Mastering the Customer Journey with Kwabena Bayode Ajifowowe — Colours of Social Media Podcast

Mastering the Customer Journey with Kwabena Bayode Ajifowowe

Featuring Kwabena Bayode Ajifowowe

In this episode, we dive into the 5 Stages of the Customer Journey with our special guest, Kwabena Bayode Ajifowowe. From building awareness to nurturing loyal advocates, we explore each step brands take to guide customers through a successful journey.

Transcript

[0:00] It's not advisable for brands to jump on certain hashtags if they're not very certain how to affect their brands. Because nurses are really worried about how much am I spending on this company.

[0:09] How can I move customers from the consideration stage to the purchase phase where I get their money? I'm a coconut seller store. There's this thing called the Net Promoter School.

[0:19] Sorry? There's a term called the Net Promoter School. Net Promoter School. Abek Bayode. From Bildx Studios, this is Colours of Social Media, the podcast for digital marketers and small business owners who believe in digital marketing. I'm your host, Enoch, Robert Boy Appiah Jr., and today we are going to be talking about the customer journey. And I have a friend of mine to help me with this conversation, Bayo Ajifowowe. And before we dive deep into this conversation, I just want to tell you a little about Bayo. Bayo is a dedicated digital marketing with over nine years experience, specializing in performance marketing and data-driven solutions. He has effectively collaborated with both local and multinational brands, providing impactful strategies on both the client and the agency sites. He's certified in the major advertising platforms, and the partner remains at the forefront of industry-based practice. When Bayo is not working, you will definitely meet him on a road trip or easier, still in a nearby swimming.

[1:32] Do you still swim? Oh yes, I mean, I swim every weekend, as long as the weather allows. So we are here to talk about journey, not the journey that you've been going on, the road trips that you've been going on, but we are coming to talk about the customer journey. So just an introduction, what is the customer journey? The customer journey just represents the touch points a person has with their brand in the simplest form. So right from when the person gets to hear about the brand, so when the person buys from the brand or takes an action that's valuable to the brand, and even beyond that, goes beyond that. So how the person talks about the brand refers to other people about your brand. It's the entire process. It starts from their awareness phase, when the person or the individual gets to see the brand or gets to hear about the brand, then it moves on to the consideration stage, where this person or this individual is trying to balance your brand against what the person knows, or with other brands the person has interacted with. So why do I choose this brand or your brand over this other brand? That's the consideration phase. And then it moves on to the purchase phase. When this person or when the individual is convinced that I have a reason to buy into your brand or it's your product, then I make that next step. I take the next step purchase from and then it goes on to the retention stage. The person is happy with your brand. The person has purchased once or twice, downloaded your videos or listened to your content, and the person wants to keep on doing this.

[3:10] That is the retention stage. And then the final stage is the advocacy stage, where the the person is willing to share your brand. Like the person is willing to introduce you, be a champion exactly. In over your nine years of experience, how have you modeled this customer journey in your way? Okay, so with most brands, usually we try to direct clients into how they should run the campaigns. But usually these things, these different phases are all interconnected. So it's hard to segment the awareness phase or it might not be very visible saying this is the awareness phase and this is the consideration phase. Because most times they overlap. When the brand comes or when I'm working with the brand, first of all, I try to identify at what stage is this brand? Is there a new brand? Is this person trying to enter the markets?

[4:05] Is this person in the markets already but is not getting the results of the campaign or of the marketing results? Is the person complaining about losing customers? Does the person have a large pool of customers and this pool is declining? So we need to understand exactly where the person is, where the business is and then how we can help support. In your first submission, you made mention of these stages in the customer journeys. That is awareness, we talk about consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy. So I'm hoping that with this episode, we will dive in deeper.

[4:46] What effective ways can brands use to create awareness for their business or their services? There are two main ways we can do it. For small brands, brands now entering or starting promotion, we can start with the organic phase. Basically, it's divided into the organic and then the paid side. The organic being the ones that you just do the freestyle, you don't put any money behind. There's no budgets behind it. These are usually recommended to smaller brands or brands that are willing to test or wanting to test. We can use strategies like things like, take for example, their current trend. The hashtag that has been trending over the last couple of weeks.

[5:37] Brands is not advisable for brands to jump on setting hashtags if they're not very certain how to affect their brands. But then a very cheap way or easy way to get the visibility you want is to jump on trending hashtags. So you see this hashtag and it really gets in momentum, it's getting traction on social media. You can add it to your brand if it's relevant to your brand.

[5:59] Good, I was about to ask you that, should I just add any hashtag to my brand? So you need to look at the hashtag. If possible, go through some of the contents. What are people talking about? Who are the people talking about this? What are they saying about this hashtag?

