decision. So what happens is they do a piece of marketing, they expect to get results immediately, I.e. new customers and lots of inquiries, but they don't get that result and so they move on to the next new shiny new object. Or they decided that strategy just doesn't work for them. Instead what they need to do is attract new leads into their world, which is stage one. Nurture these leads from initial Awareness to consideration or from no to like, which is stage two. And then ultimately move them to stage three, which is the decision making process where they trust you and they're now trying to decide if they're going to buy. As I said, this is similar to know, like and trust that I've spoken about many times before. Now just remember that at the end of the day we won't buy anything, even a bottle of water, unless we trust the brand and we like the brand. And the same is true for your marketing. So your goal needs to be to have leads and prospects at each of those three stages. So the top of the sales funnel, which is the awareness stage or getting to know you. The middle of the funnel, which is consideration or getting to like you. And then the bottom of the funnel, which is decision and getting to trust you. So let's dig into these three stages where you need to move your leads from getting to know you to like you to trust you. So ultimately they'll consider buying from you and and ultimately choose you over the competition. So the first stage is that awareness stage and at this point you are just trying to get people to know that you exist and start showing them that you know what you're talking about and that you can solve some of their pain points. So this is the top of the funnel where we're trying to get new people to sign up to our email list. We're trying to get eyes on our blogs or our social media or listening to a podcast like this. So those are the kind of things that you would have at the top of your sales funnel in the awareness stage. Blog posts, infographics, podcasts, signups to your email list and all of the other things like that. At this point you are creating short form marketing content. You're not really digging really deeply into the problem. Now none of this is going to work if you don't have a clear niche and you don't really understand your customers. What you'll end up doing is writing very generic marketing copy that doesn't really resonate with anybody. Your goal at this stage is for someone to read your content and think, oh my God, that's exactly what's going on for me. This person is a mind reader. And of course, once you've done that, they're going to want to learn more about you and that's when they move to that middle stage of consideration. So obviously if you're relying on your content on your website, with blogs and so on, then make sure that you are really optimizing for SEO. And again, make sure that you also have a way of moving those readers off your website or those listeners to your podcast to move them into your email list by offering some kind of sign up in return for something more detailed. So you might be writing a blog on niching, for example. This is what I would do. And then in that blog you would say, if you want to learn more about this and get a step by step guide, then download my free guide. And of course in order for the reader to get that free guide, they're going to have to buy it in inverted commas with their email address and then you're moving them into that middle nurturing stage of the funnel of consideration. So that's stage one, which is the awareness stage or the stage where they're getting to know you and you're introducing them to your world. Stage two is the consideration stage. And this stage is where we are providing more detailed content. I call this education based marketing. This is where you are nurturing your leads and you genuinely providing them some value that is going to help them in their business. Because this is where they're starting to really consider, could I work with you? Now, one mistake I see people making here is that they're too afraid to give too much of the good stuff away in their marketing because they think they need to save that for their paying clients. But just remember, you need to demonstrate you know what you're talking about and your credibility at this stage. So of course you need to give some of the good stuff away. And to help you allay that fear, I just want to remind you that people buy from you or buy from me, not necessarily because of the content, but because we are going to handhold them through the process or if we provide a consultancy done for you service, we're actually, actually going to solve the pain for them. So clients very rarely buy because of the content, they buy because of that process, that hand holding or doing it for them or doing it with them to help them solve their pain. So don't be afraid of giving away really good content at this stage. As I said, it's going to be more education based. It's going to be more detailed ebooks and case studies and practical tips on things that they need to do to overcome the particular pain that you are solving. Now, one thing you want to do as you build your email list, you want to be able to segment your leads based on their needs or the pains and not just nurturing everybody with the same kind of campaign because the danger there is that you are going to start missing the point because this isn't going to be the key issue for all of your audience. So you want to be segmenting them as much as you can. And one of the ways you're going to do that is simply in the forms that they fill in. Ask them something about their business. So for example, if you download something from my website, I'm going to ask you how big your agency is or are you a freelancer? So I can segment my audience based on if they're freelancers, if they are small businesses or they're mid sized businesses. And obviously each of those different audiences are going to have different challenges which I can start to solve because I've segmented my audience. The other thing that you want to do at this stage is provide some kind of social proof or testimonials or short case studies to demonstrate not only that you know what you're talking about, but you've solved this particular pain that the reader might have with other clients in the past. So make sure you pepper your content with testimonials and case studies and video testimonials where you possibly can. Okay, so the third and final stage of this is the consideration stage. This is where they are starting to trust you and you're going to have more one to one conversations with them. And this is the point where they have already identified that they have the pain that they need to solve it and they're now trying to decide are they going to buy from you or, or are they going to buy from somebody else. So these are going to look like phone calls, strategy meetings, face to face meetings, zoom meetings, proposals and so on. And obviously you'll want to use case studies to help demonstrate that you know what you're talking about