What’s not spoken about much in the marketing world is that conscious customers are not like other customers. To buy something, a conscious customer relies on a deep sense of trust. They rely on that trust to show them yes buy it, or not. Conscious customers go by what they feel. We’ve all heard of ‘gut’ feeling. Or the saying it really ‘moved’ me. How do you create this kind of trust? Trust that is honest, certain, and feels like truth. The answer is trust touchpoints. They’re the very thing that make a home-based business a best seller.
The conscious customer journey
Conscious customers want products that support transformation and sustainability. They usually want products and services for themselves, or for their family. They look for products to support their community, or for causes they care most about. Like environmental, or social justice issues.
There’s conscious customers in every category. From health and wellness, to financial, well-being, home, lifestyle, travel, entertainment, personal care, beauty, clothing, and personal and professional development.
They’re everywhere. It doesn’t matter if the products are phyiscal, digital or service-based appointments. Trust is the common measure that creates a best seller in the conscious customer space.
A conscious customer journey
All purchasing relationships that feel good to a conscious customer are based on trust.
Picture this.
A potential customer stumbles upon your product from an ad, or a hashtag that they’re searching on. Maybe they’ve even been referred to you, or recommended your way. Trust is already forming!
A product purchase relationship can happen in a moment. Or may come together over many weeks. A strong relationship with a conscious customer moves through 3 key trust touchpoints to become part of your best seller story.
Trust touchpoints are like green directional signs to conscious customers. Fast-tracking them toward what they want. They use their inner compass ‘trust’ at these touchpoints to know if your values align with theirs. To appreciate if you prioritise similar things. And the biggie - to know if your product is right for them right now.
Original bro-marketing and the funnel of know, like, trust
Hasn’t maketing on trust always been the way it’s been done though?
‘Original bro-marketing’ has been defined as “self-serving, short-term gain sales tactics that are used to disempower clients and remove a customer's agency”. Spot on Rachel Kurzyp!
Dopamine-heavy marketing tactics like those spotted in original bro-marketing tactics are often paired with other widely used online business sales funnel tactics. Things like count-down timers, pushy pop-up’s and email ‘hoop jumping’. To coerce the purchaser to just click one more yes in a series of yeses.
The customer spends more time, money and effort to buy the thing they thought they were already getting. And sometimes all they wanted was the free resource without strings, in exchange for their email address. Not the 70,000 emails that followed to ‘keep them warmed and primed to buy’.
A conscious customer is informed, intuitive and ethical. These kind of tactics are a turn off to them.
What the bro-marketers taught me however is -
- make it easier for conscious customers to buy the solution they want. For me though, that means offering them that the first time, not 5 clicks in.
- There’s huge collective energy that happens in the power of people moving in the same direction.
- And that if machines can do the heavy lifting then let them. Let the platforms and automation lighten your workload. Leaving you more available and present for the relationships with your conscious customers.
The problem with doing it the ‘original bro’ way
We’ve all been there.
You’ve seen seomthing that caught your interest. You stop your scroll to click on a product link that you want to buy. Huh?! The transaction page doesn’t match the professional product you expected. They want you to keep clicking and enter more details than you feel comfortable with. Doubt and mistrust creep in. You click back and you abandon the sale.
As a product creator you rely on the customer transaction process to sell products. For your conscious customers this is where trust touchpoints come in.
What are trust touchpoints?
Trust touchpoints envoke a sense of safety, space to breathe and let your conscious customers digest their options.
Because conscious customers perceive when they feel things trust touchpoints create a bond. They spark a chemistry that holds curiosity, appreciation and anticipation between you both. This means your customers are making decisions based on the feelings and sensations they have as they go through your offers.
The 3 key trust touchpoints support a customer in doing this.
They give conscious customers the opportunity to feel safe, offer space to explore in their own time, and help them feel heard and able to understand their options from your range of product offerings and articles.
For conscious customers it can be a conscious step forward to purchase. But it’s always instinctual or intuitive.