[6:15] And then if it's safe enough, then you can jump on your brand. That's an organic strategy. You can also use things like memes, short interactive content. People are attracted by very engaging content. So if you use things like short interactive videos, you can get that attention organically because you're not paying for people to enjoy this content. This is something they already like to see on their social channels. So if you jump on that, you can also increase your visibility and stuff like that. So in creating awareness, what are some of the challenges that businesses may or have faced in your line of work? What are some of the challenges that businesses face when they want to create awareness for their business or their services? So I'll come back to this one. Okay. For the paid section, you're talking about your organization. Sorry, totally forgot about it. Let's talk about the paid section. So for the paid section, this is when brands choose to use, put some budgets behind the post. They have selected posts or posts that they think are doing well. And then it's usually tied in with the organic phase. So if I produce content in the organic phase and it's doing well, the choice of images is quite good. The wedding is correct. And then it gets interaction. I can put some money behind this and then promote it, boost it for a simpler. Yes, we understand. We say boost here also. Okay, so then we can boost the post.

[7:44] So we boost the post and then you get even wider traffic. You get even wider and larger traffic. So you want to take the challenges that businesses face. So I think the most common challenge is visibility. During the awareness phase, brands are worried about, okay, I'm entering the markets, but there are other people in the markets probably having the same products and the same services I'm offering. So how do I stand out from the competition? And now this is where your content comes in, the organic phase. You're looking at the content you're producing. It's probably similar to what your competitors are doing, but then how do you stand out? And this is where your brand should come. Your brand should come in. The brand, what you represent as a brand, the unique service offer, what puts you apart. What sets you apart from your competitors? So these are the little things you can include to help you stand out. And then also the budgets. You are talking about paid now, of course. The businesses are really worried about how much am I spending on this company? What am I spending behind this marketing company? Do I need to spend so much?

[8:58] So these are small things. But yeah, do they need to spend so much when it comes to that? Actually, they don't. Being a paid media performance marketer, focused marketer, I would say you can spend a little, test it, get the results, and then based on that, can optimize your campaign. Do you want to spend more? Do you want to spend less? Is it working for me? Do I use it? Do I do a different channel? I mean, it's an open space.

[9:29] Talking about channels, now we are still looking at awareness. What channel from yours, you know, you using your performance marketing brain, from what channel would you recommend for businesses to jump on if they want to start the journey with awareness?

[9:47] Okay, so I would recommend to use channels that give you high visibility. Looking at channels that a lot of people have subscribed to and are active.

[10:01] Now, you're also considering these channels with high reach. Are they within your budget? Are you willing to put in some budget? Facebook is the largest social media platform.

[10:16] It has a lot of people on it. So, I would recommend you start with social channels that are relevant to your brand. It's very important, it's very relevant to your brand, and then from there you can take it. Now, we've talked about awareness. Remember, we are going through the journey, the customer journey. We started with awareness.

[10:36] Now, awareness to jump into consideration, right? What are some of the things that businesses can't do for customers to consider them? So, I think the consideration stage is the most involving stage in the entire funnel because this is where the brand gets to put in everything to convince the customer to choose their product. This is me, take for example, we sell coconuts. I'm now a coconut seller, okay. So, now, this is you trying to convince me to buy your coconuts. I've seen different, I've seen other brands, but then the efforts you need to put in will be things like, first of all, your brand. You need to let people remember your brand because it sets you apart from your competitors. And then secondly, what's the, what's the, what's the USP? Oh, we will break it down here, say USP. Okay, so what's the unique selling point? What's your value? What value are you giving to me? And then besides that, why do I need to buy coconut water instead of using the money to buy pure water?

[11:50] So, by what you are basically saying is the why. The why. Why should I join your brand? Or why should I subscribe to your product? Interesting. The why. So, that means if I'm still selling coconuts, that would be like, oh, coconut water is nutritious.

[12:10] Exactly. You can even say it has food. It has food. So, when you drink the coconut water, you still have something to chew on. It's all part of the product differentiation.

[12:19] But because it's a journey, then that means you have to have satisfied the awareness stage. You can't just jump into consideration phase. No, you can't jump. You can. It depends on the position of the brand. So, if the brand already has the visibility, it has the visibility in the market, then you can skip the awareness phase and focus more on the consideration. Because now, you have the eyeballs, people are looking at, people know your brand. So, how do we get them to join, to jump on the brand? Or to join or buy a product?

[12:51] So, we moved from the awareness stage. Now, we are in the consideration stage. And we want them to consider our product or services, right? So, what factors influence their consideration? So, I think, first of all, the most obvious one would be the price.

[13:09] This is me comparing from the consideration phase. I'm comparing the price of your brand to the price of other brands that are offering the same value. So, your brand needs to be very competitive. It needs to, I need to be comfortable paying that price for that value. Or a similar value. And then also, the brand reputation. So, your brand, I'm used to a particular brand.