and that you've helped other people just like them solve the problem that they have. Now one of the things that you want to make sure that you do, which a lot of people don't do, is be good at following up your leads. You need to be a rock filer and decide, well, if someone's got to this stage of the sales process, I'm going to follow them up. And there's one of three responses that they can give you. Yes, I want to buy from you. No, I don't want to buy from you, or I want to buy from you, but not yet, in which case you're going to have a future follow up. And the only response you can't have is nothing. So you have to be a Rockville here and follow them up promptly and make sure obviously on those calls that you are listening to them, you are overcoming their objections and concerns. And obviously you want to find a way of creating some kind of urgency and scarcity so they make a decision. So those are the three stages of your sales funnel or your buyer's journey that you need to move people through. And you need marketing to support you at each of those three stages. I now want to share with you sort of 10 mistakes that I see agencies making when it comes to generating leads and nurturing them through the sales process. So I'm going to share with you 10 things. Let's see how many of them you can relate to or hopefully it will be zero. And you say, yeah, I'm not making any of these mistakes. So some of these I've already said already, but worth repeating. Number one, one is not researching your target audience, not niching clearly, and not having clear buyer Personas so that you are not segmenting because this is basically going to waste time and it's going to be reaching out to people with messages that aren't really resonating and therefore they're not really interested in your product or service. That's number one. Number two is just more broadly not having a clear lead generation strategy. So that's where people lurch from one shiny object to the next rather than having a robust strategy for attracting and capturing leads and nurturing those leads till such a point they become customers. So that is number two, not having a clear lead generation strategy. And number three is, well, if you do have that in place, are you tracking and measuring your lead generation results so that you know what works and what doesn't work and you can do more of what does work and stop doing less of what doesn't work. And of course optimize your campaigns to maximize the results that you get. That's number three. Number four is, well, I might be good at generating leads in these email signups. What I'm not good at is engaging and nurturing your leads. So obviously if you don't engage with your leads regularly, then they are going to lose interest and become colder and colder. And then when you do message them, they're going to feel like it's spam that you're sending. So remember, we're trying to build, know, like and trust. And one of the ways we're going to do that is by nurturing your leads through communicating with them regularly. Number five is not segmenting or personalizing your communication with your leads. And if you don't do this, then you're going to send very generic messages or even irrelevant messages to your audience that don't hit that nerve and don't resonate with them and therefore they're going to leave your world. Mistake number six is not providing value to your leads. I've already mentioned this, but some people feel like they don't want to give away too much in their marketing. But this ends up meaning that you're giving very generic responses or information that everybody would give or you're being too salesy and too pushy. You really want to make sure that you are getting this 80, 20 balance of 80% of the time providing value, 20% of the time selling. So don't be afraid of providing value and the good stuff to your list because that was how you demonstrate you know what you're talking about and you build that credibility. Number seven is not following up your leads promptly. So when someone moves further down the sales funnel and they identify themselves as a potential customer, you need to be quick on following them up. And of course the longer it takes, the colder that lead will become. And then you've put a lot of money and effort to get them to that stage and you've lost it. So make sure you are responsive in following up leads. And number eight kind of goes hand in hand with that which is not qualifying and prioritizing your prospects. So you might get a lot of leads but you might not convert them very well. So you want to make sure that you are identifying your five star leads, which means they are a good fit, they have a need right now. The need that they have is something that you can solve and you solve for other people and they also have the budget to spend on your services. So that's what a five star prospect looks like. And you need to make sure you're qualifying your leads to identify those so you can really spend time on those rather than the prospects that are actually just time waster info gatherers. And they aren't the people that you want to spend lots of time on. They're the people who can digest your education based marketing but not your time. So make sure you're qualifying and prioritizing properly, which is number eight. And mistake number nine is not creating a sense of urgency or scarcity and sort of leaving it with the prospect. Once you've sent them a proposal you, you need to make sure that you don't get ghosted and that you are creating a sense of urgency with them to make a decision because otherwise people are generally pontificators and they'll put off today what they can do tomorrow, or they'll go and start looking for other options. So you want to make sure you mitigate that as much as possible. So figure out how you can create some urgency and scarcity with your prospects. And finally, number 10 is not closing the deal with the customers. So you might be really good at generating these appointments, you might be really good on those calls, but you're really bad at closing the deal. So you need to make sure that you get dates in the diary to follow up once you've sent a proposal, and that you do put your salesman hat on at that point and actually try and close the deal. So those are 10 mistakes that you aren't going to make because you followed everything else that I said at the beginning of this podcast. So hopefully that has been useful for you. You'll be able to read the show notes with this, which will outline those 10 mistakes in more detail. But I hope this has been a very practical episode. I hope it's get you thinking a bit. I'm sure we can all relate to this and think there are some areas that we can do better. And as ever, if you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure you subscribe. Please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and of course please feel free to share this podcast with your agency friends and colleagues. But other than that, have a great rest of your week and I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.