Are you wasting your Advertising Budget?

Planning to prepare your advertising budget?
         Before you prepare your advertising budgets you should have a thorough idea of what buyer's journey is. Mapping the buyer's journey would help to spend on the right advertising, right time, on the right platform.

What is the buyer's journey?

The buyer's journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider and evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service (Hubspot). There are different interpretations of the stages of the buyer's journey. Find the simplest buyer's journey below, 

3 Stages of the Buyer's journey

It is important to map the buyer's behavior at each stage of the customer journey. Below shown is an example format I used to demonstrate. You may use the same format to evaluate your business 

Example: Buyer's journey when buying a new vehicle ( Please consider that this is a hypothetical situation ). If you don't have a proper understanding of your buyer's behavior you can conduct interviews with few customers.

	Activities	Motivation	Questions	Barriers
Awareness	- Hears about the vehicle from a friend or sees it on the road - Sees a web banner or a video on YouTube	- Current vehicle is old - Wife wants a car - Have extra savings	- Can I afford it - Is it worth my investment - What will my friends think	- Satisfied with the current vehicle - The idea of investing the same money on another asset
Research	- Ask for a friend’s advice - Visit a car sale and ask information - Read websites or blogs	- Make the best choice - Satisfy needs - Trump friends	- What is the best - What can I get for my budget - Will this fit my lifestyle	- Honest and unbiased customer reviews - too many options available
Purchase	- Go to a car sale - Talk to a salesperson - Check the after-sale support details	- To finish the sales process as soon as possible	- How do I get it home - Do I have everything I need - Is it damaged	- Unhelpful salesperson - What to do with the old vehicle

Once you map your buyer's journey you can start deciding the touchpoints of it. That means deciding the marketing channels which are used in each stage of the buyer's journey.

 Do you know?
67% of the buyer's journey is done DIGITALLY.

Take a moment and think about which marketing activities you allocate most of your advertising budget? If digital marketing activities include at least 40% you can be happy, otherwise, you need to re-evaluate your marketing and advertising spendings.

               This is the era for all the marketing/ Advertising professionals to move funds from traditional marketing methods to digital marketing methods. Moreover, with the advancement of technology, attention is a scarce resource. we all are distracted. If you want to reach the touchpoints of the decision-making process of your potential consumers you have to use the mediums which they are most engaged.

Hint: 67% of the buyer's journey is done DIGITALLY

Simple Secret of Success

"Help people to get their goals and they'll happily help you to get to yours"

Found this amazing quote while reading "The greatness guide" by Robin Sharma I was wondering how to apply this to my life. Then I thought about the project I am currently working with. Basically, it is a brokering training platform that builds a marketplace for trainers and corporate training clients. My point of view is if we don't help our customers to achieve their goals they will not help us to achieve ours too. For that, we should know the customers well, we should understand their goals and requirements. We can simply understand it by creating a buyers persona for the ideal customer. For example, If we consider the trainers, their ultimate goal is to find more clients and improve their personal branding. As, a company, if Trainergram helps these trainers to achieve their goal, it will lead Trainergram to achieve the company goals and improve sales. Always remember, If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else!