Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
The clear winner in last night's U.S. debate was Frank Underwood
This aired during the debate among real candidate commercials. Sheer genius. Can't wait for Frank to return March 2016.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Friday, November 13, 2015
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Thursday, October 1, 2015
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Friday, September 25, 2015
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Beware of Fake Domain Renewal Scam !
A domain name scam is floating around lately from IDNS. We have seen this scam before and it comes around every so often. This time it's a mailed letter titled "Domain Name Expiration Notice" from an outfit called iDNS (Internet Domain Name Services). As you can see in the attached image, the letter looks very professional, shows your actual domain name and includes a realistic looking response form. IDNS uses vague wording to try to trick domain name owners into paying 4 x the normal market price for domain name renewal.
If you see this letter or one that looks like it, we strongly recommend that you shred it. If you own a domain name and are concerned about being scammed, contact us and we can help clarify things for you. Or if you are unsure, contact us at info@digitaldiner.ca and we will confirm it's legitimacy for you.
www.digitaldiner.ca
If you see this letter or one that looks like it, we strongly recommend that you shred it. If you own a domain name and are concerned about being scammed, contact us and we can help clarify things for you. Or if you are unsure, contact us at info@digitaldiner.ca and we will confirm it's legitimacy for you.
www.digitaldiner.ca
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
What is the Buyer’s Journey and Why Should You Care?
by Lina Vashurina, Ecwid Team
The funnel is dead ! That’s not us talking — that’s insight straight from McKinsey. The assertion is simple: in this digital age, linear funnels are woefully outdated. Your customers aren’t moving from “Awareness” to “Decision” stage. Instead, they are undertaking a complete journey with stops and detours in between. We call this the Buyer’s Journey, and understanding it will give you radical insight into your customers.
What is the Buyer’s Journey
In a nutshell, the Buyer’s Journey is the steps any customer takes before making a purchase decision. Think of the last time you purchased something. You probably followed a process similar to this: You realized you have a problem and need a solution. In the Buyer’s Journey, this is called the Awareness Stage. After understanding the problem, you researched some possible solutions. We call this the Consideration Stage because this is the point where you start considering answers. After narrowing down your list to one or two solutions, you searched for the best place to buy them. This is the Decision Stage. This is the Buyer’s Journey as it was first described in 1968. At that time, it was a relatively simple concept. Customers entered the journey from the Awareness Stage, and exited at the Decision Stage. The entire journey was expected to be linear, with customers moving in a straight path from one stage to another. You might have seen a chart like this plotting this Journey:
In truth, the Buyer’s Journey today is very different. Your customers have access to the world’s knowledge at their fingertips. They have no real reason to follow the linear journey described above. They can start the purchase process, spend a few weeks considering solution, then decide not to buy anything at all.
According to Forrester, if you were to plot an actual Buyer’s Journey, it would look something like this:
Although the three discrete stages — Awareness, Consideration and Decision (or Purchase) — still exist in this journey, customers go through them in a staggered, non-linear fashion. Your buyers might very well start searching for a solution, go through some answers, then give up halfway after being distracted by a new email or Snapchat.
Complicated? You bet. At the same time, understanding this journey can help you fulfil the first commandment of marketing: Know Your Customer.
Why is the Buyer’s Journey Important?
Three reasons:
81% of customers research online before making a purchase decision. For B2B buyers, this figure is as high as 94% .
Customer leads generated through inbound channels (i.e. pull marketing) are 61% cheaper than those generated through outbound marketing.
45% of companies readily admit that they have no idea how their customers interact with them.
These statistics paint a clear picture: your customers are actively searching for solutions online. Whether you can reach these customers when they search for answers will play a big role in your success.
This is where the Buyer’s Journey comes into play. If you can map this journey, you can create content that will place you front and center when customers look for solutions. This way, instead of pushing your products, you can successfully pull customers in by helping them through each stage of the journey.
Thus, mapping the Buyer’s Journey presents three benefits:
Insight: You understand your customers and their needs better.
Brand Building: By providing valuable content for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey, you can position yourself as a useful, authoritative brand.
Lower Costs: Leads generated through inbound channels such as SEO and content marketing have a higher ROI than those through outbound channels.
To take full advantage of the Buyer’s Journey, you need to:
Map out the routes a buyer might take through the Buyer’s Journey.
Create content for each route through this journey.
