What is the most common marketing mistake?

As  a marketer there are many concepts, models and metrics to know and understand. With so many flying around and changes often happening, it’s quite understandable there are sometimes misconceptions on what is exactly what. In his global marketing career and role as Marketing Effectiveness Expert, Mats Rönne sees it all the time. One of the most common mistakes marketers make, according to him, is confusing the “customer journey” with the “purchase journey”.

“The main difference between the two is that one is much more limited in time,” explains Rönne, “A purchase journey is from the moment the customer starts to have the need or desire for something until that purchase process is completed. The consumer journey takes much longer.”

We totally understand and share Mats point as we believe the purchase journey has a clear start and finish, whereas the consumer journey for us is a never ending loop in which we continue to interact with the customer, especially in between purchases.

The consumer journey continues beyond the purchase, but more importantly, also starts a lot earlier. Multiple studies, including one by McKinsey investigating over 125.000 consumer journeys, show the importance of being on the customers mind in the early stages of that customer journey. Even before they start to experience the need for which your product or brand can provide the solution.

Consumer journey infinity loop

Consumer journey infinity loop

Being that top of mind is something that is established through consistent and relevant communications with the customers, but often hard to measure. In recent decades this was done by launching extensive customer surveys.

“A common proxy these days is Share of Search,” Rönne continues. With about 81% of consumers starting to search for solutions once they have a need or desire identified, it can indeed be considered representative of the market. Consumers will most often start searching for brands and companies that they trust and are confident will be able to meet their demands. 

Given search behavior is considered “behavioral data”, where one merely does observations of what people actually do, it is a much more reliable metric than using surveys. Furthermore it is a faster and cheaper alternative to the standard brand tracking and much more flexible.

“Marketers often have the tendency to look at a fixed set of competitors, but consumers don’t look at it the same way,” says Fred Pirenne, CSO at MyTelescope. “By looking at share of search, it doesn’t require launching an entirely new survey, but you can easily and quickly define the competitive set you want to compare yourself to and get more insight to know who you are really up against during those early stages of the customer journey.”

Frederique Pirenne