the bossbabe podcast - 23. The 5 Stages of a Customer Journey, Identifying Your Exact Ideal Client & BossBabe Business Growth Secrets

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

In this week’s episode, BossBabe’s own co-founder and co-CEO, Danielle Canty, is sharing her most valuable insights into building and strategically executing on a successful customer journey within a brand or company. You’ll learn the secrets behind what helped Natalie and Danielle build BossBabe to what it is today, what has been pivotal to the company’s growth, and what they wished they knew when starting out. Customers are the most vital thing for any business to have. For this reason, Danielle dives deep into putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and identifying who your ideal client is. She discusses how to understand your target demo and identify their pain points, so you can build a product or service that provides a solution that resonates with them. Danielle will walk you through how to nurture your client through the 5 stages of a customer’s journey and show you how to lead with value to drive community. You’ll leave with so many takeaways you can implement within your own business to ensure a sustainable model that consistently meets and exceeds your customer’s expectations. This episode is brought to you by the Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12-week accelerator designed to show you how to grow and monetize your Instagram account. Discover how to grow your audience on Instagram by 10,000 ideal clients in 30 days: bossbabe.com/ig-growth.

If you look after the customers, the pennies look after themselves. If you are so focused on revenue and you're just so focused on the numbers, I personally feel that's when businesses don't succeed because you don't care enough about actually what you're offering. Really consider how you and your business are helping your potential clients and prospects through these five stages and how you're nurturing them around and creating this circle. This episode is brought to you by the Boss Babe Insta Growth Accelerator, a 12-week program designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account. If you're ready to grow your audience with your absolute ideal clients who are throwing their

credit cards at you, then listen up. I've created a completely free 90-minute training to show you how to do exactly that. I'm taking you through the step-by-step strategy to attracting 10,000 ideal clients as followers over the next 30 days. If you know that growing your audience with ideal clients who can't wait to buy from you would completely change the game, then this training is for you. As I said, it's totally free. I just recommend turning up with a journal and getting rid of all distractions as we waste no time getting into the nitty gritty specifics. You know that I love specifics. To get started with the training, just head to bossbabe.com forward slash IG dash growth, or hit the link in the show notes below. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is

on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Hi and welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to bounce it off. It's Danielle here, co-founder and co-CEO of Boss Babe. And on this episode, we are mixing it up a little bit. So Nathalie and I absolutely love doing interviews, but we also wanted to take the time to do a couple of solo episodes and talk about things that really helped us in our journey and we wish we'd known more about at the beginning.

I've chosen to do my solo episode on the customer journey because this is something really dear to my heart because a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people moving into the space and starting a business they come at it from a point of okay I want to start a business I want to work from home more or I want to make this product because I think it's a great idea and actually when you're an entrepreneur that's really the wrong way to kind of come about it we need to be putting ourselves in our customer's shoes and really understanding what they want because without doing that we really can't have a successful business and even if you aren't an entrepreneur and you work in a bigger company this still applies because at the forefront of any business

is its customers and so I just want to draw a line under that today and just say look this episode is all about putting yourself in your customer's shoes I really hope you take so much value away from it if you are driving make sure you listen to this not only what's in the car but afterwards and take some notes because I definitely think that's going to be on what you're going to want to implement and it's a good way to think about any business as you're moving forwards we do this process a lot within Boss Babe so we always are looking to strive and grow and we do this all day every so often where we put ourselves in our customer's shoes and we go through the whole process and say okay what are our customers seeing what are our clients seeing what are boss

babes out there seeing and how can we support them better and that's been really pivotal in our growth and how we've grown the company so rapidly. I'm going to first start talking about the stages of the customer journey and there are five of these. It's how we're taking that customer from the first exposure, so first discovering your brand and then becoming a full-blown raving fan. So there are five stages to this. There's awareness stage, the research stage, purpose stage, service stage and loyalty stage. It's really important that customer works through every single one of these stages. How quickly they do that will depend on how well you're nurturing through them. And the aim is not only do they go through the stages,

but they actually loop back around. So once they hit that loyalty stage, they're actually telling even more people about you and they're sending more people into the awareness stage or they're actually skipping back to purchase and they're buying from you time and time again this is a loop okay so it's not just something that we want them to go through once if they just do it once then you definitely need to up your game because you're not providing something that they want to be buying from you time and time again so we really want to be looking at like helping them through stages, but are we sending them to loop background and what does that look like? I want to start with the awareness stage, which is when a potential customer first comes in contact with the brand. Now, for a lot of us who are quite active on social media, whether it be Instagram or Facebook or other platforms, we grab their