The 3 key trust touchpoints in the conscious customer journey that support them and gift you a best seller are -
- Information
- Enjoyment
- Inspiration
The 3 key trust touchpoints offer an experience of what you and your customer values, and act as a bridge in the journey to becoming a customer with you.
Having a customer relationship move forward means that as a Creator you’ve successfully not ‘original bro-marketed’ them. Trust has been created. All without spiking your customers’ impulse to regain feeling, or recovering from flooded or overwhelmed sensations that pushing for purchases the original bro way does.
Trust touchpoints become trusted transaction points
Trust touchpoints turn into trusted transaction points when you curate your work. This means you make your products and articles available for your customer in the way an art gallery puts a show together.
It’s an experience to browse your shop kiosk. There’s an overall story being told. And then others within the individual product offerings and their supportive articles. This gives your customer space to browse, binge, trust themself and choose for themselves.
The transaction isn’t just a sale. It’s the exchange of trust at any point in the relationship.
Making these moments count for your customer means they become trusted transaction touchpoints in the purchase process. The experience of them matchs what your customer expects and needs from you.
And that’s what makes a best seller.
The 3 key trust touchpoints become the 4 trusted transaction points. Where you encourage action to be taken by the potential customer. These points are -
- Information - click to browse.
- Enjoyment - click to binge.
- Inspiration - click to buy.
- Check-in - post-purchase follow-up.
The forth one moves your customers from being audience members to advocates. It increases your customer loyalty, repeat purchase and recommendation of your work.
Right product, right timing
An intentionally designed conscious customer journey means you trust your customers to decide if your product is a match for them right now. Trust touchpoints position your best seller to be there as the right product at the right time. Your cutomer won’t need to do 3 more clicks on 2 other platforms. They can buy now right at the point where they are inspired.
Having that trust means you are able to create your products and offer them alongside supporting information like articles, ebooks, infograpics and imagery, without placing pressure on the customer to purchase. You’re supporting them in their transformation to trust themselves. To know what’s right for them.
You understand your audience. You know who they are, both as individuals and from a larger archetypal point of view, and understand what they want. In some way you may be able to see yourself in them. You’re able to feel deep empathy, compassion and even anticipation for what they experience or face in life.
In your digial home - your shop kiosk - your customers can settle in and help themselves to the content that speaks to them. And you can be certain that if it’s the right thing for them to buy now with you, that they’ll “feel it in their bones”.
The impact of trust touchpoints on customer loyalty
Lastly, it’s important to consider the trust cherry on the top of the cake.
When a conscious customer buys, they go from conscious consumer, to a conscious customer. And when that customer relationship is actively tended to, the relationship outlives the product use.
The relationship creates product longity and financial sustainability for both of you.
A relationship like this creates opportunity for them to become a product advocate with you. That’s where number 4 comes in! Your conscious customer becomes an organic and hands-off sales team, who are wholly aligned to your product, and a forever favourite of your brand.
Trust touchpoints are the centre of a conscious customer support strategy
With the 3 key trust touchpoints becoming the 4 trusted transaction points. It places trust at the centre of a conscious customer support strategy.
The Enlightenly platform has uniquely designed integrated touchpoints to support the pillers of the best seller home-based business model of product creation, promotion, selling and advocacy.
On the platform they look like this -
- Information - browse all that’s on offer in a shop kiosk - articles, products, biography, interviews.
- Enjoyment - binge freebies and low-cost products to confirm it’s the right product at the right time.
- Inspiration - buy now at the very moment they feel moved to purchase. Not through several click links, upgrades and down-sells later.
- Check-in - automated post-purchase follow-up to provide a testimonial or review means you’ll have even greater trust sitting right beside your best sellers and supportive articles.
Best sellers rarely happen overnight. But when you build a home-based business on the basis of the 3 key trust touchpoints, you’re creating a business that you and your conscious customers will be excited to share.
If you’re looking for a new digital home, without having to build a website or setup a Shopify store. I encourage you to take a look at what Enlightenly has to offer.
They even have step-by-step group for people who feel tech isn’t for them, but that they have a brilliant home-based business idea or product that they want to create.
