Imagine a world where you were able to increase the number of potential buyers at each stage of their buying journey. Imagine you could progress more buyers through the journey. And imagine you could keep more buyers engaged over time.

Those are some of the most important benefits of increasing your share of journey.

Ultimately, an improved share of journey means more sales and more market share. However, digging beneath those big ticket statements, the benefits can be broken down as follows across marketing, sales and the wider business impact.

Marketing

Less funnel wastage

By improving your share of journey, you will be keeping more buyers on the journey at each step. This means that the terrible wastage that is traditionally seen within marketing funnels, where only a small percentage (*) of buyers make it to the bottom of the funnel, can be minimised.

“Depending on what business you’re in, typically anywhere from 2%-15% of your online visitors convert into customers.”

Improved marketing activation impact

To improve share of journey, it’s best to have aligned marketing activation activities with the journey management. This means that all outbound/inbound activities are designed to engage and send buyers into the right steps in the journey. As a result, the effectiveness of the marketing activations is improved.

Improved website outcomes

Similar to the above point, improving share of journey typically involves enabling greater content connectivity within the website. This is essential for increasing journey progression without which the share of journey cannot be improved. The upside is that the website is then working far harder for the business, actively helping progress buyers through to a purchase whether that is in a single session or over time. This is especially important if the business offers either eCommerce or self-onboarding.

Marketing attribution to sale (inc. content)

For many marketers, this has been the holy grail of marketing goals. Being able to attribute the budget spent to the final sales outcome would justify and qualify activity, while also allowing poorly performing activities to be cut back or culled. By mapping and monitoring journeys, marketing attribution becomes possible and is an essential component of share of journey measurement.

Sales

Improves lead insight – needs & step

As the share of journey is monitored and improved, so the ability to enrich leads becomes possible. This means that the sales team will benefit from information such as the needs of the individual buyer and where they are on their individual buyer journey.

Improved lead prioritisation & intervention

With the customer data enriched as explained in the above point, then the sales team can choose to prioritise which leads to actively pursue. It also allows the sales team to identify which leads are progressing perfectly well and therefore do not need any intervention.

Business

Increased likelihood to buy

Ultimately, if your share of journey increases then the average buyer’s likelihood to buy from you also increases. This is because the buyer is spending more of their journey with your business.

Greater share of prospective customers

At any given time, only 3% of buyers are actually ready to buy. That means that you and all of your competitors are fighting over that same 3%. By improving your share of journey, you are increasing your share of that 3% and you are going beyond that 3% to reach those not quite ready to buy yet.

Greater insight

The greater your share of journey, the greater your insight into your customer base. You will know more about their needs, more about how long it takes to progress a buyer from the beginning to the end of the journey, where the barriers are and how to unblock them, and which content and marketing activities work best for different personas and needs.

Richer forecasting

With effective journey management in place, not only will your share of journey increase but as a result you will have a richer forecasting capability. This is because you will understand how long it takes the average buyer to progress from the beginning to the end of the journey and, by knowing at any given time how many buyers are on the journey and likely to be fed into the journey, you will have a greater understanding of how many will convert.