[13:34] How would you, as a business, position yourself in such a way that you... You are trusted. You have a reputable stance. Exactly. So, now, I get to see that if I'm moving from brand A to your brand, I'm not going to lose any value. I'm not going to... I'm not reducing what I'm used to.

[13:55] And then also recommendations. People talk about your brand. How is your brand online? How is your brand offline? What are you saying about your brand? These things, these comments and reviews, can influence me as a person to buy a brand or not to buy a brand.

[14:12] So, these are some of the things we can consider as well. If we are talking about digital, that means our creative is the first point of contact.

[14:19] Very important. So, the first point of contact, that is your creative should list these main factors. Like, let's say, the pricing, so that they can make decisions right out of the bat, whether to choose your brand or not.

[14:36] It also depends on the points on the phase, the particular stage you are... The customer is... So, if you're in the awareness phase, you should be focused more on letting people know your brand. So, it's very important to put in that information there.

[14:50] So, it's advisable to, at every stage in the conversion funnel or the customer general, optimize your creatives, optimize your marketing objectives to suit that.

[15:00] So, if you're starting a campaign and you realize you're not starting from the awareness phase, you're probably starting from the retention phase, your creatives and your messaging, your brand messaging should speak to that.

[15:12] To that stage that you are. Interesting, interesting. Now, let's close the seal down. That means we are the purchase, right? So, let's close the seal. How can I move customers from the consideration stage to the purchase phase, where I get their money? I'm a coconut seller at the store.

[15:30] So, it just comes down to you simply by the process. If I let me not just say, take their money, where they'll probably download a file from me, take an action, let me see.

[15:42] So, you just need to, there are lots of ways you can do it, but then you need to basically simplify the process, okay? Make it easy for me to switch to your brand.

[15:52] So, take for example, you run, you have an e-commerce product, okay? I've moved the coconut to, I have a store, the coconut, I have a web store.

[16:05] And now you want me to buy your coconuts, but then I need to do from your social media, I need to go to your website, your website, I need to call you, and then the process, people don't like that because the attention span is really, really short.

[16:18] So, instead of me going through that process, if there's an easier process to do it, I mean, I'll switch. If a competitor is giving me the same, an easier process to get the same value, I mean, I'll go with that, okay? So, basically, the most important thing is simplify the process. Keep it as simple and short as possible.

[16:40] If I drop off along the way, you as a brand should have strategies to bring me up, exactly. So, you can do things like, if I purchased your brand, okay?

[16:50] If I purchased your brand, you can do like an after sales follow-up, okay? You bought this from us. Did you like it? How was the process? Was it easy?

[16:59] You get, this information can help you win more customers because then you optimize the process. If people are saying it's not as easy as you thought it was, then you can customize the process.

[17:10] Yeah, it's okay. All right. So, basically, initially, my website is there, thinking that I've gotten this dope developer, and you know developers, they are good.

[17:20] I've gotten a good one. He has set up a store for me with this long list of forms. You tell me your name, your location, right? Your GPS data.

[17:34] I mean, that Ghana card. Ghana post. Ghana post, yes. You tell me that, you tell me your phone number, your email address, your WhatsApp number, the number of keys that you have, just for one coconut. So, you mean all those things?

[17:48] I've dropped off. I mean, I didn't want the coconuts. Go through the entire process just for the coconuts. I think I would rather not. And then, also, another thing you can do is you can do product trials.

[17:59] Okay. So, if you have something, let's leave the e-commerce. Now, you are teaching us a lot. Okay. You're teaching that. You know, when you get to part of the platform, sometimes they can cut and then give you to taste to see if you like it.

[18:13] Yeah. Okay. That's product trial. Now, you can create samples of your products and let people try it. If it works for them, they buy into your product. This is as simple as that.

[18:24] These product trials, I think these are bocci salad. They've done that. I don't know if they know what you're doing, but then I've experienced some before.

[18:32] It's working. Uma, right? You know Uma. I do. I do. Uma is a fan of Kebab. So, we went to one Kebab joint, right? And he ordered for, I think, goat or something.

[18:47] And it was like, the Kebab salad, you know, it was like, Charlie, Mika cut this one for you. Charlie. And he cut it. We all was using it. And the next thing I know, I was like, I beg, add this one.

[18:59] Strategy. You see? Strategy. That's it. Interesting. That is it. It's that simple. A lot of people use it, but brands, new brands or small brands are sometimes not willing to try it because they feel they may be carrying costs.

[19:14] Yeah. Yeah. Because you're not, you're trying to get a person over, but then you are not very sure the person comes to your brand. Yeah. That's a little bit.

