What Shopify Owners Can Do At Every Stage Of Customer Value Journey

Good marketing is when you are able to sell coffee to tea lovers as Nestle did in Japan. A good marketing campaign does not end once people are aware of your product, it ends when you are able to leave a significant impact so that your brand gets imprinted in their minds and the constant thought of it makes them come back to you. It should be like the one jumpscare from that one horror movie that you can’t get out of your mind. That is when you can claim that you had a successful campaign and it wasn’t merely a fluke. Marketing is essential, we all know that. If successful, it will create benefits for now and the future allowing the business to sell itself. We as humans are conditioned to think that whenever money goes out of our pocket we have incurred an expense. In the case of marketing, this is not necessarily true, as the cost you incur for placing your product in an audience is more of an asset. A well-thought, structured and creative marketing strategy will help create a loyal customer base for your brand which is enough to sustain a business in the long run. Among other things, the biggest advantage of having a loyal customer base is that they will do your marketing for you! They will advocate and promote your product in a way no other marketing tool can. For any business owner, it is of utmost importance to know where they are and where they wish to go. Every organization must keep in sight and mind, its long-term and short-term goals, and every effort taken from there on must be to achieve those. If you are looking to grow your Shopify business manifold, align your goals with DEVIL’s plan. This will not only help you gain traction by creating a minimum viable campaign but will also act like a checklist that can be referred to while planning on how to strategically increase ad-spend. Just as we are taught to overcome our fears by facing our devils, to aid your Shopify store boost sales one must face the DEVIL before deciding on what works and what does not for your business. Here is what the DEVIL’s plan actually means along with a list of questions you should answer before diving straight into heavy ad-spend.

Once you have narrowed down the strategies that work for you it is time that you scale it on to the next level. This scaling should coincide with continuous additions and deletions keeping into consideration the audience of your product and their ever-changing buying patterns. 

The next important thing to take one step closer to growing your online business is to deliver value. Customers are always looking for products that will add value to their existing consumption. You can increase this value and desirability by adding value at every stage of the Customer Value Journey. The Customer Value Journey is a stepwise progressive model which represents a customer's behavior with reference to your brand. What you have to do particularly is ease your customer's journey so that they stick with you and become loyal to you. Because if you are an Apple user, no matter how costly the new model of iPhone gets, you will still buy it.  According to recent CIRP data, the iPhone loyalty rate continues to exceed 90% and this is what brand loyalty does for you and  also why you need to capitalize on it. The customer value journey can be compared with a funnel. Your target audience is at the outer rim of that funnel and your content campaign should be the push they need to fall gradually towards the center of the funnel where they are finally converted to loyal customers. A targeted content strategy can, and should, assist the prospect in graduating from one stage of the marketing funnel to the next.

So just as investors are advised to diversify their investment portfolio, you should look into diversifying platforms and mediums that you will use to launch your campaigns on. As a bonus, supplement all this by adding social proof. Mention notable stores that use your app or influencers you've worked with in the past or have transacted with you. People trust a brand if they trust the persons associated with it. This will not only create legitimacy for your store but also facilitate image building and will create a base for you to transition your target audience into customers and then alleviate your customers from pain state to gain state. 

Let’s look at one of the most successful shopify store, ColourPop Cosmetics, This California-based beauty brand was founded in 2014 by Seed Beauty. By cutting out the middle-man, ColourPop can offer high-end cosmetics at drug store prices, which has built a cult following over the last 5 years. Colourpop has a number of fruitful partnerships with brands like Disney as well as influencers. You can work with a complementary business to develop a product or special, this is known as a collaboration (also known as co-branding). By working with a partner, you expand your audience and visibility while delighting customers with a fun, innovative product. 

ENGAGE

Let’s quickly talk about Red Bull’s breakthrough advertising tactics which helped them gain over 43% of the market share. They were able to create the illusion of popularity. By filling the rubbish bins of London with empty Red Bull cans, people would draw the conclusion that Red Bull was THE energy drink of choice. This is what you have got to do, grab your customer's attention in a way that they can’t resist. And once you’ve got your target audience’s attention we could start talking about how to increase engagement. Some major ways through which your Shopify store receives engagement are via direct search, SEO, referral, email marketing, or social media platforms. About 85% of traffic comes onto your landing page by direct searches for your store and organic searches through SEO algorithms combined. Quite obviously, a growing store should focus on the same.  

Luxy Hair, The hair extension store has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube, and it was able to leverage that audience into a seven-figure business. It is an example of a store that uses Yotpo to collect reviews and social proof. This app is full of useful features, such as review request emails and an SEO helper.

SUBSCRIBE

This is the litmus test of trust for your customers. It is the stage where you realize if the advertising expense you have incurred has resulted in some returns. There are 2 ways a potential customer might react to your brand's visibility. One, he might be intrigued to know more about your brand, or two, he might ignore your ads. In the case where your ads are being ignored by your customers, it implies that either you are being unclear about what you do or how you help your client or because you are making your message about you instead of about them. You need to go back to step 1 and crosscheck your campaigns with the DEVIL’s plan. If you are successfully able to grab your audience's attention then you must focus on asking the prospect for contact information (and permission to reach out via further marketing) in exchange for something of more value. This could be in the form of a blog subscription, a content download, a newsletter, or perhaps an on-demand webinar. Customers feel that they are in benefit as long as they could derive the most value without paying a single penny.  At this stage, you incentivize pre-purchase offers. 

