The Customer’s Journey: Understanding How Your Potential Clients choose a Veterinarian online

If you want to see better results from your marketing efforts, it’s crucial to understand how the modern customer makes a purchase.

The modern age of information has changed how pet owners research and choose a veterinarian and its services. While it was once hard to find out about a product without reaching out directly or physically visiting a location, the modern consumer seeks out information to help them understand their problems and aspirations before considering their options and finally making a purchase decision.

This process is known as the buyer’s (or customer) journey and can be broken down into three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

1. Awareness

The first stage is focused on the challenges and problems that the buyer faces. Although they might not have a firm grasp of the cause of the symptoms, the buyer is searching for answers around their problem as they seek to gain a better understanding of the situation they are in.

2. Consideration

Once the buyer has a better understanding of their situation and can define their problem, they move into the consideration stage. The buyer actively searches for solutions to help them overcome their problem or achieve their goal. They research and consider all of the possible solutions.

3. Decision

Now the buyer knows what they want to achieve and has knowledge of the all the possible solutions, they shortlist their options before deciding on the best possible course of action and choose a specific product or service. The decision stage is usually when the buyer actively reaches out to a business.

The Shift in Customer Behaviour.

The way people make a purchase has shifted. Rather than veterinarians outwardly pushing their products onto people with marketing that interrupts, people conduct their own research, evaluate the solutions, and reach out to veterinarians when they are ready. The modern buyer isn’t receptive to the old school marketing approach, they don’t want to be disrupted by advertising and messaging that isn’t relevant to them.

People want to interact with a business on their own terms. To be helped, not to be sold to. The modern buyer wants useful and relevant information that helps them make the right decision when they purchase a product. Not to be pressured into a purchasing decision.

An Organic Marketing Approach.

The majority of businesses focus their marketing efforts on the decision stage of the buyer’s journey, hoping to nudge prospects over the line to make a purchase. They make the mistake of neglecting the awareness and consideration stage. Understanding your customers and targeting your marketing efforts to customers earlier in the buyer’s journey can reap great rewards.

Rather than just hoping the buyer will turn up at your door when they decide to make a purchase, a customer-focused marketing plan helps to build a relationship with the customer earlier in the buyer’s journey.

By educating the prospect on their problem, before later offering a solution, businesses can attract and nurture leads through each stage of the buyer’s journey. This organic and fresh approach to marketing positions your brand as a trusted source of information, ultimately leading to more sales as buyers are confident in a business that understands their problems, and has helped them through each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Conclusion

Once you understand the way people buy today, you can start to focus your marketing efforts on building relationships and helping your customers understand their problems, and how your product or service offers a solution. Positioning your brand as a trusted source of information, and ultimately making more sales.