Understanding the path to purchase

A marketing plan is a constantly evolving strategy. Informed by factors such as market trends, demand, competition, and consumer insights, it is essential that you continually evaluate, assess and tweak your approach to ensure it is as efficient and effective as possible.
 
One of the key customer insights that will help you to optimise your marketing strategy is the customer’s path to purchase. Here we explore how responding to data around path to purchase could help you understand how your customers engage with your existing marketing strategy and enable you to improve your marketing ROI.
 
 
What is the path to purchase?
 
The path to purchase is the journey a potential customer makes between first discovering your brand and making an initial purchase. The approach can be long and winding, with customers interacting with numerous different touchpoints and channels before finally deciding to buy a product or engage the services of a business.
 
There are often considered to be three critical stages in the path to purchase:
 
1. Awareness
The first stage of the path to purchase is the point at which a potential customer becomes aware of your brand. This may occur via a wide array of mediums, such as through targeted social media adverts, seeing press coverage, meeting at an exhibition/conference or finding blog content while researching the relevant product area.
 
2. Consideration
This stage is the point at which a potential customer is reviewing their options and choosing which brand to purchase from. The potential customer may read guides or watch videos relating to the product, seek independent reviews about your brand or request a trial to ensure that your business’s offering can fulfil their needs.
 
3. Decision
Stage three is the decision stage, referred to as the ‘purchase’ or ‘conversion’ stage. This is when a lead converts into a customer and completes their product or service purchase.
 
 
Why map your path to purchase
 
Mapping your customer’s path to purchase involves a combination of digital tracking and analytics to highlight the many touchpoints they have interacted with during their journey to conversion. This information enables marketing and sales teams to understand which channels generate leads so that they can make data-driven decisions about where to focus budgets and concentrate efforts going forward.
 
Pinpoint crucial channels
Reviewing the path to purchase can reveal which channels have the most significant impact at each stage of your customers’ journey. This information can enable marketing and sales teams to concentrate their efforts and further invest in these critical touchpoints to optimise their effectiveness.
 
For example, if a marketing team identifies that LinkedIn is a key channel in the Awareness stage of the customers’ journey, they can nurture it to increase its return further. This may involve encouraging customer-facing teams to be active on the site in order to widen the business’s reach and boost the networking possibilities.
 
 
Understand the customers’ needs
Path to purchase insights can help marketers build a clearer picture of their customers’ needs and pain points. By understanding what drives the customer and what their priorities are, it is possible to create content that meets these needs.
 
For example, suppose a blog that details the sustainability benefits of your product regularly converts potential customers from the Consideration to the Decision stage. In that case, you may infer that this subject is crucial to leads. Armed with this insight, it’s possible to dedicate marketing effort to creating further content around this topic to ensure that you provide leads with all the details they need to make their purchase decision.
 
 
Build synergy between the marketing and sales teams
While much of the path to purchase data will be retrieved digitally, sales teams are also a vital source of information. From taking part in exhibitions, conducting pitch meetings and engaging with potential clients via social media, live chats and phone calls, sales teams are brimming with path to purchase insights.
 
This information is essential to building marketing strategies that resonate with the target customer, but it can also create alignment between the marketing and sales teams. This may result in a more productive relationship that positively impacts the marketing ROI and the business’s bottom line.
 
 
How we can work together
 
To find out more about how tracking your path to purchase and optimising your marketing strategy could enhance your sales and boost your business, contact the 3Eight team for a full consultation.