Content Creation For The McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey

It is important that content marketers are familiar with the traditional customer journey funnel and are creating content aimed at customers at each stage of the buying process. This helps to give your content a purpose and drives users to purchase your product or service. However, there are other models available which better explain how customers interact with brands during their decision making process. This article will discuss one of these models in detail and give you some ideas of how you can utilise online content to engage with users during this journey.

The Standard Funnel Model

The standard funnel model looks something like the below image, with visitors dropping out at each stage along the funnel and the amount of customers decreasing as the journey progresses.

Content created for this model tends to focus on brand building, then comparisons, reviews and information gathering, and finally persuasion. Once the customer has purchased there is an assumption that they will be loyal, although many brands do create content for customer retention purposes, particularly emails. There is also an assumption that customers will only eventually decide to purchase if you are present in their initial awareness phase.

The McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey

However, another customer journey model exists called the McKinsey Consumer Decision Journey, which looks like this:

In this model, the customer can actually expand the number of brands that they are considering purchasing from during the 2nd ‘Active Evaluation’ stage. There is also a post-purchase ‘trigger’ which can mean the difference between a loyal customer returning or abandoning you for another brand.

I’m going to look at each stage of the McKinsey model in details and explain how you can use content to make sure you are encouraging your customers to purchase and remain loyal at every stage in the buying process. (Click here for the TL;DR summary)

1. Initial Consideration

During the first stage of the purchasing journey, the consumer considers an initial set of brands, based on their existing brand perception and recent exposure to any marketing, both online and offline.

In order to be present on a consumer’s initial consideration list you need to create content which will build brand awareness in the long term. This should be highly engaging, funny, interesting useful content which keeps your company in the top of people’s minds.

Think about using infographics to highlight an important aspect of your industry and adding your logo subtly to the bottom as well as simple, interesting blog posts or articles. Also, funny attempts at newsjacking are good for bringing your company to the forefront of people’s minds – This job listing for a new Pope from Jobsite is a great recent example. This type of content needs to be created on a regular basis, with an increased frequency ahead of any occasions that you typically see a jump in sales, Christmas for example.

This content shouldn’t include an obvious call to action or try to push your product onto the consumer, as the purpose is to build up your awareness in people’s minds so that when they move onto the next stage of the buying process, they are more likely to want to learn more about you and are less likely to disregard you for a rival brand.

2. Active Evaluation

The second stage sees consumers evaluate what they want using gauges such as price, ease of use or additional benefits. Consumers may add or subtract brands to their consideration list as they delve deeper into their research.

Brands may “interrupt” the decision-making process by entering in to consideration and even force the exit of rivals.

As with the standard funnel model, comparisons and reviews are key, but in this case it’s important for brands to also cater for users who may have discovered the company via their research and were not aware of them during their initial consideration phase.

This will involve creating content that grabs the attention of potential customers and highlights any authority or trust  that the company has built up. This will help to educate new customers and put their minds at ease that your brand is one worth considering. This could include content such as customer testimonials or staff profiles, to show that your company is run by real people. You should also think about highlighting your excellent customer service (if you have it) by showcasing your Twitter feed on your site or letting them know how easy it is to return or replace a product using a Frequently Asked Questions section.

SEO should also be utilised in order to gain visits from users who are searching for decision making content, for example “brand X and brand Y comparison” or “product X reviews”. In order to rank for terms like this, you need to be creating and publishing content which contains these phrases. To do this, you could ask previous customers to write reviews for you and publish them on your company blog, or you could write informative articles highlighting the pros and cons of the products that people are searching for. These articles don’t even have to sit on your own site; you can try guest posting and place them on more authoritative sites in your niche.

Another way to educate users about your products or services, as well as providing something useful at the same time, is to develop tools which can help them make decisions. One good example is this New Year’s Resolution Calculator from Thomas Cook, which determines how much money people could save if they gave up things like coffee, chocolate or alcohol.

Of course, all this content needs to be promoted so that potential customers can find it. Use your social media channels and tools to find potential influencers or bloggers in your niche and point them towards your content.

3. Moment of Purchase

At stage three, the consumer will select a brand to purchase from. This stage requires you to help reinforce to the customer that they are making the right decision. Again, this could include customer reviews or testimonials displayed at key points during and after purchase and friendly messages along the way such as “thanks for purchasing, we look forward to having you as a customer”.

