Ep 115 I Tracked 120 Clients Over 5 Years. Here's the Real Customer Journey Nobody Talks About

If you've ever found yourself wondering why enquiries feel slower than they did a few years ago, you're not imagining it.

You might be posting on Instagram consistently, sending emails every week and showing up in all the places you've been told you should be... yet people seem to be taking much longer to say yes.

I started noticing exactly the same thing in my own business.

Rather than guessing what was happening, I decided to do what we've all been trained to do as healthcare professionals. I looked at the evidence.

Over the last five years, I tracked the customer journeys of 120 paying clients. I wanted to understand where they found me, how long they took to buy, what influenced their decisions and whether buying behaviour had changed over time.

What I discovered completely changed the way I think about marketing for dietitians.

We Need Evidence-Based Business Too

As dietitians and health professionals, we make clinical decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.

Yet so many of us run our businesses based on what everyone else says is working.

We're told to post more on Instagram.

Launch another freebie.

Run more webinars.

Send more emails.

But how often do we stop and ask whether those things are actually bringing clients into our business?

Looking at your own data gives you answers that no marketing guru can.

Instagram Wasn't Telling the Whole Story

When I analysed where my clients came from, Instagram appeared to be my biggest identifiable source of enquiries.

That sounds brilliant until you look a little closer.

Only around 20% of my recorded client sources came directly from Instagram.

The remaining clients came from referrals, networking, Facebook groups, professional events, word of mouth and several other touch points.

It reminded me that people rarely make decisions because of one post they happened to see on a Tuesday afternoon.

Most people experience your business in lots of different ways before they're ready to invest.

That means your marketing is probably working across multiple channels, even if one platform feels like it's doing all the heavy lifting.

The Data I Wasn't Collecting

One of the biggest surprises wasn't in the numbers.

It was in the gaps.

Around half of my client records didn't include where they'd originally discovered my business because, in the early years, I simply wasn't asking.

That means I was making decisions without having the full picture.

Now, every enquiry form asks where someone first came across my business.

It's such a small change, but over time it builds a much clearer understanding of what's really driving enquiries.

If you're not collecting this information yet, it's one of the simplest improvements you can make.

The Buyer Journey Isn't the Same for Everyone

One of the biggest myths in online business is that everyone follows the same path before they buy.

They don't.

In my business, 42% of paying clients never downloaded a free resource before investing.

They discovered my content, decided they trusted me and bought.

Simple.

But the remaining 58% looked very different.

They usually downloaded two or three resources before they felt ready.

Each free guide became another opportunity to build trust.

Neither group is better than the other.

They're simply different.

Some people already know exactly what they need.

Others need time to understand whether you're the right person to help them.

That's why your business needs both a direct path to your paid offers and a nurture journey for people who aren't ready yet.

If you only build one, you'll miss opportunities with the other.

Your Best Clients Might Already Be in Your Audience

Another pattern jumped out immediately.

Around a third of my clients had already bought something from me before investing in higher-level support.

That tells me something really important.

The next sale is often much easier than the first.

It's easy to become obsessed with finding new followers and attracting brand new leads.

But sometimes the people most likely to work with you are already reading your emails, watching your videos and quietly following your content.

They simply haven't taken the next step yet.

That's one of the reasons I'm such a fan of having an offer ladder.

A lower-priced product isn't just another income stream.

It's an opportunity for someone to experience what it's like to learn from you, build trust and gain confidence before making a larger investment.

People Are Taking Much Longer to Buy

This was the finding that fascinated me the most.

Back in 2021, around half of my clients purchased within a month of joining my audience.

Fast forward to today and the picture looks completely different.

Many people now spend over a year on my email list before they invest.

Some remain in my world for several years.

In fact, my highest-paying client waited four and a half years before buying.

At first glance, that might sound frustrating.

But I actually find it reassuring.

It tells me that consistency matters.

Showing up week after week isn't about convincing someone to buy tomorrow.

It's about becoming the trusted expert they remember when the timing is finally right.

Are Webinars Really Dead?

You've probably heard people say webinars don't work anymore.

My own data suggests otherwise.

Almost half of my paying clients had attended one of my webinars before buying.

What surprised me most was that many of these webinars had taken place well over a year earlier.

Those live events continued building trust long after I'd stopped running them.

That completely changed how I think about webinars.

They're not simply sales events.

They're long-term trust-building assets that can influence buying decisions months or even years later.

What This Means for Your Marketing

The biggest lesson from this project is that your buyer journey is probably more complex than you think.

Your clients aren't making decisions after seeing one Instagram Reel.

They're experiencing your business across multiple touch points, building trust over time and buying when the timing feels right for them.

That's why consistency beats chasing every new marketing trend.

It's why understanding your own data is so powerful.

And it's why I believe evidence-based business deserves just as much attention as evidence-based practice.

