Move from the Buyer’s Journey to the Tryer’s Journey

There’s a major shift underway in how purchases are made: people are trying things before they buy them. This new capability is being made possible by technology and it’s moving from the consumer world into businesses now. So I want to share some ideas with you on how to help your marketing keep up with this change.

First, a quick review of the traditional marketing purchase process. The buyer’s journey is:

• Make the prospect aware of what you do – what you offer;
• Have them choose you as one of their top choices for that and do some research and investigate; and hopefully
• They choose you and buy your product.

The Tryer’s journey – the new world that we’re seeing more and more – is different.

• It starts with them trying your product. It’s the very first thing that you get them to do.
• The next thing is to get them to continue to use that product, and the win is to have them adopt it and make it part of their life or their business or whatever it is they’re using it for.
• Finally, you want it to get to the point where they value that free product so much that they’re willing to pay for either additional capabilities or continued use of it, however that might be.

The key to this is different than prior priorities. The key to marketing the Tryer’s journey is twofold. One, make it as simple and as easy as possible for them to try your product; remove as much resistance as you can. That means make the process simple, like one click, and it means make it a very simple early product so it’s not hard to understand. They don’t have to get educated. There’s just no effort in them experiencing your product. And then the second really important priority is to be indispensable. You want them to grow into your product, so easy for them to adopt it and for it to solve important problems for them so that they rely on your product. Because that’s how they’ll start paying for it – when they decide that it’s no longer something fun to try or satisfying a curiosity, but it’s something that they want to rely on and therefore they will pay you for that opportunity.

If you want to learn more about this dynamic and this change, there’s a new set of knowledge around product-led growth – PLG. I’d encourage you to look online. There’s a lot of great resources that are related to this very dynamic. Your customers may be changing today. Don’t be left behind.

If you have any more questions or you want to talk about this further, I’d love to chat with you. You can reach me on LinkedIn or at my website.