You also need to think about people who may be doing last minute research before they purchase. If you also have stores in the high street, maybe customers will be doing last minute research on their mobiles? Make sure your persuasive content is present on your mobile site or you could lose out to a competitor at the last moment. It’s also a good idea to make sure your Google Places listings are up to date and relevant, as people may be searching for the location of their nearest store. These also contain reviews, so any negative reviews should have replies from you offering help or refunds to unhappy customers.

Don’t try to constantly up-sell more products to customers at this stage as it can be irritating. The purchasing process should be as quick and easy as possible, so make sure there are no unnecessary steps or distracting content which will drive many customer away.

4. Post Purchase Experience & Loyalty Loop

After purchasing your product or service, the consumer will decide whether or not to purchase again based on their experience. As a bare minimum you should send a thank you email to each new customer, but why not also direct them to some content which provides them with some extra tips or instructions for using their new product?

If you want customers to keep returning to you, you need to keep them engaged. For high cost products this can be done with regular emails reminding them of their experience and gently nudging them to purchase or at least think about purchasing, again. For example; “We hope you enjoyed your holiday with us, why not take a look at the these great getaways for next year?” or “How are you enjoying your new car? Did you know you can also buy insurance from us at a discount?”

For purchases with a lower involvement, a small reminder of the purchase along with the opportunity to give feedback via ratings and social media is enough to keep your brand in the customer’s mind. If a customer doesn’t return for a repeat purchase within a set time, it is a good idea to send them another email asking them if they had any problems or simply directing them to a recent interesting article or news item that you think they might like. You may find that they simply forgot and the reminder will jog them to purchase again soon, but if they did have any issues, you can gather them via a feedback form and improve the experience for the future.

Also, why not create content that can only be viewed by customers who have purchased? For example, give them advanced notice of any sales or product launches. This could be done using their login details or by sending them a unique code. This will make them feel valued and will also increase the likelihood of them telling their friends and family about their great experience with your company.

The original funnel model assumes that once people have purchased, they stop researching. This seems logical but the McKinsey model says otherwise:

More than 60% of consumers of facial skin care products, for example, go online to conduct further research after the purchase.

If you think your customers may be continuing their research after purchase, then create content to target them. This could be in the form of articles, videos, infographics or anything mentioned before, but you need to make sure it is seen by the right people. Use your database to email your content to customers or promote it using your social media accounts.

Summary / TL;DR

In short, if you want to people to buy from you, you need to engage with them at each stage of the purchase journey. This journey has evolved from users being passively targeted by advertising across many channels, to customers actively going out of their way to research products for themselves. Since most of this research is now conducted online, it is imperative that you utilise the content on your website to attract the attention of these potential customers.

 In today’s decision journey, consumer-driven marketing is increasingly important as customers seize control of the process and actively “pull” information helpful to them.

If you ignore this opportunity, customers will almost certainly ignore you and turn to the brands who are engaging them with useful, informative content.

Marketers could seem out of touch – for instance, by trying to push products on customers rather than providing them with the information, support and experience they want to reach decisions themselves.

An outline of the four stages and content recommendations for attracting users within these stages can be found below:

1. Initial Consideration

• Create highly engaging, funny, interesting and useful content for top-of-mind awareness
• Try detailed articles, infographics and newsjacking
• Create this content regularly and increase frequency around peak times
• Reduce focus on CTAs and pushing purchases

2. Active Evaluation

• Create content which will help you get discovered if you weren’t in the inital consideration stage.
• Use SEO and create optimised content to rank for decision making phrases
• Use customer testimonials, reviews, staff profiles, FAQ pages, pros and cons articles, useful tools and customer service to highlight your authority and trust among unfamiliar customers
• Use social media to find influencers and direct potential customers to your content

3. Moment of Purchase

• Show reviews during the final stage of purchasing
• Make your content available on mobile for users who are doing last minute research in stores
• Update and optimise your Google Places listings
• Purchasing needs to be quick and easy so content shouldn’t hinder or distract the customer

4. Post-Purchase Evaluation and Feedback Loop

• Send a thank you email
• Create content to help them with their new purchase, such as tips and instructions
• Follow up with reminders and nudges to purchase again
• Reward exisiting customers by giving them access to exclusive content
• If consumers are continuing their research post-purchase, then target them with relevant content

I hope you found this guide useful, if you have any feedback, good or bad, please let me know in the comments.

Diagrams and all quotes from: http://www.slideshare.net/fred.zimny/mckinsey-theconsumer-decision-journey