[19:22] But now we are trying to move customers from the consideration stage to the purchase stage. In your line of work, what mistakes do businesses often make that prevents customers from moving from the consideration stage to the purchase stage?

[19:40] Yeah. So, I think the first is the businesses, businesses don't sometimes don't provide enough information. Okay. During the consideration stage.

[19:50] During the consideration stage. Now, I've seen your brand, but you're not giving me a reason to buy a brand. To purchase. To purchase. So, the consideration stage should be taken very seriously.

[20:00] People, you need to educate people on the products or the service you're offering. Let them know why they should join. Okay. And then also, if the process is too complicated, if it's too, I mean, it's too strenuous trying to purchase something from you.

[20:18] I would lose, you lose me as, you lose me as a customer. And then also, if I eventually buy from you and maybe you don't follow up on the purchase, how easy was the process?

[20:28] Did you enjoy the product? I mean, sometimes you get some emails saying, okay, fine, you purchase this from us. Did you like it? What do you think about it?

[20:37] What comes to you better? These are things that... The service. The service, exactly. People don't take them as important parts, but then they really help brands to know exactly how the customer thinks.

[20:49] And then too, if the customer is willing to come back and buy from you. Me, me. I don't know about you, but I mean, I don't feel service. I feel like...

[20:59] They're harder than me. Yes. No, no, no. I feel like, what do I have to... I mean, what does the brand give me after me feeling that service?

[21:11] You bought the products. I've bought a product, so... It actually helps. It actually helps even you, because sometimes when the emails come through, they can give you discounts.

[21:20] They can say, okay, fine, you'll be able to use them once. Then I'll sell your service. So it depends. I mean, the information actually helps brands know how easy it was for you to buy from them.

[21:35] And most importantly, if you'll be willing to buy a game from them, that goes into the attention stage. Yeah. So the purchase goes into the attention stage.

[21:46] All right. So talking about the retention stage, what can businesses do to bring customers to this stage? Because they've already made purchase.

[21:58] Now, just as you said, the example you gave, you're like, save this, which sort of overlap with the retention stage. But here is me. Me, I don't do save it.

[22:07] So how can you move me from the purchase stage to the retention stage? So you can give things like for repeat customers or for new customers, you can give them discounts on the next product.

[22:21] You bought a shoe for me. Now you want to buy a belt. Well, now I have a belt. But then if I give a discount, the product is 10 cities. If I give a discount and make you pay five cities, would you be willing to buy?

[22:37] So do the strategy. Don't send me email. You're not checking. I mean, the email is the service. You're not checking. But then they give you a reason to basically following up on the product or following up on the pages.

[22:49] Is it you went through the process? If it was convenient, was it how easy or how difficult was it? And then now we have this product. Are you willing to buy again from us?

[23:01] Based on your response, they can tell. Okay, fine. Do we need to optimize this process? Do we need to make it more or do we need to simplify the process to make it easier for you to buy from us again?

[23:12] They optimize the process from there. You know, another name for retention is customer loyalty, right? Loyalty. Yeah. And it sort of is part, I don't know if it's like custom stone, but then it's also part of the marketing strategy.

[23:27] Right. But my question to you, Bionna, is it relevant for businesses? And if so, how come businesses foster customer loyalty? Because remember, the reason why I'm asking that if it is relevant is that I have my budget for marketing activities, right?

[23:47] And you are telling me customer loyalty or retention program is also part of marketing activities. So I should remove some of my overall budget to do that.

[23:59] Now I'm wondering, is it relevant? You finally convinced me to buy a product. To keep your business going, you need me or other people who are purchasing your product or who are purchasing your product or your service, you need us to keep on taking repeat actions.

[24:14] Yeah. Coming back to buy stuff from you. Now, if you don't, we would either find another competitor to buy from or we just lose interest in your brand.

[24:25] So it's very good. It's actually advisable to craft strategies in such a way that you finally got in these customers. How do we keep them? Let's craft a strategy here.

[24:37] Let's focus on the coconut selling my e-commerce business. Luckily, Kinsley, yeah, Kinsley came to buy coconut from my outfit on my website. Now, how do we retain Kinsley so that he keeps on coming back for more?

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[26:57] So, for him, if you want to keep Kinsley, first of all, you can do a delivery service. Kinsley, instead of coming to my coconut shed to buy it.

[27:09] No, no, it's online. Oh, it's online? Yeah, online. Remember, we moved the coconut selling from offline to we created an e-commerce. Okay, great.

[27:19] Yeah, so it's an online business now. So, it's online. Kinsley, you bought coconuts from us. You like coconuts, okay, fine. Um, how about to give you an extra coconut on Friday?

[27:29] Just because... For shaker reasons. Just because. I mean, we'll give it to you, get a straw and add to it and everything, make it look nice. So, how about we throw in an extra coconut on Friday?