We’ll show you how to accomplish this below.
Mapping the Buyer’s Journey with Keywords
Let’s take another look at the stat above:
81% of customers search on Google before making a purchase decision. Put another way, it implies that 81% of your customers go through at least some stages of the Buyer’s Journey through their searches. If you remember your SEO 101, you also know that different keywords are associated with different customer intentions. A customer who searches for a “how to” is more interested in understanding a problem and its solutions. One who searches for long-tail “reviews” or “coupons” keywords, on the other hand, is likely close to purchasing a solution. Which is to say, if you have a list of keywords, you can segregate them into different categories depending on searcher intention. These categories roughly correspond to the three stages in the Buyer’s Journey.
Let’s understand this with an example.
Example: A sample Buyer’s Journey.
Suppose you run an online store selling laptops. A buyer lands on your site by searching for “new Windows laptops” on Google. Here, he finds a blog post about recently launched laptops. From this blog post, he makes a list of different laptops offered by different brands. Because he’s heard a lot about Dell, he decides to focus his search on Dell laptops. He types in “new Dell Windows laptops” and finds a list of Dell laptops. He looks at their prices and realizes the Dell 7000 Series would be perfect for him.
Now that he’s made a choice, he needs validation. His next search is for “Dell 7000 series laptop reviews”. This query takes him to your blog where he finds an in-depth review. Finally, after deciding that this is the right laptop for him, he wants to find the best deal for it. He types in “Dell 7000 series laptop coupon codes”.
After finding a coupon code, he searches for “buy Dell 7000 series laptop online”. Your site shows up as one of the results. He recognizes your website name because he’s had multiple positive interactions with your brand before. Because of the positive brand equity you’ve built up, you end up making a sale.
In the course of buying the laptop, the buyer looked up the following keywords:
new laptop
new windows laptop
new Dell 7000 series windows laptop
Dell 7000 series laptop reviews
Dell 7000 series laptop coupon codes
buy Dell 7000 series laptop online
These keywords become progressively more targeted as the buyer goes from not knowing anything about the topic to searching for a particular laptop model.
Based on what we know about the buyer’s journey, we can easily map these keywords to specific stages:
By creating useful content for each of these Buyer’s Journey keywords, you’ll ensure that you retain top of mind brand awareness among your customers. Instead of just being another no-name retailer, you can be known as a brand that helps buyers throughout their buying process.
As Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute says: "If you can build the platform where you become the trusted expert. If a company had more people thinking about that instead of focusing on the product, it would open up all kinds of opportunities."
Conclusion
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey should be a top priority in any successful digital marketing endeavor. Not only can it reveal incredible insight into your customer behaviour, it can also help you sell more by building up your brand and increasing your reach.
Key Takeaways
The funnel is dead ! That’s not us talking — that’s insight straight from McKinsey. The assertion is simple: in this digital age, linear funnels are woefully outdated. Your customers aren’t moving from “Awareness” to “Decision” stage. Instead, they are undertaking a complete journey with stops and detours in between. We call this the Buyer’s Journey, and understanding it will give you radical insight into your customers.
What is the Buyer’s Journey
In a nutshell, the Buyer’s Journey is the steps any customer takes before making a purchase decision. Think of the last time you purchased something. You probably followed a process similar to this: You realized you have a problem and need a solution. In the Buyer’s Journey, this is called the Awareness Stage. After understanding the problem, you researched some possible solutions. We call this the Consideration Stage because this is the point where you start considering answers. After narrowing down your list to one or two solutions, you searched for the best place to buy them. This is the Decision Stage. This is the Buyer’s Journey as it was first described in 1968. At that time, it was a relatively simple concept. Customers entered the journey from the Awareness Stage, and exited at the Decision Stage. The entire journey was expected to be linear, with customers moving in a straight path from one stage to another. You might have seen a chart like this plotting this Journey:
In truth, the Buyer’s Journey today is very different. Your customers have access to the world’s knowledge at their fingertips. They have no real reason to follow the linear journey described above. They can start the purchase process, spend a few weeks considering solution, then decide not to buy anything at all.
According to Forrester, if you were to plot an actual Buyer’s Journey, it would look something like this:
Although the three discrete stages — Awareness, Consideration and Decision (or Purchase) — still exist in this journey, customers go through them in a staggered, non-linear fashion. Your buyers might very well start searching for a solution, go through some answers, then give up halfway after being distracted by a new email or Snapchat.
