How to Leverage the 5 Stages of the Customer Buying Cycle for More Sales

By mredbord@hubspot.com (Michael Redbord)

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Let’s face it – there are many marketing tactics that boost conversions. However, to make your marketing effective, leveraging the customer’s buying cycle is the key to a successful online business.

Understanding a customer’s buying cycle is how you can have the right marketing for a successful commerce site.

Online Buying Cycle

The online buying cycle is very similar to the original buying cycle; however the key difference is the online buying cycle occurs online. Because it is online; many ecommerce sites and brands will utilize social media platforms and email marketing as marketing tools to help market and sell to consumers and generate leads back to their ecommerce site. The buying cycle and online buying cycle will go through the five stages of closing a sale.

5 Stages of the Customer Buying Cycle

You can look at a customer buying cycle as a customer’s purchasing cycle. ;Many customers go through stages during their purchasing process to educate themselves before they either make a purchase. There are five stages that you have to consider:

1. Awareness

Awareness is the first stage in a customer’s buying cycle when customers realize that they have a problem that needs a solution. ;

A company will be able to reach the target customers given the right marketing strategies and campaigns.

For example, a customer is trying to lower plastic waste from water bottle usage. A customer then sees an ad for a water filter. The problem the customer is facing is met with a solution and now the next stage of the customer buying cycle begins.

2. Consideration

This stage is where the prospect is considering their options and ;your company can provide multiple solutions for a customer. As an ecommerce site, this is where your marketing, sales team, and products come in.

In this stage, you can provide detailed information to explain how your product will help solve their problem. To go back to our example, once the customer clicks the ad and lands on your site, you can list the benefits of the water filter, such as cleaner water, more cost effective than buying bottled water, and gives you a good boost in health. ;Once the customer understands that this product is what they need to solve their problem, ;they will move onto the next stage.

3. Intent

In this stage, a salesperson aims to earn the trust of potential customers. Whether you tap them emotionally or logically, this is the time where a salesperson convinces the potential buyer that their product is the best solution for their needs. You can accomplish this through reviews from existing customers, highlighting the benefits of the product, or through a social media campaign that creates a feeling within the customer. Once the customer is convinced and has seen proof that the product works, we move on to the next stage.