[27:38] Just because you've been buying from us. It makes Kinsley think, oh, fine, instead of buying two coconuts... Like the king he is. Exactly. It makes Kim think the king he is.

[27:46] No, I see. And then you get to get an extra coconut for free. Now, Kinsley will go back to the office. If he's at work, he can't tell his colleagues.

[27:55] Colleagues, yeah. I bought these three coconuts from this guy, just because I bought from him. Because I purchased from this site. I mean, just scan this QR role.

[28:05] He sends the link to the friends. Tell if you buy from this guy. Every Friday. And then we can have like coconuts party and stuff. Interesting.

[28:12] That's a strategy you can use to keep Kinsley. Right, so that is one. Any other? So, aside of that, another thing you can do is, okay, fine, Kinsley has gone to website and he's bought the coconuts.

[28:23] You can create a separate ad to say, oh, we know you bought this coconut from us. Okay, so how about you have this other product, maybe a coconut and what do coconuts go with?

[28:35] Coconuts go with what? Tell the guys, what do coconuts go with? Oh, if I change the product, you all switch it. No, no, no, it's okay. I'll switch it.

[28:43] I'll switch it. Okay, okay. Let's switch it to a different product. So, we don't know what coconut cooks. Maybe it's every Friday. I'm looking for the coconut.

[28:53] So, another thing you can do is, aside, let's leave the coconut conversation. So, let's say you have a separate business, you're selling phones here.

[29:02] Now, Kinsley has taken the coconut, he likes it, but then he sees that also, actually, another side of the website, they sell some tech stuff, okay.

[29:09] Now, he likes gadgets. He's a gadgets person. He's bought a camera, okay. You can tell him, okay, fine, we've seen that you have this camera.

[29:17] How about this camera backpack? It fits in properly, okay. You can do a short video showing how the camera fits in the backpack. Exactly, and how convenient it is.

[29:27] That is consideration. That is consideration. But then, it's powered by a marketing strategy we call remarketing. Remarketing. You look at a person based on the actions the person has taken with your brand or on your brand.

[29:40] And then, based on certain actions, did the person purchase? Yes, did the person not purchase? No. If the person purchased, how can we upsell?

[29:48] How can we give something else of value that depends on, like, at a reduced price? So, the backpack for the camera, it will go for 15 cities.

[29:59] But then, because you bought this camera, it will give it to you for 10 cities. I mean, Kingsley has bought about great to get it. So, that's remarketing.

[30:06] It's another strategy marketers can use to retain their customers. Interesting. So, Bayo, let's come to the advocacy stage, right. Remember, we are going on this customer journey.

[30:17] Now, I want to know, how can brands turn lawyer customers into brand advocates who would just be telling people about their businesses or services?

[30:28] So, it falls back to how the person engaged your brand. Okay. If the person, if I liked how you advertised your brand or how I was able to buy from you and you count through a few discounts my way, I mean, I'm a gamer.

[30:47] I'd spread the word as an influencer. And you're not paying me for this. You can choose to pay me. But then, if I think it's good enough for other people to jump on, I'll just tell them.

[30:56] Yeah, it's free. It's free advertisement for you. All right. So, we've heard about word of mouth, which is, I mean, it's basically advocacy. How can businesses harness word of mouth?

[31:08] Actually, word of mouth is very powerful. It's very powerful because it can either make or break your business. And that's why you need to, at every stage in the funnel, you need to listen to what is going on with your audience, how people are engaging with your brand and then optimize the process.

[31:26] Now, if for some reason you sold me a product that I didn't really enjoy and I take to social media and I put it out there. You don't take any strategies or you don't make any efforts to try and find out what the process or what the...

[31:43] to find out why I was not pleased and how you can make it better, how you can make the experience better for me, then it puts your brand at risk because now I may choose not to buy from the brand again.

[31:54] I may choose to go in a different direction. So, word of mouth is actually very powerful because I'm on social media. I'm in a network of friends.

[32:01] These people don't know that I bought your brand or bought from you. If I go and put out positive feedback or reviews about your brand, it's very likely you get people calling you or checking your social media pages or website to see what you're offering, what's making me recommend or seeing that.

[32:19] And so, I think it's actually something brands should consider. It's very important. Every single comment that comes your way, good or bad, take it in, learn from it, optimize the process.

[32:32] It's very important. Optimize the process and then put the brand out again. That's the best way to retain customers. So, another thing you can do is another thing you can do is you can send out savings.

[32:45] People are pages from you or are pages from you. You can send out savings, find out. There's this thing called the Net Promoter Score. There's a term called the Net Promoter Score.

[32:56] Net Promoter Score. I beg to go deep. Net Promoter Score. Net Promoter Score. So, basically, simple things. It's like a survey to find out how people want to engage with your brand and then are willing to recommend your brand to other people.

