What is Your Share of Journey?
Share of journey defines how much time your prospective customer spends with you on their buying journey. This matters because if they are spending time elsewhere then your opportunity to progress your prospective customer to the point where they consider your product or service is limited.
And with only 3% * of your potential market in buying mode at any given time, it is essential that you have the maximum share of their journey.
How to define share of journey
You may or may not currently calculate your ‘share of voice’ or your company’s ‘share of engagement’ versus the competition – i.e. by using metrics around PR and search. Most companies will also be aware of their ‘share of market’.
‘Share of journey’ bridges the gap between the share of voice and engagement that is the lifeblood of marketing activity and the sales outcome that is share of market.
However, share of journey differs in that it is not about ranking your effort versus the competition. Instead, share of journey looks wholly at the customer it is about understanding how much of your customer’s journey is being spent with you. In other words, how much of the research they are undertaking through their buying journey is done with your content rather than any other available content they might find, of which only a portion will be generated by any business with the rest being created by third parties such as news sites and influencers. The aim is not to understand how much time they are spending elsewhere but how much more time they are spending with you and your content.
This can be understood when you have live Buyers Journeys which allow you to actively track the progress of the customer through their journey.
How important is share of journey?
Successfully improving your share of journey increases the customer’s likelihood to buy from you in three ways.
Firstly, by spending more time with your content on their buying journey, the customer’s trust in your ability to meet their needs is increased. Their propensity to buy from you is therefore also increased.
Secondly, when your share of journey increases, you gain a richer understanding of where they are on their buying journey and gain valuable insight into their buying needs. This empowers your journey management team with the information they need to help your prospective buyers overcome barriers and to also progress and nudge them forward on their buying journey.
Finally, and most importantly, an improved share of journey means that you can be there for your prospective customer when they are ready to progress to the next step. This is gold dust as it means you will have a greater share of prospective customers that are ready to progress at each stage of the Buyer Journey.
What does maximum share of journey look like?
To be achieving maximum share of journey you will have achieved the following:
1. Increased consumption of content through every step of the journey – by mapping the Buyer’s Journey and ensuring the content exists for every step of the journey, you will be able to measure content consumption at each step. Successful share of journey will see this content consumption at each step increase.
2. Increased progression through the journey – by ensuring your content is connected through the journey, you will be able to measure and see an increase in the volume of prospective customers progressing from step to step.
3. Successfully sustaining the journey engagement over time – to maximise your share of journey, you need to sustain the engagement with your prospective customers over time. This may be anything from hours to months. Not only does this aid journey progression but it also means you are more likely to engage your prospective customer at the moment they are ready to progress to the next step in their journey.
How to improve share of journey
Thanks to COVID, digital engagement is the default. This means that capturing the greatest possible share of journey has never been more important.
Improving your share of journey ultimately comes down to mapping, managing, planning and analysing the Buyers’ Journey.
Want to find out more? We explore all four points of improvement in our article ‘how to improve your share of journey’.