Do you know the journey your customer needs to take to go from Stranger to Raving Fan?
Have you planned their journey with you and your business?
A good customer-centric business should create a symbiotic association between You, your firm, your brand and your customer or client.
A mutually beneficial relationship, with one Main difference – You Give First!
So many of our clients when we ask them these two questions, either don’t know, aren’t sure or believe the simple scenario … ‘we advertise our products and people buy our products and become customers', is the answer.
But it isn't, in fact all this does is gain you a customer, which is woefully short of that person being a raving fan.
Many companies back 10 years ago with huge advertising budgets may well have survived like this. Fast forward to 2016 and none of the big companies rely on this system even with their big budgets.
Think for a moment about …..
Apple
Nike
Harley Davidson
Coke
Disney
They all tell a story, they all build a relationship with you their customer, they all have a journey from stranger to raving fan, they become trustworthy.
We all need to gain our customers Trust and be Worthy of their engagement by offering great high value customer-centric content.
So how do you achieve this in a world where your customer is hit, on average, with over 3000 advertising messages a day, where their email inbox is overflowing and the chances of them seeing your content on social media is less than 6%!?
Add to this their ability through the search engines to find, learn and buy almost anything and their inbuilt wariness to anything that looks remotely like advertising or spam.
It feels like it would be almost impossible to turn a stranger into a fan. No matter how wonderful your product or service is and no matter how much it is needed.
But it is possible. Even as a new business just starting out you can learn from the big successful companies like Apple – why is Apple so successful and remains so decades on?
Because they have built and continually build a relationship with their customers. It is a symbiotic relationship, they offer great products that appease our senses with design, innovation and great support and in return we part with our money willingly.
You need to build a relationship with your customers and clients, take them on a journey with you and your business.
There are 8 steps to taking that Stranger and turning them into a Raving Fan.
These steps are divided into Two Stages.
Stage 1 – Attracting the Stranger and converting them to a Paying Customer or Client
Stage 2 – Turning that Customer into a Raving Fan
Stage 1 – Stranger to Customer
Step 1 – AWARE
AWARE
You need to make the Stranger AWARE of who you are and what you offer. Amongst all the noise, you will need to be found, be noticed. You do this by giving Valuable Content.
This content must be 3 things:-
1. Valuable – Offer some of your best content.
2. Easily consumable – You want them to read, view or listen to your content
3. Un-gated – Make it absolutely Free, immediate access, no opt-in.
At this point your Stranger is now a Prospect
Step 2 – OPT-IN
OPT-IN
Move the Prospect, as they are now aware of you, into a subscriber. The prospect is now wanting to know more and is prepared to OPT-IN to get the new content. This Opt-in doesn’t have to be digital, it could be by giving their phone number or email at a shop or when a coupon is filled in. The main point is that they have given permission for you to contact.
This new content must be 3 things:-
1. Valuable
2. Easily consumable
3. Gated – You will be requesting an email opt-in.
At this point your Stranger has become a Lead.
Step 3 – CONVERT
CONVERT
There are two steps to Convert. Step 1 where the Lead gives you Time and Step 2 where the Lead gives you money. Now it is not essential that the Lead completes both these steps as your goal is to convert your Lead to a Customer and by definition that would mean they have bought something.
With a Time Convert the Lead is giving their time in exchange for watching a webinar or video tutorials or attending a free event. With time goes the ongoing building of trust with you delivering great content.
With a $ Convert the Lead is exchanging their money for your content or product.
The very first time you move your Lead to a customer or client there are 3 thing you must ensure:-
1. Very High Value Content – a Great Product
2. Very Low Value Cost – (1st purchase at the lowest cost possible)
3. A CTA ( Call To Action) within the content to move them forward.
Step 4 – ENGAGE
ENGAGE
This step is often forgotten but is an integral step of Stage 1. Engaging with your customer, building on the relationship and on boarding them with your knowledge, skills and content. Getting them to be social.
The goals here are:
1. Engagement – get your customer to consume your content.
2. Interaction
3. Being remembered.
Stage 2 – Customer to Raving Fan
The goal to this stage is to increase your customer value and to ascend your customer as they travel along the journey with you so that eventually they become a Raving Fan, someone who is happy to Promote your company to help others.
Step 5 – EXCITE
Excite your customer with new content and your customer care and service. A major part of ascending your customers is to show the ongoing service and support you offer to enable them to move to the next level in their business.
Step 6 – LOYAL CUSTOMER
In this step you have built enough trust and relationship equity that your customer actively consumes and searches for your content and products.
Step 7 – FAN
This is where you loyal customer becomes an advocate of your company and when asked is happy to refer your company to others.
Step 8 – RAVING FAN
The final step is when your Fan becomes a Raving Fan and this is the ideal situation. Here your fan actively promotes your company to others and to his/her clients and customers.
Whilst all the steps 5 – 8 include content, engagement and interaction they incorporate different levels of trust and loyalty. Your part is to continue to give great value, in your content or products and in your support and community.
The real value and ROI of your customer is to be gained in these last 4 steps. This is where companies such as Apple as so brilliantly focused. When you get this stage right your fans are your promotion and they are your main returning customers.
After all how many of us have only ever bought just one Apple product?
Or only listened to one clip from Oprah or Tony Robbins?
Once people Know Like and Trust you they come back for more, if you then Serve and Support them they will become loyal fans.
It is worth noting that you may have several customer journeys depending on your avatars and the products you have. It is possible that they may take a different route to the same end.
A short while ago Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer taught their customer journey which inspired me to write this blog and create a Free customer Journey Template for you.
You will find on the template that there are more than 8 boxes to fill out, this is because every business will have a different customer journey which may entail more steps to reach the end goal of a Raving Fan.
I have also given you an example so that you can compare and gain inspiration from some of the options you can use at each step.
Click here or image above to download your Customer Journey Template – completely free – no opt-in.
Did you find any steps were missing in your customers journey, from stranger to raving fan?