[33:11] So, if you've seen something like how easy was it to buy these products from us on a scale of one to ten, on a scale of one to eight. Okay, one to five.

[33:22] How easy was it to buy from us? And then all you need to do is just click. Those things provide valuable insights about one, the customer journey to the brand and then two, what they need to work on or how they can optimize that final stage to make sure that they make you repeat customer.

[33:38] Come back and buy something with your friends. Right, right. Net Promoter Score. Yeah. It's another strategy people on brands can leverage. Also, also.

[33:47] Now, let's mirror you. We are all marketers. So, we know this thing. What gets measured? You are my boss. In this episode, you are my boss. We know this thing.

[34:01] What gets measured gets improved, right? So, that means I'm diving into measurement and, you know, performance. I'm all about that. Looking at this stage, the customer journey, we started with awareness came to consideration purchase.

[34:17] Purchase, I know the KPI over there. So, but then you will go in. So, we started with awareness considering purchase retention, right? So, what is the KPIs?

[34:28] That is the key performance in making tests for all of these stages. So, let's start with the awareness stage. The awareness stage is you're getting the brand out there.

[34:37] You want people to see the brand. That's all. That's the main objective. So, are they seeing it? That's the question I should be asking myself.

[34:44] Are they seeing the brands? And how can you tell the brand? I'm coming. Yeah, how can you tell? If you're looking at things like the views, if you have a video, you put it out there.

[34:53] Okay, you want to know how many people have watched this video? You can go deeper and see at what stage the people drop off the video. Okay, that's all awareness.

[35:03] If you're running a campaign. Post it. So, with this metric, it's very, very important. That's why I said post it. Where can I get this? Look at me as I still want to sell coconut.

[35:17] So, look at me as a coconut seller with an e-commerce business, right? How will I get this data? This data, the number of views. So, if you have on your websites or if you have your social media pages, you can check the dashboard.

[35:35] Most of these social platforms or these platforms, even your website has a dashboard behind it. Yeah. Now, this dashboard shows you the numbers, everything that's happening on either your website or in your social media or within your social media pages.

[35:48] Yeah. You can check things like impressions. Impressions means the number of times a particular piece of content has been seen. So, it could be a post on your Facebook page.

[36:02] It could be if you're looking at the website, you're looking at website distance. People who have come to visit your website. I mean, so it's, if you check your dashboard, you can tell there are certain metrics that are put that specify this shows or this terms.

[36:18] The performance at the awareness stage. The performance at the awareness stage, oh yeah. So, views don't mean if I've put out a video on my social media pages.

[36:29] If you put up posts, it could be impressions. Like images. Images. It could be impressions. Even sometimes just your tweets. It could be impressions.

[36:36] To give you information on who has seen the particular piece of content. Right. So, that is awareness stage. That is for the awareness stage.

[36:43] Now, let's come to consideration. The KPIs, the key performance indicators when you come to the out consideration stage. So, for the consideration stage, you're looking at, people have seen, I mean, your KONOS store, people have seen the products you have.

[36:58] They've seen the different components you have. Now, are they asking you questions about the KONOS? Where do you buy the KONOS from? How can I get KONOS to give it to me?

[37:08] This is engagement. This is a step further than just seeing your brand. Seeing, ah, right. I've seen it now. I want to know more about it. More about it.

[37:17] Exactly. So, this KONOS, is it better than this other thing I'm buying? Or this other KONOS I'm buying? Let me draw the journey if I get it right.

[37:27] So, the awareness, they've seen it. Now, if the customer start asking you questions, that means they've moved to the consideration stage. They have moved to the consideration stage.

[37:39] Another thing, well, that's on social media. Another thing could be, if I'm browsing the webpage, your website, I've seen it. But now, I'm going through other pages.

[37:48] You have maybe another page that is showing a different fruit you're saying. Coconut ice cream. Coconut ice cream, exactly. Now, I'm looking at, okay, fine.

[37:58] This person also has this and this and this product. This is also part of the engagement. It's not coined as engagement, but then it shows that I'm having more interest in your product.

[38:07] In my products. Exactly. So, you can look at things like clicks. I've clicked from this page to another page. It's measured in click-through rates.

[38:16] It's the ratio between the clicks on a particular thing, either on your website or if you're running an ad, like it clicks on your ad, and then the number of people who have seen it.

[38:27] All right. So, it just shows that it's a step further in the interest piece. I'm showing, taking more steps and getting to know your brand. All right.

[38:36] So, I'm not just looking at, I mean, my customers are not just looking at my videos, or they are just not looking at my posts that I post on social media, but they took the pain to comment on that.

