If you are a marketer, sales professional, an entrepreneur or even a marketing student, you must have heard a lot about the buyer’s journey. We are all told to know our customer’s journey. That journey is important simply because it helps you understand the way a customer is getting attracted to your brand and the path they follow before they finally make a purchase.  This understanding of your buyer shapes your marketing and sales strategy and helps you build the sales funnel which finally converts the customer into a client.  As marketeers we are taught to rely on the traditional sales funnel – the model which was first developed by E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. Here is a simple explanation from Wikipedia which sums it up nicely.   In 1898, E. St. Elmo Lewis developed a model which mapped a theoretical customer journey from the moment a brand or product attracted consumer attention to the point of action or purchase. St. Elmo Lewis’ idea is often referred to as the AIDA-model, an acronym which stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. How did the AIDA model work? For years the AIDA model was used to explain buyer behaviour. They started at the top of the funnel, moved through the additional layers and then emerged as a new customer. What is important to note here is that in this model, the sales rep has a large part to play. They were responsible for the pushing a passive customer through the “Awareness”, “Interest” and “Desire” stages.  It’s they who decided which technique to use to explain to the buyer what he wants.  So the sales rep has a huge control over the whole process since they get to decide what techniques they will use to create demand in the customer. In this model, the sales rep is the only one who tells the customer about the product, its greatness, its price, its USP.  Also Read: 7 Customer Engagement Strategies That Really Work That is exactly what has changed now. The customer no longer needs the sales rep to tell her anything. They can get the information, almost a truckload of information, much before they actually hit the shopping place – online or offline. This has created a shift in balance from the sales rep to the customer.  The customer is now in more in control of the whole process, and in fact, dominates the whole process. And that is why the sales funnel is no longer a funnel.  So what exactly happened to the buyer journey? Well, the buyer journey is still there. Only that it has become very different and complex than what it was before. And that is because the customer goes through a very different journey today before buying a product. The thing to note is that – the buying journey is no longer a step-by-step process, a liner journey. It’s much much more messy since consumers are moving back and forth within the various stages, wandering off and then coming back, reading more, comparing, asking friends, discovering new things and then reconsidering those decisions before they make a final purchase. The whole process is much more longer and definitely not linear.  In 2018, a Garner’s research confirmed that the buying definitely did look different today. They explained that the customers had to complete 6 buying jobs to their satisfaction before they did make a purchase. What can be seen here is that there is no linear pattern to the whole buying journey. In fact, customers move around in loops, taking a decision and then reconsidering that decision again.   What we can surmise from this finding is that the whole process of buying is not sequential but more like a set of simultaneous jobs. Google’s Messy Middle Theory The most definitive piece on what the buyer journey looks today came out last year. It was published by Google in a paper named Decoding Decisions: Making Sense of the Messy Middle.  For some time now, the search engine giant has been saying that buying is no longer a linear journey, from awareness to purchase. Buying has become defined by intent and the customer’s need to know more and more, which has reshaped the funnel.  But there has been nothing definitive like the above paper written by Alistair Rennie and Jonny Protheroe, who work on Google’s consumer insights team in Great Britain. In a nutshell, this is what they found –  The centre of this model is the messy middle – “a very complex space between triggers and purchase, where customers are won and lost.” Basically, what Google tries to say is that is this – 1. THE TWO MENTAL MODES – The messy middle is created when the buyer switches between two stages, or two mental modes. First is the exploration stage, where they are presented with an enormous amount of information and choices. The second is the evaluation stage where they try to cut down on their choices and narrow down on what they want to buy.   2. THE LOOP– This process looks more like a loop where the buyer goes back and forth between the exploration and evaluation stages. It’s what Google calls the “MESSY MIDDLE”, where the customer is flip-flopping between exploring their options and expanding their knowledge by considering other things and then going back to explore more and then evaluating more options.  3. THE ALWAYS-ON EXPOSURE OR AWARENESS STAGE– The exploration or awareness stage where you have become aware of products in a particular category as a result of everything you have heard or read about those products online and offline – is always on. This means, that unlike the original AIDA model, exposure can impact or change your decision-making process at any time. You can become aware of a new product just as you are going to buy something and a result of that, you either abandon that purchase or make that purchase and then swing away from that brand to a new brand. What does this mean for … Continue reading What is the Buyer Journey Today, and How to Incorporate Content into it?