Excite

Buying generates warm fuzzies. It’s a scientific fact. The dopamine from a new purchase gets people excited—which is why the fifth stage of the Customer Journey is to build on that excitement.

How do you do that? By giving your new customer a memorable experience.

Consider offering a quick-start guide… bonus features that surprise and delight… quick wins… any content that makes your new customers happy.

What we talk a lot about in the Excite stage is “The AHA Moment.” The AHA Moment is when you’ve been talking to a prospect and something that you said made their eyes light up. 

If it’s a piece of software, there’s a moment in the demo when the value just rushes in and they go, “oh yeah, I know what it is” and that’s a huge deal. 

It’s critical that we discover what that aha moment is for your business, so that we can build marketing and follow up to engineer towards that moment. 

Defined by Ryan Deiss, the AHA moment is when the true core value clicks with a customer. Transforming your product from a “nice to have” into a “must have NOW.” The AHA Moment is a combination of relating to feelings and emotions. When you have wonder combined with understanding, you have the AHA. 

But the AHA moment is just a simple magic trick, people are amazed and impressed, but they’re not necessarily motivated to move forward. Next we need to answer the questions that people are asking, that’s how we get our client’s understanding. 

When Twitter first got started they found that before someone could begin to see the value of Twitter, they needed to follow 30 people. The brand was starting to take shape, there was a kind of viral loop taking place by looking at other people’s tweets. 

The subscribe stage was when they registered, set up the account, and started using. But what they realized is that if they couldn’t get someone to follow 30 people they would bail. So they engineered the follow up, getting people to follow 30 accounts, that’s where they had their AHA Moment. 

This is how Ryan Deiss’ Tesla test drive went:

“I’ll tell you how it happened for me. So the test drive started out like any other test drive. You get the car sales person next to you, a little weird, you’re in a car you don’t fully understand and a total stranger is sitting next to you judging your bad driving. So we’re driving around, and I’m like okay this is pretty good. I pretty much made up my decision that I’m going to buy the car. 

So I’m like, alright great let’s head back. The salesman is like “okay, but before we can head back you have to do a launch.” I asked what you’re all thinking, what’s a launch? He said you’re about to find out. 

So he took me back around to this back street where there weren’t any other cars, and said “okay the coast is clear … I want you to come to a complete stop, and then I want you to floor it.” You’re not supposed to do that in a car … but apparently in this one you are. 

I felt what 0-60 in 1.9 seconds could feel like. It was incredible. When we were done the salesman said “pretty cool, huh? Kind of like having your own rollercoaster isn’t it?” Boom, the AHA moment. In that split second I experienced the AHA, this wasn’t just a car it was my very own rollercoaster.”

So for Tesla, the AHA Moment is “The Launch.” 

What is your Launch? What is your first 30 followers? 

Let’s build some excitement for our example companies.

When a customer purchases an item, Hazel & Hems follows up with an email that thanks them for their order. 

They then go the extra mile by informing the new customer about their rewards program, and shows them that they have earned 100 points towards future product purchases.