[38:50] Exactly. Where can I get it? So, they've loved the awareness. Now, they've moved to the consideration. So, that's why the process is very fluid.

[39:00] Sometimes, you might not even know if going through the videos. Yeah, because, I mean, you will be like, oh, they are commenting on my posts.

[39:08] Exactly. But then, you should look at the kind of comments that you get it, if it is just emoji comments or someone else actually. You know, there's a difference between the like and the love.

[39:19] If I click on the like, I mean, it's just a click. If I click and I scroll through to the love, or to the support in terms of LinkedIn, or celebrates, it shows a different level of engagement.

[39:31] Ah, yeah, yeah. So, now, that means, exactly. Interesting. Now, you see, for me, I mean, this is what I'm looking at it. If I get a comment like, oh, this is nice coconut.

[39:44] Where can I buy some? I know the kind of assets or posts that I need to post out there, that, okay, I'll create a new post that you can buy on my website or whatever.

[39:57] Now, if someone comments, love, how do I address that? So, now, this person has, if I get the question, this person has seen your products. Okay.

[40:08] This person has commented. Hot with a hot emoji. Exactly. So, this person has shown a different level of interest in your products. Okay. It's just, if I'm scrolling through social media, I can keep on clicking like on every single post.

[40:21] Right. It's very easy for me to do. If I switch to the love, it means something in there could be the creative. Okay. It could be the messaging.

[40:30] Something in there has made me want to, not just like this, but then love it. Interesting. Right. It's like, it's like, go ahead. This show, this show is for eating and above.

[40:47] No, please. Wait, this show is open to all ages. All ages, so yeah. I would rather not say it. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Is this it? Yeah.

[40:58] It's a family show. Okay. Thank you for that bio. Michael is listening to this show. Yeah. She's safe. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right. So, that is for the consideration, right?

[41:16] The KPIs for consideration. Now, let's talk about it. The purchase, which is, I mean, self-explanatory is basically, if it is an e-commerce website, basically, if you get a dollar, then you have accomplished that.

[41:31] What if it's not an e-commerce website? So, if it's not an e-commerce website, so you're looking at things like, take for example, you have a product and you want people to download, you have a report, you want them to download it.

[41:44] Okay. You let them fill in information and then they get it. Yeah. You're looking at things like conversion rates, download rates. How many people have downloaded this?

[41:54] If it's in the event of, you have your podcast, I mean, call us on social media. Yeah. You want people to, I've listened to this, then I like it.

[42:02] What's the next step further? I follow you. Okay. So, the next step is go to buy me a coffee and buy me a coffee. I will buy you the coffee. So, yeah.

[42:15] It's subscription. I subscribe to it. I want to listen. I want to see this in my feed every time. It's another type of conversion. It's not just me buying from you, but then it's me showing that I want to be part of your brand.

[42:29] The community. Yeah. The community. All right. Now, let's go back to the small business owners, right? What advice would you give the small business owner about customer journey?

[42:44] So, I would say for small business owners, I think it's very important to consider, first of all, the entire journey. Know the journey. Know what to do at each phase of the journey.

[42:59] And then secondly, know your audience. Know your customers or know your potential customers. Because you need to engage with these guys at every stage.

[43:08] So, if you don't know them, you don't know what resonates with them or how they can relate to the brand. You can't tell how you can help them at different stages of the brand.

[43:17] At different stages of the journey. So, if you realize this person has followed you in the instance of the Pokemon store, the person has gotten to the checkout stage or the person has gone to the point where it's clicked to buy one Pokemon and the person drops off.

[43:34] What do you do? How do you get busy? So, you need to look at the full spectrum of the journey. Look at the people and then optimize your creatives at every point in time to speak to this.

[43:46] Yeah, I'm right. And I think what I will add is, especially the consideration stage, since most people might overlook it. You have to be looking at your comment, the kind of comments that you are getting, the kind of messages that you are getting, because with these ones, it will help you, once you get it right, it will help you craft the perfect message to put out there.

[44:11] And then another thing brands should do is they shouldn't overlook results. Sometimes you've done something and you've seen the results, but you're not taking action.

[44:25] That's where testing comes in. You test something to see if it works. I mean, we mentioned Facebook has the largest audience in Ghana. Now, if you realize that Facebook is not working for you, you don't need to put in more effort than Facebook.

[44:41] If you see that Snapchat or TikTok is working better than Facebook, you're moving there. So, this is where data comes in. When you have your dashboard, you see all the metrics, you see the impressions, you see the clicks, you see the conversion rates.

[44:53] Let this all make sense to your brand. Put it into action. And then work on what works for you, basically. Let's talk about tools. You've probably said some about the dashboard.

[45:05] And this dashboard is provided to you by the social media platforms. When you go to your insides, it is there. If you go on Instagram, it's there.

