If you’ve ever felt like your marketing isn’t landing — like you’re saying all the right things but somehow not reaching people — there’s a very good chance the problem isn’t your message. It’s the mismatch between your message and the moment.
That’s the heart of what this episode is about.
March on Be More Business is dedicated to client chemistry: understanding the relationships between you and your customers at every stage of the journey. And this episode is the foundation for all of it — a deep dive into a framework that’s been in use for sixty years, still works, and when you really internalize it, changes the way you think about every piece of marketing you create.
Two Journeys, Not One
Most business owners think about “the customer journey” as a single path. But Kim draws an important distinction: there’s the consumer journey — the path a person takes before they ever really engage with your business — and there’s the customer journey — what happens once they’ve entered your world.
These require different conversations. Different content. Different marketing instincts.
And conflating them is one of the most common (and expensive) mistakes entrepreneurs make.
The Consumer Journey: Five Stages
The consumer journey traces a person from total unawareness of their problem all the way to being ready to make a decision. Eugene Schwartz first mapped this in 1966, and sixty years later, it remains as accurate and useful as ever.
**Unaware.** These people don’t know they have a problem yet. They’re the hardest to reach in marketing, because they’re not looking for anything. Your only entry point is a side door — content or advertising that catches them off guard and makes them wonder, “Wait, could that be me?” A roofing billboard that says “Here are the signs your roof may be leaking” is a classic example.
**Problem Aware.** Something has surfaced — a spot on the ceiling, a drip in the night, a hailstorm. They know something is off, but they’re not yet seeking a solution. They’re complaining to friends. They’re Googling vague, general terms. They’re in the “this is annoying” phase. Your job at this stage is not to sell — it’s to help them understand what they’re experiencing.
**Solution Aware.** Now they know something needs to be done, and they know solutions exist. This is where inbound marketing becomes powerful. They’re actively reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, downloading lead magnets, and training their algorithm to show them more. The breadcrumbs you’ve placed in their path — content, SEO, video, social — start to matter here. This is a marathon game. You don’t know when they’ll stumble across your trail, so you have to trust that the trail is there.
**Your Solution Aware.** They’ve found you. They’re on your website, reading your reviews, checking your social profile, comparing you to others. And here’s something worth sitting with: they’re also comparing you to solutions you might not have considered your competition. In the roofing example, one option isn’t another roofer — it’s selling the house entirely and skipping the repair. Knowing your indirect competitors is strategic intelligence, not paranoia. This is also where your email list and social following start doing real work, because these are people who’ve opted in to stay connected with you.
**Most Aware.** They’ve done their research. They know their options. They’re ready to decide. This is the threshold between the consumer journey and the customer journey — and it’s where the conversation has to shift.
The Customer Journey: Five Stages
Once someone crosses that threshold — once they’re genuinely considering your business — the customer journey begins.
**Connection.** This is the opening of the sales process. It may have started earlier (when they downloaded your lead magnet, when they visited your sales page), but this is where they’re actively beginning to decide whether they want to move forward with you. It’s often tentative. It overlaps with consideration.
**Consideration.** This is typically the longest stage, and it varies enormously by business type. For a coaching business, it can last years. For a roofer with an actively leaking ceiling, urgency compresses it significantly. For a restaurant, the entire consumer and customer journey can happen in under an hour. Understanding the timeline for your specific business helps you calibrate how often to communicate, and how much patience to build into your marketing. This is where comparison shopping is in full swing — direct competitors, indirect competitors, and all the solutions in between.
**Conversion.** The actual sales process. Often shorter than consideration, but this is absolutely not the time to ease up on your marketing. This is the make-or-break moment. The person is deciding yes or no. Your CRM and email marketing are your most important tools here — they create the consistency of contact that supports a confident decision. Don’t assume that because someone has been following you for months, they’ll convert automatically. Meet them where they are, right now, with the right message.
**Service.** They’ve said yes. You have their payment. Do not drop the ball. The instinct to relax here is understandable, but it’s exactly backward. The service phase is when you deliver on everything you’ve promised, troubleshoot proactively, and lay the groundwork for everything that comes next. Your CRM continues to support you here — managing communication, staying consistent, maintaining the quality of the relationship.
**Loyalty.** This is where most businesses fail to capitalize, and it’s the most valuable stage in the entire cycle. Return customers spend an average of seventy percent more than on their first purchase. They bring their networks. They provide the social proof — testimonials, reviews, word-of-mouth referrals — that accelerates the consumer journey for everyone who comes after them. Loyalty is not automatic. It’s cultivated. And it requires the same intentional marketing as every other stage.
The Real Lesson: Same Message, Wrong Stage
The framework is useful. The application is everything.
A person who’s Most Aware doesn’t need you to explain what you do. They already know. What they need is support in making a confident decision.
A person who’s Solution Aware doesn’t yet know you exist. They need to find your breadcrumbs, be helped by your content, and be guided toward the next step.
Sending the same message to both of them is like speaking in a language neither one recognizes. The words might be right, but the register is wrong.
When your marketing is calibrated to meet people exactly where they are — when you understand the triggers that move a person from stage to stage in your specific business — it stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like a conversation. That’s client chemistry.
Start with the Triggers
The PDF workbook linked in the show notes is a practical starting point. It walks you through each stage and asks you to identify the triggers — what moves someone from one stage to the next in your world specifically?
If you don’t know the answers yet, that’s not a problem. It’s a prompt to start interviewing your customers. And that’s exactly what the Make It Happen Monday challenge this month is designed to help you do.
You don’t have to solve it all today. But start peeling back the layers. The understanding you build will shape everything — your CRM, your content, your email sequences, your social strategy, and the way you sell.