So much attention is being paid to the importance of the Customer Journey and making sure you map it. Rightfully so. Customer Journey insights help you create and serve better content at every stage in the buying process. But are you overlooking a step? If you’re like most business owners I speak with, the answer is yes. In fact, in my experience, you may be overlooking several steps.

Before I go too far, when I say “Customer Journey” I am talking about the figurative representation of the process any buyer goes through when considering your offerings. It’s synonymous with “Buyer’s Journey” and you will see me use both here. It typically has four distinctive phases, Awareness, Education, Evaluation, and Decision, and is depicted as a funnel. I believe the phases and funnel image are both inaccurate – and I’m not alone.

Many top marketing minds have cited the lack of alignment of the sales funnel to current marketing science. We know much more about buying behavior than the funnel implies, and the phases are much more complex and interconnected than depicted. Plus, the funnel concept only considers the time from when a customer becomes aware of your company or offerings to when they buy.

The phases in the process are oversimplified for easy understanding in the model, but they are not really as distinct or separate from one another as implied. We now know that Brand Awareness, for example, not only drives initial awareness, it also impacts the final buying decision. Brand Authority is a key factor in the decision, and although it is influenced by Brand Reputation, these are not synonymous.

You need a strategy that creates and reinforces Brand Authority at every stage, however, Brand Reputation tends to be more confined to later stage consideration, and may not even be as heavily weighted. When a business leader tells me they are heavily focused on generating reviews, I usually ask about how much effort they are putting into establishing their authority and expertise. Reviews are great, but they are not very influential early in the Buying Journey.

In addition to the lack of alignment with marketing science, the funnel concept implies that once someone is in your pipeline, they’re not going to leave it until they buy – from you or someone else. You know that’s not true. So, it’s important to engineer your journey with ways to determine when prospective buyers drop out and why. The funnel doesn’t measure either of those things nor does ithelp you figure out what to do about it. Engineering the journey needs to include creating the benchmarks and defining how you will measure them.

And then there are the steps that everyone seems to overlook; the ones that support the buyer after the sale. They include the things you do that will impact the experience of delivery and implementation. Can you imagine how much more valuable your brand would be if you engineered the journey to set customer expectations before the purchase and then meet or exceed those expectations? This phase, which I call the Commitment phase is when you create repeat and higher margin sales, referrals, and Brand Loyalty.

You should be engineering the Buyer’s Journey to increase the likelihood of a closed sale every time a prospective buyer enters your pipeline, and don’t forget to include the post-sale activities that generate Commitment. Make every interaction count—start transforming your buyer’s journey today to boost sales and drive long-term success. Book a free strategy session with our team now!