[45:14] But what about those of us who have an e-commerce website? Is there a tool or a platform that sort of outlines the customer journey? Forget about the awareness, but then when they get onto the website, is there like a tool that outlines that this person moved from here, here?

[45:34] Because you said if they drop off during the purchase, right? If they drop off. How am I going to know that Akosia Menu came to my website? But Akosia Menu just clicked on purchase now.

[45:46] Akosia Menu didn't click, and she went away. How am I going to see that? So that I go back to Akosia Menu and say, come and click. Come and click the purchase.

[45:55] So, we have the dashboard gives a lot of information. A lot of information you can work with. You can tell you, first of all, from the awareness phase, Akosia saw the ad, okay?

[46:06] You can tell in the consideration phase, Akosia clicked on the engagement phase. Akosia clicked on this ad, okay? But now for the conversion part, you can tell you people that clicked on the ad.

[46:17] There's a tool called Google Analytics. Oh, Google Analytics, all right. If you type in Google Analytics, it will give you, you just once you have a Google account, you can sign into the Google Analytics, and then you can see everything that's happening at the back end of the website.

[46:30] So, you have a landing page. It can tell you people who visited the landing page, and then you have a button, and that same dashboard can tell you people who clicked on the button.

[46:40] Now, I can tell people who clicked on the button to download or to purchase, but didn't pay for that. What you can do is, if you want to bring Akosia back to your business, you can retarget, you mentioned this earlier, you can retarget Akosia.

[46:56] So, you want to bring in Akosia, okay? There are things called cookies, website cookies, okay? When Akosia visits your website, your website knows that Akosia has visited your website, okay?

[47:08] And then there's a little piece of tracking information that's put in Akosia's browser, that's attached to Akosia's profile, online profile. What you can do is you can create ads, you can create content that speak to Akosia, and people like Akosia, people who have visited clicked.

[47:26] And didn't. And didn't. For some reason, they wanted to, but then maybe she got a phone call and then she left your page. Right. Now, you can create content and then reach out to these people and bring them back to your website.

[47:38] And so, probably this content should come with incentive? Exactly, an incentive. So, you can add a discount to see if you're fine. Oh, we noticed you did this and this.

[47:48] Oh, we noticed you did you bought your website where you didn't buy this coconut. How about we give you an extra free coconut? If you like it.

[47:57] But with that one, I know that Akosia and her lies came to my website without tool. I mean, the Google Analytics too. No, the Akosia and the lies came to my website, went through everything, but then didn't finish the patches.

[48:12] She got a phone call. She got a phone call. From Kinsley. From Kinsley, right. Kinsley don't do calls now. So, yeah. But then she didn't make the patches.

[48:24] So, once I initiate that, it will be served to her and her lies. Yes. So, that it will incentivize her to come back. So, come back. Interesting.

[48:33] And the good thing about this is, because it's unique to Akosia, it means that whichever device Akosia may be using, maybe she was on her phone and she got a phone call.

[48:43] Now, she decided to use her laptop. Because it's tied to her online profile, so her online profile, she would see the ad in a different space.

[48:53] It could be on a different device. It would be in a different website and tie. She gets to see the ad and eventually comes back to you. So, by her commitment to invite you over for us to talk about retargeting.

[49:08] The one we go all out. All out. I can't wait. I'll be too excited to do this. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's do that. But then before I let you go, I want us to talk about the future of the customer journey.

[49:20] I believe this journey started, we started using the customer journey since time immemorial. Maybe the Mad Men era time. Since century. Yes. We've been using the customer's journey.

[49:33] That was a liar. We've been using customer journey since then. But I want to know, do you foresee it's being changed? Or do you foresee businesses and advertisers not using it because of the technology that is coming up?

[49:49] To answer the question, it won't be phased out because it's a very essential part of the marketing process. Come along with it, but then we can't overlook it.

[50:00] What we can do is we can enhance it. We have things like chatbots. We have things like AI. I mean, these are things that, these are tools that know people even better than we do.

[50:13] It picks data from different sources and then multiple touch points and then it can give more information about your potential customer than you would ever have.

[50:23] It's providing more information that we can leverage to optimize our marketing process. Basically. So I think the customer journey, I mean, we've worked with it for a long time.

[50:33] This is not the time we're going to go to. With things like the tools like AI and marketing automation tools, we can only enhance or improve this process, especially when we combine it with what we already have.

[50:44] Yeah, so this gives information. It even gives deeper information on the customers that we don't see. And then we can use this to better our marketing campaigns.

[50:53] All right. Bayou. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. But before I let you go. This episode, just like any other episode of Colours of Social Media Podcast, is produced by Builders Studios and recorded at Tribal Mark Studios, 13 Asiko Street, Tontra Hills, Accra.