The first step of any customer journey is Discovery. Depending on the industry or vertical, it’sunlikely you’d be able to acquire a customer who is unfamiliar with your brand.
Gaining awareness at the Discovery stage is all about upper-funnel tactics. Creative at this stage should be general brand messaging that speaks to the company’s strong reputation and customer-centric philosophy. Since activity at this stage is focused solely on making users familiar with the brand, expectation for user engagement is low and is measured by impressions and view-through rates within the applicable audience segments.

At the Research phase of the journey, customers are generally more engaged than in theDiscovery stage. Using for example a bank target audience as an example, at the Research stage, they have established intent to open a new checking account but have not collected enough information on the various features and benefits they’re looking for in order to make a decision, or even narrow down the list of options.
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At this stage, broad, short tail keyword-targeting. To narrow the targeting and improve efficiency on these upper-funnel terms, consider layering in In-Market Audiences. This ensures that your campaigns are maximizing visibility on users who are actively researching the services you’re advertising. Ad copy at this stage should highlight the company’s key value props that differentiate their checking product from others similar products. Engagement during the Research stage can be measured with click-through traffic and page views; it’s still unlikely users have enough information to begin the application process.

Once customers have identified key players in the space, they move into the Consideration phase. At this step in the journey, they’re narrowing the list of choices down to a few competitors who best fit their needs. At this stage, users have most likely visited your site while performing research. Whether targeting users on the GDN, GSP, or the search network via RLSA, you should ensure that your ad copy and creative is highly specific to the benefits and features of your offering.

As customers conclude the decision-making process and identify the company who best fits their needs, they complete the process of shopping. Although this is the one stage that isn’t directly supported by any digital marketing activity, it’s still important to track this action in order to appropriately assign value to all touch points in the journey that preceded it.

As all marketers know, the customer journey doesn’t end with the initial transaction.Regardless of vertical, businesses rely on repeat purchases and customer retention to be successful. In the example mentioned before of the bank, the account acquisition is the entry point into an ongoing relationship with its customers. From there, the Retention phase includes opportunities to deepen the relationship with other products. While each of those service offerings requires its own unique decision funnel, they also represent the final step of the initial customer journey.