Why Are Reviews Helpful in the Customer Journey?

The customer journey includes all of the steps a customer takes throughout their relationship with a brand. The main steps in the customer journey are:

Awareness: The awareness stage is when customers learn about the brand or its offerings. They may learn through social media, marketing campaigns, or recommendations from their friends and family, to name a few possibilities.
Consideration: In the next stage of the journey, the customer explores different options, weighing the brand’s product or service against the competition.
Purchase: The customer decides to buy from the brand and completes their purchase.
Loyalty: The customer makes repeat purchases and possibly buys additional products from the brand, cementing their loyalty.
Advocacy: In the final stage, the customer shares their positive experience and recommends the brand's products or services to others.

In the first four stages, you’re always trying to help the customer along to the next stage. Once they reach advocacy, the last stage, your goal is to keep them there.

Remember that the customer journey isn’t the same for every person. Some customers may spend a lot of time in a certain stage, while others zoom through all five.

For brands, the customer journey is key to understanding how people become loyal customers — the backbone of any successful business. Understanding each step in the customer journey can lead to a better customer experience, more sales, and a competitive advantage. You can examine each step both individually and as part of the full picture to optimize your marketing strategy. After all, you should have different marketing messages for customers at different stages of the journey.
In the awareness stage, your marketing efforts should be all about exposing new customers to your brand and the products or services you offer. They may have never heard of your brand before. You need to introduce yourself and intrigue them with your marketing campaign so they choose to learn more.

At that point, the shopper is in the next stage of the journey: consideration. Your marketing efforts at this stage should focus on how your brand stands out, like sharing a case study. Highlight your advantages over the competition to influence customers' purchasing decisions.

The following stage in the journey is when the customer finally buys something from your brand. Marketing efforts like retargeting and cart abandonment campaigns can help get them over that last hurdle. In the loyalty and advocacy stages, your approach should focus on providing great customer service. Encourage your happy customers to leave positive reviews on your product pages or third-party review sites.

Reviews give shoppers insights into previous customers’ experiences buying from your brand. They provide a better idea of what shoppers can expect if they decide to proceed with your business, which helps build trust.

Since 81% of consumers say trust is a key factor in their purchasing decisions, that feedback is vital. It serves as social proof that your brand is reliable and provides strong customer service. Even negative reviews can enhance customers' trust, as long as you respond to them professionally and work toward a solution. More than 80% of shoppers actively look for negative reviews to gauge a brand's credibility since perfect five-star ratings can seem too good to be true.