Flypaper Digital Marketing Agency

Anthony Bourdain, the Internet, & Me: The Buyer's Journey

Understanding the Buyer's Journey

In January, I got the grand idea that I’d travel to Ireland after spending my evening binge watching Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown . I spent most of my night hurling comments across the room to a friend about how nice life must be for the ex-chef turned travel guide who has created a cult following from being undeniably relatable and brash. I am normally not quite so impulsive, but within 30 minutes I had booked my flights, found an Airbnb in Dublin, and secured a rental car for my impromptu adventure. While this wouldn’t be my first trip overseas, it would be the first time I handled all of the details and logistics of the trip. So once done, I started to think about a little travel agency that has sat at the corner of McCallie and Georgia avenue since I first came to Chattanooga as a student. Even then, the pictures of cruise ships, smiling families in front of the Hoover Dam, and palm trees that wallpapered their store front were peeling, faded, and acted as artifacts from a period of time I knew almost nothing about. I actually spent many years believing it was abandoned before running into the owners via their other business years later. The reality that I was experiencing was that life has quickly changed for us all in relatively short order. We are far more autonomous, educated (just ask Siri), and accessible year after year. How we interact with social media, brands, and each other seems to evolve year after year. It’s possible that some of us speak to Alexa or Google Home before a human in the morning. We can experience new places and cultures through virtual reality. And pretty soon, we will have the option to give up our driver’s licenses to self-driving cars.

At Flypaper, we speak to a lot of business owners, and over and over again we hear the same things. Everyone seems to know they need to meet their customers where they are, but they often don’t have the time, resources, or know where to start. However, I believe any reluctantancy to pay real attention to it is far more foundational than not having sufficient time or money.  We all know that people do business with other people. We all know that that the biggest deals are done over a meal or drink before the conference table. Flypaper and every other digital agency knows that your business is run off of word of mouth, and EVERY good, local business is run this way. What you fear is not the technology. It is removing the handshake out of your business deals. Where does this stem from? From a miseducation and misunderstanding of how the technology available plays into customers buying decisions. For example, when someone is planning on landscaping their yard or installing a pool in the backyard, one of the very first places they go is Google. It could be to find pictures for inspiration, it could be to research expected costs, or it could be… STOP. They closed their phone, put it in their pocket, or the red light just turned to green. Their 30-45 seconds online is what we call a moment of consideration. Later that day, they might speak about it to a coworker who gives them some recommendations. A few days pass and they are sitting in front of the TV with their computer on their lap and their phone next to them. They make it to your website, a competitor’s site, or they are flipping through reviews. This buying process may take days, weeks, or months as moments of consideration begin to build. You may even visit their home, quote the project, and feel that the job is yours to lose. After all, you guys are going to the baseball game this week.

Money falls through. Life happens. And the job is never guaranteed. What are you doing to be there when consideration turns into action? Was your website easy to find even though they couldn’t remember your name? Did they see that awesome pool with the waterfall you just completed on Facebook? Are you sticking with them while they read about the NBA playoffs or buy new shoes? Are you still there when they finally get the promotion?
Flypaper sees your website like Las Vegas. We ask ourselves what the most important thing to that city is. It’s not the gambling, the casinos, or the debauchery. It’s the airports and the roads that lead to it. Otherwise, it is a city in the desert. It’s not about building websites. It’s not about making sure you are on every social media platform. We want to develop pathways into you customer’s buying process holistically. The internet is not a hallway with your door at the end. It is an ecosystem with customers constantly moving from place to place. When booking my trip to Ireland, what was most important was that each company met me where I was the moment I needed them. Talk to someone at Flypaper today about your business. Digital marketing can be complicated, we make it easy.

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