 The market needs to be aware of who you are and what you do. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where we share marketing agency insights, ideas and best practices to help your brand or business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder of Slam Agency. We have offices in St. Louis and Miami. Today I want to share with you how to get the right message to the right people at the right time and in the right place. This is what we might refer to as the holy grail of marketing. In the past and in decades ago, this just wasn't possible. But today it is with the technology and the advertising options that we have. A lot of times though, we spend so much time in the targeting, we don't spend enough time on the message. And really in order to get this right, we have to have the right message and put it in the right place to get noticed. So how do we do that? Well today I'm going to share with you the secrets to consumer journey mapping. Now here at Slam, we believe that there's four pillars to customer acquisition in order to drive revenue. The first being a strong brand. If you don't have a strong brand foundation, then you're going to have a difficult time capturing and retaining customers. After you have a strong brand, then you can begin to build on that with this thing that we call market awareness. Now if you took a marketing class in college, in the textbooks, they call this brand awareness. We call it market awareness. We just want you to know that the market needs to be aware of who you are and what you do. So when the time comes that they might become a customer, they know who you are and what you do and you're an option. The third pillar of customer acquisition is targeted lead generation. Now this is what a good digital agency will do for you. Targeted lead generation, whether it be on Facebook with CPA ads or on Google PPC or remarketing, retargeting, whatever it may be, we're targeting leads specifically based on who they are and how they might connect with our products or services. And finally, once you bring those leads into your website or into your app, the fourth pillar of customer acquisition is sales proficiency. And this is just a way of saying that once they're on your site, once they're in your office that you're closing the deal. But here's the startling statistic. 70% of the buying decision has already been made before a prospect even hits your site. So what does this mean? It means that consumers are, they're going online, they're reading up, they're researching and they're making these decisions before they ever even land on your site. So the days of build it, do some great SEO and hope that they get there early are pretty much over. Today you have to begin to capture customers earlier on in the buying cycle. So how do you do that? Well, the first step is this thing that we call consumer journey mapping. Now I talk a lot about knowing your audience, knowing your buyer, getting inside their head, knowing where they are online, what questions they're asking, what they're searching. And if you know this, then you can begin to map it out. You can begin to say, okay, so in the search engines, here is what my buyers are searching. Now here's the thing, if you're not able to answer this, then you probably don't know enough about your buyer and you need to go back to the basics of saying, okay, who is my buyer? What motivates them? What inspires them? What are their characteristics in order to complete what's called a customer journey map, a consumer journey map? So here's the definition. A consumer journey map is the visual representation of the journey that your customer would go through to complete a specific goal or action on your site. So obviously we know that at the end of that journey is the completed goal. So now you need to backtrack and figure out how they're going to get to that point. It obviously starts on your website and then it branches off from there. All the different ways that you could touch a consumer, that they can become aware of your brand and that you can generate that targeted lead in order to bring them into your site, you need to be writing these things down. We suggest that you do it in a spreadsheet and then you do it based on their knowledge or awareness of your company, your service, their problem. And we do this using the five levels of awareness. So the first level of awareness is that they're just not aware. They're not aware of their problem. They're not aware that they have a problem. They may not have a problem and they're definitely not aware of your business, your product, or your service. The second level of awareness is problem aware. So this means I have a problem and I'm aware of it. I don't know what the solution is and I don't know who can help me with that solution or if there is even a provider of that solution out here or out there. But I know I have a problem and I am going to start to search, possibly online, for a solution to that problem. So I go online and go on Google. I start searching. I have a headache and it won't go away. What is the problem? I start to become aware of that problem and in that moment that I become aware like, aha, that's it. That's my problem. Then I can begin looking for a solution. Number three level of awareness is solution aware. So now I know the solution. Who can provide the solution for me? I understand what the solution is. So now where am I going to get that solution? Where am I going to purchase it? Where am I going to go to get it? Now my searching changes. The words that I type into the search engine change. So now I am solution aware and I am looking for a solution. At that point if I am solution aware, I need to become product aware, right? So that is the fourth level of awareness which is product aware. I need to be thinking, okay, I have this problem. I know that the solution is this product and now I need to go find this product. Now if it is a product that multiple companies sell, then they might not be, your consumer might not be aware of your company yet. If it is a product that only you sell, then there is a shortcut there. But let's say I have a headache and the product is ibuprofen or Tylenol. So see at this point I need to figure out which of those I want to go with. So for me it is going to be ibuprofen. Where would I go to buy that? Okay, that is when I get to that fifth level of awareness, which is most aware. So I know the problem, the solution, the product and now I know who offers it. When we talked about the second level of customer acquisition, the second pillar, we talked about market awareness. This is so key for the people that understand the problem they have, the solution they need and the product they need that will provide that solution. They need to understand that you are the provider that will provide all of those things. These are the five levels of awareness, okay? So when you begin to start thinking like a customer you have to think about where are they in which level are they in of awareness of the not aware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware and finally most aware, which is aware of you and who you are and what you do, right? So here's the thing. A lot of companies will say, you know, I'm going to put some money in PPC, this ad, the consumer clicks on it, they come to my page, they buy my product and then suddenly I know I need to put more money in this ad. Now that may or may not be true, but here's what is true. Last click attribution doesn't always tell the whole story. Begin to broaden your horizons. The Facebook pixel is awesome for being able to tell you, you know, where else people are before they are on that last click and so I would suggest looking into that a bit. But you got to understand this consumer journey map and here's what we're going to do. We are going to provide for you the template to be able to begin to build your own consumer journey map. So if you go to slamagency.com, scroll down the page and look for this episode, what you'll find on the blog post for this episode is that we've provided a consumer journey map template for you to get started mapping out where your consumers are along those five levels of awareness. You know, a lot of times when we're like a new marketing director, we do stuff like this. We get in deep, we understand the buyer, we learn who they are and where they are online and then we put it on a spreadsheet and we file it away. But here's the thing, in order for this to work, you have to continually test your assumptions and refine, optimize, rinse and repeat your consumer journey map. This is how you get down and get it right and make sure that you're constantly improving. In the game of digital advertising, it's always about rinsing and repeating and making things better to improve your conversion rates. So if you enjoyed this show, I want to hear about it. Let me know in the comments. If you're listening or watching on a podcast network, be sure to rate and review. And if you haven't already, please subscribe. And if you receive value from this show, let me know. Email me, hit me up on slamagency.com for a free consultation or just hit us up on social at we are slam. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next week. Thanks for watching. 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