What is a Customer Journey?

We explain the term customer journey and show why it is essential for inbound marketing.

Customer journey or buyer's journey is a marketing term that describes the individual cycles that a customer goes through before deciding to buy a product.

The Customer Journey can be broken down into the above three phases and helps marketers to develop relevant content for the right audience at the right time. HubSpot defines the phases as follows:

1. Awareness phase: The starting point for the need for a service or product is always an individual problem or challenge. First, potential customers find out about their problem or first become aware of their problem.
2. Consideration phase: The potential customers can now name their problem in concrete terms and search specifically for possible solutions.
3. Decision phase: The potential customers have decided on a product or service as a possible solution and now choose between different providers.

How to create a Customer Journey

You should ask the following questions when developing a Customer Journey in the awareness phase:

1. How would your customers describe their problems or goals?
2. How do your customers get information about their problems or goals?
3. What are the consequences for your customers if they do nothing?
4. Are there common misconceptions among your clients about how to solve their problems or achieve their goals?
5. What makes your clients prioritise their problems or goals?

The following questions are helpful for the consideration phase:

1. What possible solutions are your clients considering?
2. How do your clients gather information about these options?
3. What do your clients consider to be the advantages or disadvantages of these different options?
4. What criteria do clients use to determine which option is right for them?

And for the decision phase, these questions apply:

1. What criteria do your customers use to evaluate your offer?
2. What advantages do your customers see in your offer compared to those of the competition? In your clients' opinion, what are the weaknesses of your offer?
3. Who will be involved in the decision-making process? From what different perspectives do the individual participants view the decision?
4. Would your customers like to test your offer before they buy it?
5. Do your clients need to make any additional arrangements, such as creating an implementation or training plan?

You can find more detailed information on the topic in our Inbound Marketing Guide.