Considering the digital user journey

The reality of all integrated social media marketing is that it generally isn’t just one thing that makes you buy a product or choose a supplier. Generally it is a huge range of factors that make you prefer one brand over another, choose a particular supplier or buy a particular product. Digital branding is all about understanding this process and making it measurable. As marketers we can model, measure and use all sorts of tools to try and understand this buying process – and this is where digital marketing has its greatest strengths. We have access to more data and more ability to measure the user journey than ever before. However, the missing piece in this measurement puzzle can be the interaction between online and offline marketing. Quite often mobile can act as the bridge between the two, yet we still face some challenges with this. The journey is very likely not to be a linear one: many channels and types of content may be revisited several times and we may not have any visibility on some of the steps in the journey. However, we still have a better view than we have ever had before, and with a little planning we can fill in the gaps. User journey examples Let’s take a look at two real-world user journeys – B2B and B2C – all the way through to purchase and consider how different channels are working together. Business to business example I need a new hosting company for my business website. I’m responsible for the website’s reliability and I have had some bad experiences previously, ending in my website being down, which left me feeling both frustrated and embarrassed. This buying decision is primarily motivated by risk mitigation, but I also need to make sure that my website will be fast and that any provider will give me the opportunity to expand and improve my web offering, so I need flexibility and performance. This is not a decision I will make without being well informed, and the user journey is made up of multiple steps, including but not limited to: ● Doing numerous searches for suppliers. ● Reading online reviews of these suppliers. ● Signing up for newsletters from each of these suppliers. ● Asking opinions on LinkedIn and Twitter from my social network of their experiences. ● Completing several diagnostic tools to understand what kind of hosting I actually need. ● Reading websites that talk about the technology behind hosting in order to educate myself about it. ● Signing up for newsletters from the sites that helped me educate myself. ● Talking to colleagues and trusted partners at unrelated events and meetings. Getting recommendations for suppliers I had never heard of and making a note on my phone. So let’s map out what is important to note in this user journey. First, that my decision is being based on risk mitigation and finding the right fit to my needs. I also need to educate myself on the topic (which is very common in B2B buying decisions). We also need to note the practicalities of this journey. It was done almost entirely online, except where face-to-face word of mouth was involved. However, I only knew that I should search for several of the suppliers because I was already aware of them due to some other offline interaction at previous trade shows. Also, much of the time I was reading and educating myself I was actually offline as I had no internet access (I was either on a plane or on a train with poor connectivity). So what does this tell us about our digital branding? Well, our value proposition needs to align closely with the ideas of risk mitigation, trust and education. So a clear value proposition aligned to user needs at the heart of any strategy would be essential for any potential supplier. The suppliers need to provide more content than just telling me how great their solution is, and I need education in order to build trust. Together these elements convey a classic example of the need for content marketing, which we’ll discuss shortly. I had relied heavily on my social network and online reviews to influence my decision, so an effective method on spreading social media approach was also clearly going to be essential for any potential supplier. As well as needing these different types of content I needed to be able to consume them in ways that suited me. And what suited me varied by time and place. I need content that will work on all of my devices. Business to consumer example I’m looking at what I can do with my airline loyalty points, how the process works and where I might like to go. This process is as much about enjoying the process of looking at the destinations I could visit as it is about making any sort of practical plan. As I work through this process I will make a number of steps that may include but are not limited to: ● trying to log into my account online to see how many points I have; ● understanding the process of using the points to book flights; ● seeing how far the flights can take me – and obtaining a list of available destinations without having a particular destination in mind; ● understanding when flights are available; ● looking at the destinations, exploring holiday options and looking at the suitability for different types of travel (romantic, family, etc); ● working out the most cost-effective way of using my points, considering airport taxes and other charges. Bear in mind that I said this was as much about fun as it was about practical planning, so this was most likely to be done in what Harvard Business Review call ‘Me’ time (Harvard Business Review, Feb 2013). Therefore, a lot – if not all – of this research would be done on a mobile device from my sofa. Nearly 30 per cent of all website visits to travel sites are now on mobile devices (Digital Tourism Think Tank, 2013). I cite this example because not only is it real, but with my particular airline of choice it turned out to be nearly impossible. The key point here is that it was essential to understand the motivation of my user journey, and that was to explore, to learn and to ‘mock plan’. Let’s take a look at some of the issues that got in the way of this process meeting my requirements: ● main site redirecting to mobile site with limited functionality; ● no ability to go back to main website easily; ● main website not designed to work on multiple devices; ● search options not suited to my user journey of being unsure of my final destination; ● no easy way to browse availability without browsing through page after page of dates; ● no further information or recommended sites on potential destinations; ● unclear guidance on travel options