awareness by creating attention, grabbing images or captivating captions or from the conversational copy that you're putting out there. But all of that is leading with value. And that's really, really important in the awareness stage. So sometimes one of a great way to build awareness is someone seeing a caption, seeing an image, or you saying, hey, if you give me your email address, I'm going to provide you with this free ebook, or I'm going to provide you with this killer PDF on something that's really important. So around Christmas time, like, you know, the top 10 gifts to buy your husband, what options can you put out there that really captivates them in? So just really thinking about that, like what value that you can offer. But aside from

social media, it's really important to think about, you know, the website, are you optimizing for your SEO searches? Is it appropriate in your industry to be registering with comparison sites? Let's not forget, I think we all get really focused on that online world, which is so, so important. However, it's not the only way. There are the old good old fashioned methods that are, you know, traditional media, like articles, magazines, radio, podcasts. And depending if you have a brick and mortar business, I know certainly in the UK, we still have it here, like local magazines that don't cost a lot to advertise it, but are really, really important to help find

your potential clients. So I guess the point is with the awareness phase is that I don't want everyone to get obsessed with, okay, it's only what I can do on social media. It's not really open this up to so many different ways and different ways to reach people. And I would also just want to draw your attention to good old-fashioned word of mouth don't be afraid to say on your social media okay tag someone who needs to hear this or actually asking your existing customers to share this like how can you encourage them to do that whether it can be like okay refer five people and they get a discount or whether it is just share when you purchase this on social media really think about how you can bring more people into your brand or into your company through these different methods. So any of you listening

now definitely encourage you to have a little brainstorm on this, but really always try and lead with value. Educational content is one of the easiest ways, in my opinion, to help with awareness. You can do it through humor and making viral content. However, I do think that is much trickier and kudos to you if you've been able to do that. Never be afraid of giving away value. Like one thing we see a lot is people live in a scarcity. So I don't want to give this away for free because then what would they buy from me? Actually, that's completely the opposite. The more you give away for free, often it builds the trust. And then someone's like for free, often it builds the trust.

And then someone's like, okay, yeah, I really value this brand. They gave me away this for free. So goodness knows what they're going to give me if I actually purchase something from them. So just bear that in mind. And also just think about really being consistent with this. Like you can't just put something out there once and expect, oh yeah, all of a sudden I'm going to have all these customers. They're going to have seen me like the awareness stage does take consistency like think about that rule of sevens they have to see it sometimes before they're going to purchase from you okay that's why there's so much power in brands so if you are just starting out you need to make sure that you are in front of that potential customer in as many ways as you can possibly do so but you need to be

there consistently that's why we talk about in our Instagram growth accelerator course posting consistently at Boss Baby we post three times a day there is a reason for that so just really spend some time and thinking how you can improve the awareness stage for your customer how they can see you from lots more different angles and how you can consistently show up because that will lead on to the research phase, which is when a potential customer further investigates your brand. So this is when a potential customer starts going, hmm, they've got my attention. I want to learn a little bit more about them. Now, this is a really crucial part of the journey. Say like you've got followers, but you're really trying to convert them into customers.

This is a part that you'll really need to start working on so basically if you put yourself in your customers shoes and you found you let's say on instagram what are you going to do next to research you well perhaps you're going to have a scroll through your feed you might watch the stories or perhaps you'll go to the highlights and if you're liking what you say you're probably going to want to dig a little bit deeper so then you're going to be highlights. And if you're liking what you say, you're probably going to want to dig a little bit deeper. So then you're going to be like, okay, so I found the highlight reel. I'm wanting to learn more. Is there a link? And where does that link go to? Is that link, like we're doing right now, linked to a free webinar where we're providing educational content

on something? Is it to a sales page, like a website? Is it an Amazon link to directly buy your product? So just really think about, okay, if they're finding you there, like what else are they going to want to be seeing to help them decide on the purchase? So other things that tend to help build trust are awards or certificates or as seen in, so as seen in Entrepreneur, as seen in on Forbes or as recommended by which if you're in the product industry. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team

couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible i definitely recommend kajabi to all of my clients and students so if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe all of these are confirmations that you and your company can

be trusted and i'll point out at this point that don't forget that if they do find you on instagram they are likely to be looking somewhere else for a secondary point of contact, i.e. a website or YouTube or LinkedIn or vice versa. So they're finding you on LinkedIn, they probably want to go to your website. If they find you on your website, they're probably going to see you on social media. So the awareness stage and the research stage, it doesn't really matter where they find you, but it's about that second place that you're appearing on and how then you nurture them through that. So this applies for any brand or any business. So what I encourage you to do, if you are listening and you're not in the car and you're just listening around the house or