Complicated? You bet. At the same time, understanding this journey can help you fulfil the first commandment of marketing: Know Your Customer.
Why is the Buyer’s Journey Important?
Three reasons:
81% of customers research online before making a purchase decision. For B2B buyers, this figure is as high as 94% .
Customer leads generated through inbound channels (i.e. pull marketing) are 61% cheaper than those generated through outbound marketing.
45% of companies readily admit that they have no idea how their customers interact with them.
These statistics paint a clear picture: your customers are actively searching for solutions online. Whether you can reach these customers when they search for answers will play a big role in your success.
This is where the Buyer’s Journey comes into play. If you can map this journey, you can create content that will place you front and center when customers look for solutions. This way, instead of pushing your products, you can successfully pull customers in by helping them through each stage of the journey.
Thus, mapping the Buyer’s Journey presents three benefits:
Insight: You understand your customers and their needs better.
Brand Building: By providing valuable content for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey, you can position yourself as a useful, authoritative brand.
Lower Costs: Leads generated through inbound channels such as SEO and content marketing have a higher ROI than those through outbound channels.
To take full advantage of the Buyer’s Journey, you need to:
Map out the routes a buyer might take through the Buyer’s Journey.
Create content for each route through this journey.
We’ll show you how to accomplish this below.
Mapping the Buyer’s Journey with Keywords
Let’s take another look at the stat above:
81% of customers search on Google before making a purchase decision. Put another way, it implies that 81% of your customers go through at least some stages of the Buyer’s Journey through their searches. If you remember your SEO 101, you also know that different keywords are associated with different customer intentions. A customer who searches for a “how to” is more interested in understanding a problem and its solutions. One who searches for long-tail “reviews” or “coupons” keywords, on the other hand, is likely close to purchasing a solution. Which is to say, if you have a list of keywords, you can segregate them into different categories depending on searcher intention. These categories roughly correspond to the three stages in the Buyer’s Journey.
Let’s understand this with an example.
Example: A sample Buyer’s Journey.
Suppose you run an online store selling laptops. A buyer lands on your site by searching for “new Windows laptops” on Google. Here, he finds a blog post about recently launched laptops. From this blog post, he makes a list of different laptops offered by different brands. Because he’s heard a lot about Dell, he decides to focus his search on Dell laptops. He types in “new Dell Windows laptops” and finds a list of Dell laptops. He looks at their prices and realizes the Dell 7000 Series would be perfect for him.
Now that he’s made a choice, he needs validation. His next search is for “Dell 7000 series laptop reviews”. This query takes him to your blog where he finds an in-depth review. Finally, after deciding that this is the right laptop for him, he wants to find the best deal for it. He types in “Dell 7000 series laptop coupon codes”.
After finding a coupon code, he searches for “buy Dell 7000 series laptop online”. Your site shows up as one of the results. He recognizes your website name because he’s had multiple positive interactions with your brand before. Because of the positive brand equity you’ve built up, you end up making a sale.
In the course of buying the laptop, the buyer looked up the following keywords:
new laptop
new windows laptop
new Dell 7000 series windows laptop
Dell 7000 series laptop reviews
Dell 7000 series laptop coupon codes
buy Dell 7000 series laptop online
These keywords become progressively more targeted as the buyer goes from not knowing anything about the topic to searching for a particular laptop model.
Based on what we know about the buyer’s journey, we can easily map these keywords to specific stages:
By creating useful content for each of these Buyer’s Journey keywords, you’ll ensure that you retain top of mind brand awareness among your customers. Instead of just being another no-name retailer, you can be known as a brand that helps buyers throughout their buying process.
As Joe Pulizzi of Content Marketing Institute says: "If you can build the platform where you become the trusted expert. If a company had more people thinking about that instead of focusing on the product, it would open up all kinds of opportunities."
Conclusion
Understanding the Buyer’s Journey should be a top priority in any successful digital marketing endeavor. Not only can it reveal incredible insight into your customer behaviour, it can also help you sell more by building up your brand and increasing your reach.
Key Takeaways
- The Buyer’s Journey describes all the actions a buyer takes before purchasing a product.
- The Buyer’s Journey helps you understand your customers.
- You can map this journey through keyword data.
- You can increase your search engine reach and build your brand by creating
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)