when travelling with family (I will not be popular if I’m sitting in business class sipping cocktails and waving to my family who are seated in economy). These are not just technology issues. After all, the airline had an app. They just hadn’t thought through the different user journeys, and the process had been mapped to work with their booking system. If these journeys were embraced, any airline or holiday company I was looking up would have the opportunity to engage me, re-enforce their brand and give me inspiration for future travel. Even if it didn’t lead to me booking there and then, by making the process easier they could improve my brand loyalty and potential word-of-mouth recommendations. This point of it not leading to an immediate booking is an important one and is at the heart of mobile branding. I may go through the whole flight-booking process only to drop out at the final step. This may not be because something went wrong, but rather that I was using the tools available in order to plan rather than make a booking. I may then go through the same process a month later and actually make a booking. I need to be able to understand this journey and attribute value to the original visit that didn’t end in a sale. This is something we’ll explore more and, in fact, we can solve this initially complicated looking scenario simply by using some free web analytics software (I’m referring to something called ‘multi-channel funnels’ in Google Analytics). Content marketing Content marketing is often talked about when looking at user experience and search optimization, but it is also very much part of your approach to digital branding. Fundamentally, content marketing is about providing useful and engaging content that is suited to the user’s journey. Generally, content marketing is about providing value beyond what your direct product offering is. If we go back to my example of selecting a hosting provider, a useful focus for content marketing would have been educating the user about web technologies. Content marketing, value proposition and brand Content marketing allows us to bolster our value proposition through digital-delivered content or services. More importantly, we have the opportunity to use digital technologies creatively to deliver this value proposition via interaction. All of these very simple ideas could be developed into something far more robust that would interactively re-enforce a brand value proposition. It is important to understand how this can be applied to organizations with completely different products or service offerings. A B2B service is generally a high-involvement purchase. That is, you think carefully and do some research before buying. Buying confectionery, on the other hand, is generally a very low-involvement purchase – you’re unlikely to go online and compare chocolate bars before buying them! However, using digital-delivered services and content marketing can help bolster value proposition and brand positioning in both cases. The stages of the user journey Google have put a lot of time into investigating the user journey and trying to understand the different stages we go through when making buying decisions. Let’s also be realistic here. Much of the research published by Google ends with conclusions about how their products can fulfil the requirements outlined in the research (and why not, they are a commercial organization). Putting aside commercial objectives for a moment, let’s take a look at a piece of work that I think is particularly useful when trying to understand the mobile consumer. Procter & Gamble’s first moment of truth We’ll start by taking a step back in time to 2005. Procter & Gamble (P&G) published their take on what they called the ‘first moment of truth’ (FMOT). This was covered widely in the press and made a significant impact on their overall strategy, as outlined in the annual report of 2006 (P&G, 2006). The idea of FMOT was that there was some sort of initial advertising push that the consumer was exposed to (which is called the ‘stimulus’ part of the journey in the models we will explore), but much of the actual decision-making process was actually influenced at the brief moment when the consumer was at the shelf in the supermarket (bear in mind that this model was originally targeted at what we would call consumer packaged goods (CPG) or fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), so it looked at that specific set of potential user journeys). They then speculated that there was a ‘second moment of truth’ (SMOT) when the customer purchased the product, took it home, used it and formed an opinion on it. These three steps of stimulus, FMOT and SMOT made up the traditional wisdom of how to think about marketing campaigns. Google’s zero moment of truth Some six years later Google decided that this model was out of date and added one significant change to the model: the zero moment of truth (ZMOT). This is the step that comes between the stimulus and the FMOT. It is when we do our research, educate ourselves and compare and contrast products and services. In a way, this is nothing new, as we always had word of mouth and asked the opinions of our trusted friends, colleagues and loved ones. What Google has suggested in this model is that the internet has enabled completely different consumer behaviour. They then continued to prove this point by carrying out a series of research that looked at how much research people did before buying different types of products and how long they took to do this. The basic conclusion was that the ZMOT was now the most influential of the now four-step marketing model. The feedback loop Not only is this model interesting because it explores how the internet has changed our buying behaviour, it also shows a much closer connection between our ZMOT, that point when we are researching online, and the SMOT, when we have experienced a product or service. It is now easier than ever to leave reviews online that influence other consumers’ buying decisions. This feedback loop can be extremely powerful. For example, it has radically changed the travel industry, with nearly 40 per cent of consumers consulting online reviews before booking (World Travel Market, Jan 2013). This can be a mixed blessing for businesses. I was recently consulted by a large hotel group who asked me how to deal with a major problem they had with numerous negative reviews on the TripAdvisor hotel review site. The answer, which they gracefully took on board after some initial resistance, was that they needed to improve their hotels.