Small Businesses aren’t immune from this behavior.

Every year corporations spend around $4.5 million on a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. That’s $150,000 a second. And they get nothing more in return than a promise of a large audience and the hope that a lasting impression will, one day, lead to a sale.

Now it may win the advertising agency an award, but no one will ever really know if it made the company any money. The sad thing is they probably don’t even try.

At the same time, small and medium-sizes businesses (SMB) spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on newspaper ads because the salesperson claims to have 100,000+ subscribers. Never mind that most subscribers never read the entire paper and will never actually see the advertisement.

These same SMB pay experts to load content onto social media. I’m not talking about the paid ads or boosts. I’m talking about the free stuff that even the experts can’t prove makes the business a single penny.

Then they spend thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars on “nice looking” modern websites. And again, no one is ever sure that anyone who visits the site will actually become a customer.

Good marketing shouldn’t be an accident.

Of course, measuring and tracking the success of your marketing is only the beginning.

You also need to understand the role that copy, images, content, PPC ads, social media, and your website play at every step of the Customer Journey.

Luckily we can turn to Psychology for some help.

Psychologist Mark Knapp describes 5 stages of Coming Together in his Relational Development Model. In it, he describes the 4 stages people must go through before they reach the 5th stage called “Bonding”; which in the West usually represents marriage.

Knapp’s work provides us a framework for the Buyer’s Continuum™ which describes the 5 Stages of the Customer Journey that ends with a loyal and satisfied customer.

As with the Relational Development Model, the stages of the Buyer’s Continuum™ are completed in sequence. However, it’s very unlikely that two customers will go through the stages in exactly the same way.