21. The 4 Seasons of the Customer Journey: Summer

EPISODE 21 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

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In this second episode of the Four Seasons of the Customer Journey mini-series, we dive into Summer, the season of engagement.

From subscribing to your emails to bingeing your podcast or attending your webinars, this is when your dream clients are actively paying attention, and deciding whether you’re worth the next step. We explore practical, non-pushy strategies to build trust, spark connection, and gently guide customers toward a confident yes as a service-provider, course creator and membership site owner.

What we cover:

What Summer Looks Like in the Customer Journey – When your audience is no longer browsing but listening, reading, and leaning in.

The Importance of Engagement Before the Sale – And why pushing too soon can backfire.

Email, Content & Nurture Touchpoints That Build Confidence – Tips for service providers, course creators, and membership site owners.

How to Personalize the Journey Without Overcomplicating It – Using behavior-based automation and subtle emotional signals.

Real-Life Examples From My Retention Lab Launch – Including a clever strategy that turned curiosity into conversions.

Soundbites:

“So in summer, people are not just browsing anymore. They are actively engaging with your content. They are immersing themselves into everything you have to offer. And they are nudging closer to a decision with every touch point they have with you. Summer is really important because this is where your dream customer, the person perfectly positioned to buy from you goes from: “Yes, I’ve got a problem.” to: “Oh my God, Nadine is the one, I need to work with her, I need her to fix all my problems.”

“It’s really important to know exactly who your customer is so you can lean into them in this summer period and nudge them closer to that decision-making point. It’s about showing up consistently, and giving them what they need to hear to have every bit of confidence in your abilities, in that you are going to be consistent and not just disappear on them and that their dollars are well spent with you.”

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Catch up with other episodes in this mini series:

Episode Transcript:

Nadine Nethery (00:01)

Okay, here we are episode two of this four part mini series all about the four seasons of the customer journey. Last week we talked about spring, the season of discovery when your potential clients or customers first realize they have a problem to fix or a goal they want to achieve.

If you missed it, make sure you check out episode 20 so you can catch up on all the spring happenings. But today we are going to dive into summer. Summer

on the customer journey is very happening. It is very active. And that’s when your potential customer becomes aware of you. So they already knew they had a problem they wanted to fix or a goal they wanted to achieve. Now they’ve started to realize that you might be that potential solution and they are starting to engage with you,

to have interactions with you to really pay attention to what you have to say. And they’re starting to lean into your emails, your Instagram appearance, your podcast episodes, for example. They’re curious, and they’re excited because they might be coming closer to that actual decision process.

Summer is all about engagement and getting to know that customer and inviting them into your world. So in this phase, your potential customers likely subscribe to your email list. If you have one, that’s the case. If you don’t have one, make sure you start growing that list because email marketing is still the most reliable income source because you’re not relying on algorithms and other people’s

platforms to present you to the right audience, right? So they’re subscribed to your emails. They are reading your emails. They are likely attending any free webinars that you have, any free challenges. If you’re hosting summits, they’re coming to those. They’re listening to your podcasts. They’re

trying to binge listen to you and really get a good feel of your consistency. So whether you are someone who consistently delivers on your promises and someone they can picture themselves investing in. Eventually that looks like filling in a contact form or booking a call with you, filling in an application form, something like that.

So in summer, people are not just browsing anymore. They are actively engaging with your content. They are immersing themselves into everything you have to offer. And they are nudging closer to a decision with every touch point they have with you. And as much as it might feel like a slow burn, particularly in 2025,

They’re taking a lot longer to make up their mind because there is so much noise out there. Society, the world is crazy. So they’re just preoccupied with a lot of things. And while it might seem like this process goes on forever, if you’re warming them up properly, if you are serving them the right content, then each of those touch points is doing its job and is going to nudge them closer to making a decision whenever they’re ready to move into that next season of the customer journey.

Summer is really important because this is where your dream customer, the person perfectly positioned to buy from you goes from, yes, I’ve got a problem to, my God, Nadine is the one, I need to work with her, I need her to fix all my problems. The engagement piece is super important.

If you’re not doing it the right way, if you are, for example, pushing a sale too early, and if your messaging is off and not specific enough, then that interest can fizzle as well. So it’s really important to know exactly who your customer is so you can lean into them in this summer period and nudge them closer to that decision-making point.