something, pause this now, write down all the places that you and your brand are currently being seen and all of the additional places that you would like to be seen. And also I'd encourage you to go through, like put those fresh pairs of eyes on. It sounds a little bit weird or perhaps even get somebody else who's close to you to really give a fresh perspective on what they're seeing. If you're in the society, ask the other ladies in there, can someone do an audit on me? I'll trade you an audit. I just want to go through that process and understand what you're seeing because there might be something obvious that you're missing because you're too close to it that somebody can give you that fresh perspective on. Really work in this phase because

the next phase is purchase and this is like our chance to really, really convert them into a customer. So this is where they've kind of seen the awareness phase, they've started learning about you, they've done the research and they're like, I love this brand, I trust them and I really want to buy from them. The purchase phase is all about how easy do you make it, like how much resistance you're creating for them not to purchase from you. Things that really help this purchase stage move through are things like testimonials and reviews. So how many of us go on to Amazon, for example, and we're like, hang on a minute, our product doesn't have very good reviews, I'm not going to buy from it. Or actually, that product doesn't have any reviews, I'm a little

bit wary about this company, I'm not going to buy from it. And the same applies for a service industry. If you can have customers, whether it be screenshots of things that they've sent in, or video testimonials work incredibly well it's really important to put those into the face of the customer at this point because they've already discovered you and they've decided they like you to get to this point but it's just reconfirming that and it doesn't have to be long testimonials but just that credibility the other thing I want you to think about is are you answering the potential customers questions on the sales page so even before they have asked the questions themselves even before they've thought about these being

potential questions you want to be answering them so any previous emails that you've had in through customer services where they've asked you certain things make sure you're like pre-empting that on the sales pages so that those customers there's not added friction they're not thinking oh I wonder this and they're having to search that up. You're answering it already. There is research that shows that up to 60% of people like to talk to a customer service representative before they actually purchase. So do you have live chat linked onto your website? So do you have somebody there who, if someone has a question, because let's face it, we can be a little bit lazy. Perhaps we don't want to go and find their FAQ section.

We just want to ask someone like, hey, does it do this? Or is it good for this? Live chat is really good and you'll see conversions. And even if you're a small business, just have somebody in your team, have it up whilst they're working. It isn't much effort at all, but it's really just nice to have. I definitely encourage it because it does really help are you offering secured pay on your websites do you have your SSL certificates are you

offering Visa MasterCard PayPal like how easy are you making that and let's say if you have a bigger product are you offering payment plans or are you offering guarantees is there a 14-day guarantee is there a two-year warranty? Like what does that look like? Again, all these things help with that purchase process. They help just pushing them over that edge into like, yes, I love this brand. I'm ready to buy this brand. I'm getting out my credit card and I'm ready to purchase. So again, just take yourself out of your business and just look at this in a very objective way. How well am I doing this? Because once they have purchased, they are going to go into the service stage. And this is around

delivery of the product, delivery of the service, whatever that is. But are you living up to the expectations? And I want you to think about as soon as they have purchased, what happens next? Don't just let them purchase and then that's it. Is there a thank you page that comes up? Is there an email that gets sent and says thank you? You know thank you for buying this product. This is how to use this product or this is what else you might find useful with this product. This is what you might find useful to know about this product. To have a sustainable business that grows year on year you need to meet your customers expectations not only so that they will come back again and again but also to ensure that they tell their friends about you now by no means it's not easy to meet everyone's expectations and sometimes you can come across that customer that there's just no

pleasing but I really do think everyone should try and I think you know not only of that delivery of the product and what that physically looks like how how that's wrapped in, like how that's wrapped in the box or how that's wrapped in with the communications is so, so important. And can you go that extra mile? And what does that look like? Because I really do think a lot of customers recognize that. Sometimes it's not always about the product. It's about like what happens with the product. And someone might buy something from you and actually initially something's wrong with it. But it's about what happens with the product. Someone might buy something from

you and actually initially something's wrong with it, but it's how you deal with that. I remember this case where I actually bought my husband some shoes from a department store for Christmas and they sent me two different sizes. So they sent me one size eight and one size nine. I was doing it last minute before Christmas. There was no time to exchange them. And I was like, oh my God, how embarrassing. On Christmas day, I'm having to give him odd shoes. And I was a little bit annoyed about the whole thing. But what completely turned it around for me is that when I went back to the company and who I purchased them from was like, hey, look, you sent me these like odd shoes. Like, I really feel this isn't great. Rather than like defending it or like being like, oh yeah, sorry,