A shopify store, Intelligent Change’s flagship product is the Five-Minute Journal, which is full of exercises for mindfulness and self-improvement. Within a few weeks of opening, the business sold out of its initial order of 1,000 books and turned a profit. This is how email marketing demonstrates its importance to ecommerce success yet again. With 90,000 newsletter subscribers on its contact list, Intelligent Change uses Privy to help manage these communications. Privy can be used to create and automate emails for other purposes besides newsletters, such as order follow-up, coupon reminders, and abandoned cart emails.

CONNECT

At this point, a customer decides to give your brand a chance because they think your product can help them achieve a transformational state. He is prepared to make a time or financial commitment in exchange for your good or service. You must focus on providing front-end offers to boost traction like Just pay for shipping, free gift with purchase, spin to win, free shipping over a specific threshold, welcome discounts, abandoned cart savers, etc. 

Let’s take for example, Hydrant, a growing Shopify store that tackles the problem of modern-day dehydration.To help people who are constantly on the go get the necessary hydration, electrolyte mixes are sold in handy packets. Hydrant is an evil genius for developing a quiz on its website that aids customers in determining the ideal Hydrant product combination for their requirements.  As an added bonus, Hydrant gives customers who complete the quiz a nice discount. The Lead Capture rate for the quiz is 31.6%. In layman's terms, that means it's a really efficient way to attract potential customers to your sales funnel. 

EXCITE

Your chance to show your prospect how your product or service transforms from a nice-to-have to something highly desirable or necessary is called "excite." Your customer is seeing the value in your product and starts to believe it. A key focus should be put on post-purchase upsell. Your customers must be provided with what is popularly known as the white glove treatment. From the point where they reach your website to the point where they finally consume your product, every step of the process must be eased for them. From how the product shows up first time ever in front of the customer to improve the unpackaging experience customers should feel like every service is hand-delivered to them. 

ASCEND

At this stage a customer starts purchasing additional products to increase their satisfaction. The brand must work to increase recognition and trust. Growing customer value and satisfaction is the objective of the Ascend stage. It is easier for you to gain attention for the second time if you had successfully delivered value that satiated their needs. Loyalty programs, retargeting ads, and broadcast emails are some ways by which you can keep them focused on your brand. 

Spigen, a company that sells phone cases, has build a solid and effective loyalty programme to keep customers coming back. They use Smile.io app to create a loyalty program for its store. Customers receive points for performing tasks like placing orders and opening accounts, and following Spigen on Instagram. These points can then be used to get deals on purchases.

The Smile.io app was also used to develop a loyalty programme for Tattly, a store that sells fake tattoos created by real artists and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, NBC, and The Atlantic. And another customer retention technique it uses is offering the option of including a confetti splash inside the packaging. Many e-commerce merchants overlook this, but personalising your packaging with unique elements will help you stand out from the competition and increase customer loyalty. 

ADVOCATE

You have been developing trust, providing value, and fostering long-term client satisfaction throughout the course of the journey. If you were successful, your customer should be content. Additionally, these satisfied clients are probably aware of other potential satisfied clients and are willing to recommend you. The Advocate stage formalizes the process of creating customer advocates eager to spread the word about their positive experiences, raising awareness, building credibility, and engaging a wider audience. At this point, you will be able to see real profit with the bare minimum customer acquisition cost. But keep in mind you do need to invest in ensuring that you keep the customers you have acquired. Automated workflows and feedback can be collected from the best customers. Service post after-sales service is what will ensure that your customer acquisition cost does not rise exponentially the next time you decide to sell. You need to provide lifecycle solutions, i.e. you need to maintain connection and deliver value till the life of the product sold in order to re-sell to that same group again. 

PROMOTE

During the Promote stage, you create brand ambassadors who actively market to their audiences on your behalf. This could entail incentives, affiliate or referral programs, or simply making it simple for pleased customers to sing your praises. Brand advocates generate recommendations from reliable sources whether or not they are paid, which frequently reduces your customer acquisition costs.

You need to address every stage of the roadmap and think about how you can optimize the customer experience through each step, finding the gaps in your strategy & pulling it together, so that it gets people excited about interacting with your business. A customer who completes CVJ is the biggest asset as he will market your company for you and no additional cost needs to be incurred to sell your product to them. Now that you have gone through the essential stages of the customer value journey, one might wonder how to effectively implement these in real life. So here I have mentioned key actionable insights your business can take at every stage of the CVJ to maximize your Shopify growth:  

What Shopify Owners can do at Every Stage of Customer Value Journey.pdf

References:

https://go.merchantmastery.io/pages/case-study-for-shopify-store-owners

https://9to5mac.com/2021/10/28/iphone-loyalty-rate-data-switchers/

https://popupsmart.com/blog/shopify-statistics

https://smithbrothersmedia.com.au/get-smarter/case-study-how-red-bull-used-rubbish-bins-to-achieve-marketing-success/

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SmLw1tK-m5Sp4oVrfgHtKKhG758vGkBIiYmghVEN6Pg/edit#heading=h.k08w52cuksby

https://www.supplychain247.com/article/everything_you_need_to_know_about_white_glove_service

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/12/14/the-minimum-viable-content-marketing-campaign/?sh=4dd43d2e7c20