It’s about showing up.

consistently, making people feel seen and supported and giving them what they need to hear to have every bit of confidence in your abilities, in that you are going to be consistent and not just disappear on them and that their dollars are well spent with you. Right. So now let’s look at some quick tips

that you can walk away with to make your summer season a smashing success. If you’re a service provider I would totally come up with a nurture sequence that primes your dream customer to be ready to work with you one-on-one. And part of that nurture flow should be

an email where they find out about you, the person behind the brand and what makes you tick. So really infusing personality, personal touches and connection points where people can totally go, oh my God, I resonate with that. Like I’m a mom of three, I wear far too many hats. So that’s totally like we’re on the same wavelength.

It could be a personal story where you were in a similar situation or you find something that they are struggling with frustrating just as much as they do. So some helpful story that again puts you on the same

page. Use this nurturing sequence to help people get to know you rather than just your services. They need to feel like they know the person behind the brand, they totally relate with your

opinions and attitudes and your approach to business and life. And they need to feel confident that you can get the successes you got for other people for them as well. If you are a course creator, I would totally look at delivering some sort of mini result that goes beyond the lead magnet wins people signed up for.

You could offer a special micro audit that people can claim and request based on behavior they’ve shown. If you wanted to pre-qualify people that could look like people who actually clicked on the lead magnet, people who visited certain pages that you’ve linked up in the welcome sequence. So people who are engaged with the content you’ve sent them and then present them with this option to have a mini interaction with you and

again have them look at you as the expert they would love to learn from. It could also be a curated email pathway or email funnel based on their needs. That could be a little quiz or decisioning tool that you build into the welcome sequence after the lead magnet

that then based on their behavior points them towards the most suitable course or program to help them fix those problems. It could also involve an interactive calculator that demonstrates the trade-offs of not investing in your program. If you can’t picture what that looks like.

In my recent founding member launch for Retention Lab, I actually incorporated an interactive sales page calculator. So on that page, this calculator had little levers people could drag to adjust the numbers. So if they, for example, doubled the amount of times that one customer bought from them,

what would happen to their bottom line across the lifetime of that customer. If that customer spends slightly more, so let’s say 50 bucks more per order, what would that look like? And how would it impact their bottom line? And if their customer bought from them for three years rather than just one year, what would that look like? So people could actually experience the impact of my retention strategies.

They could play around with the numbers. They could see that bottom line and the customer lifetime value grow and shrink as they adjusted those levers. And that can totally be applied for your course. So if you’re a productivity coach, for example, and one of your strategies can save people, six hours every week, how can you incorporate this calculator to help people understand that?

For every template in your membership or in your course, that is an incremental savings of however many hours It’s all about showing rather than telling.

And it is a super powerful strategy that’s worked to treat in my launch as well. It helped people picture and visualize what the impact could be if they just supported their existing customers more. And it’s been so popular that it’s coming to retention lab in August as a brand new formula. And I’m super excited to explore some clever use cases with my members. last but not least, my tip for membership site owners:

Creating an email series or one-off email that really shares member wins, behind the scenes snippets or an email that really helps people understand how they specifically could see wins. At this point, we’re in summer, we’re still not ready to sell to them. It’s about building familiarity as I said.

One great way to do this for example is a case study. So if you have a member who is super engaged, has seen amazing results from being inside the membership, if you were a podcast host, you can totally invite them onto your podcast to share their first-hand experience and their case study. That’s actually something I did in episode 14 where retention lab member Brooke Henry shared her amazing results from

a challenge she hosted earlier in the year and how the strategies we brainstormed have supported her to get there. You can also, if you’re not a podcast host, totally write a blog post case study or have your member record a little video where they just speak to camera that you can then share with your audience. Having your members tell potential customers and potential members

that they are seeing awesome results is much, stronger than you pushing a sale and you telling people how amazing your membership is. So to sum it up, Summer on the Customer Journey is really all about curiosity and turning that curiosity into deeper connections and ultimately something that can foster long-term relationships.

The purpose of summer is to nudge people towards autumn where we are ready to make a decision. if you want to have a look at your summer brand touch points, I invite you to take an email, a resource, a check-in point on your current summer customer journey step.

and have a look how you can make it more personal, more helpful or alternatively more conversational to really start building those deeper connections. Next week, we are diving into autumn, the decision season, and we are going to look at practical ways to help your customers feel.

totally ready and totally confident to say yes to working with you, whether that’s one-on-one, inside your courses or programs or inside your membership. And we’re going to look at ways that help them do that with clarity and confidence rather than you pressuring them to do just that.

So thank you so much for tuning in. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss the remaining two seasons in this mini-series. And if you love this concept, please share it with anyone in your circle who might benefit from practical ways to maximize the four seasons of the customer journey. I will chat to you next week. see you then.