like here you are. They're like, oh my goodness, we we're so sorry here is a gift voucher I was so chuffed and over the moon it was way more than I was expecting and then I continued shopping there because I was like wow like fair enough mistakes happen but how they dealt with it and how they retain me as a customer was really really impressive so always think about this also if you have a business that isn't online, think about what your premises are like. What is the greeting like from your staff that are working there? What details do you offer that set you apart from others in your field? Those little touches. How are you supporting your customers as well? Are you asking for feedback? And most importantly, are you reacting on it? It's really easy for us to ask for customers feedback

but unless we're actually doing something about it it's not going to help you progress your business also interpret your customers feedback sometimes the customer doesn't know what they want until you give it them so just bear that in mind when you're getting customer feedback don't always act on the first thing that comes through or just that one thing but really deliberate over that and consider the feedback and then implement it appropriately in the business. And so finally they are reaching the loyalty stage. Now this is where they have become a raving fan. They want to tell their friends, they want to refer to the brand and they want to buy from you over and over again. And you know how we spoke about in the

awareness stage that friends saying to another, hun, you are going to love this company I found, you are going to want to buy their stuff, let me show you. That's what we want to be creating. So are you creating that first? People will do that for two reasons, okay? So people will share things for two reasons. When they feel a company has given them an outstanding service and a product, or when they are incentivized to do so. So tell this many friends and get X free or discount, et cetera, or leave a review and get X. And it doesn't mean the referral is any less genuine. It's just about giving the customer a little extra nudge to get them to actively think about it and do something about it. And so you can communicate this via emails after the purchase.

You can make sure all this is automated. So this doesn't have to be anything your team thinks about. On the back end of purchases, you can put in automations or you can send a little note in the product. So if you do have a large purchase, maybe even they get a free gift. And I encourage all of you, don't take loyalty for granted. In this day and age, it is something that you have to work towards. And it is something that has to be cherished and nurtured. But it's something that is so, so valuable for your business. It's that Pareto's principle, right? 80% of your revenue can come

from 20% of your customers. So do not underestimate this loyalty phase. It's all very well, like really getting out there and it's awareness and really nurturing on the research. But unless you have a firm loyalty plan in place, it's going to be very, very hard for you to grow and scale quickly. So put lots of effort into this. Think about loyalty programs that you can implement. about referral options think about promotions that you do and really be consistent and then again like we spoke about earlier on that service and that feedback like where those customers who are giving you that feedback and it's valuable feedback how are you rewarding for that as well and like you say how can we encourage more people to love your brand so much that they're referring people into the awareness. Now one thing I'll add extra at this point is to just think about what you do okay so

what brands do you refer people to and what brands do you shop over and over again at. So I really hope you found this episode useful and you know you'll listen to this over and over again and really consider how you and your business are helping your potential clients and prospects through these five stages and how you're nurturing them around and creating this circle. Reach out to friends and family and ask their opinion. One last piece of advice as well as putting yourself in your customer's shoes, one thing I always try and remember is that if you look after the customers the pennies look after themselves if you are so focused on revenue and you're just so focused on the numbers I personally feel that's when businesses don't succeed because you don't care enough about actually what you're offering and I think there's a lot to be said for that actually just kind of taking the monetary value

away and actually really caring about the impact on that you're having and your business is having on someone's life and I think when you can do that that's when the true magic happens. If you enjoyed this episode I actually teach some of this within the Instagram Growth Accelerator and the Society and we've included some audit spreadsheets for you guys that will really help you on this journey and really help you work through this in a bit more of a operational approach so either head to the website where you can find information on instagram accelerator or the society or head to our instagram account and make sure you dm us and we can send you the link if you enjoyed this episode we would

love it if you subscribed and left us a review let us know what you enjoyed what your main takeaways were and who you'd like to see appear on the show as a special thanks we'll send you a copy of our boss babe 25 now this is an awesome resource it's the 25 essential things that you need for personal and professional growth we've included everything from must-have products to books to rituals this guide literally covers it all and I know you're going to love it so if you want your copy simply leave us a review and then send a screenshot of your review to podcast at bossbabe.com. We love bringing you experts and interviews from other successful business owners so they can talk about their experiences and share information, tips and what has worked for them. However, remember that the opinions or advice of our

guests and as the hosts should not be taken as personal actionable advice and is given as general information and education only. Please always remember to consult a qualified professional before implementing any medical, financial, legal or other business advice to ensure it will work for you or your business. Boss Babe is not responsible nor liable for your decision to implement anything you hear on the podcast. Please listen and act responsibly. The opinions of our guests do not represent the opinions or views of Boss Babe, Danielle Cant or nancy ennis personally and are meant as information and general education only