When you understand how people actually become your clients, you stop wasting time on activities that feel productive but don't move your business forward.

Instead, you can focus your energy where it makes the biggest difference.

Final Thoughts

If there's one thing I'd love you to take away from this, it's this.

Stop guessing.

Start measuring.

Begin tracking where your enquiries come from, how long people stay in your world before they buy and which touch points appear again and again.

You don't need complicated software or fancy dashboards.

Just a simple system that helps you spot patterns over time.

You might be surprised by what you discover.

And if your business feels slower than it used to, don't immediately assume you're doing something wrong.

The buyer journey has changed.

People need more trust, more reassurance and more time than they did a few years ago.

The businesses that continue to grow won't necessarily be the loudest.

They'll be the ones that stay visible, build genuine relationships and make decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.

If you enjoyed this article, listen to the full episode of Beyond the Clinic. In the next episode, I'll explore why buying behaviour has changed and the practical adjustments you can make so your marketing continues to attract clients in today's business landscape.

The Master Plan:

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Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/

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Episode transcription:

Do you know where your best clients are actually coming from? It's probably not what you think. In this episode, I'm going to show you how to properly identify what's actually driving the best clients to your business. I'm going to show you in a really simple way, how you can start understanding your data and what I call your most profitable customer journey so that you can double down on what's working and stop wasting your time on what isn't.

This is a really important thing to do because just like we practice evidence-based medicine, we also need to practice evidence-based business if you want your business to work and actually bring in clients. And also because it's very much possible that the thing that you're spending the most time on right now isn't actually the thing that brings in your best clients or the most revenue. But don't worry because today's episode is going to show you how to stop doing that.

Over the last five years, I've tracked the real data behind 120 paying clients in my business and what I found completely changed the way I make decisions in my business today. In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the real customer journey inside my business, where clients actually come from, how long they take to buy, what role my freebies play and where they don't, and the surprising behaviors of my highest paying clients. And more importantly,

what all of this means for you. So you can start attracting clients and growing your business in a way that's evidence-based and not guesswork. Now, the goal with this episode is to help you make smarter decisions with your time and your energy and your content.

Now, just to give you a little bit of background here, the reason that I decided to do this was I had a hunch that buying behavior was changing. People were taking longer to make decisions. There's so much free information online now, particularly with AI. And because of AI, people are less trusting. They don't know what's real and what's not real. And so they are taking a lot longer to trust us and to make buying decisions.

And I was also hearing my colleagues and my friends and my clients saying, Hey, it's business slow this month. I don't know why, but I've not got as many clients this month compared to this time last year. And so I thought, you know what, Sarah, I need to investigate this a little bit more. And that's exactly what I did.

So I'm gonna start by sharing with you a few stats from my own business so you can see what this actually looks like in practice. So firstly, in my own business, Instagram is the number one identifiable source of clients. I ask people where they heard about me, but it only actually accounts for around 20 % of known sources. Now the other 80%, when I combined referrals,

word of mouth, in-person networking, BDA events, Facebook groups. Well, you know what? That accounts for a whole lot more than that 20 % that come from Instagram alone. It's very easy to assume Instagram's doing all the heavy lifting because it's where I'm visible every day and it's where I'm putting most of my daily effort. But in reality, your clients might be coming from a much wider mix of different touch points.

many of which are quietly happening in the background and often take quite a lot longer for them to convert. And that's a really important takeaway because it means your business is probably more multi-channel than you think. And of course, if you're only focusing all your energy on one platform like Instagram, you could be underestimating the impact of everything else that brings people into your world. That brings people into your world.

But when I look at the data more closely in my business, there was a much bigger issue hiding underneath all of this. Around 50 % of my client sources were completely unrecorded, which means for half of my clients, I actually didn't have a clear data point on how they found me. And that's not because the information didn't exist, it's simply because I hadn't recorded it.

It wasn't until a few years in that I started asking people, hey, where did you find out about me? And so this is why I think it's so important to always ask people on your inquiry forms where they first came into contact with you and your business. Once you start tracking this properly, you stop guessing where your clients are coming from and you start seeing patterns that you might not have noticed otherwise.

Okay, let's move on to freebies because this is another area where the data tells a really interesting story. So the common advice that you hear online is that you have to start your business with a freebie. You've got to have a lead magnet first and grow your email list and then nurture people into buying. And whilst that's not wrong, don't get me wrong here, it's fundamental part of business. It's not the full picture because in my own data,

42 % of my clients never actually downloaded a single freebie before they bought. So they didn't come through my nurture sequence. They simply discovered the business, followed along with my content, and then went on to buy. 42%. And what that tells us is really important. There's people in my audience who don't need long nurturing journeys. They are what we would call most aware. They already know that they have a problem, and they trust you enough

and they're actively looking for a solution. They just need a clear path to work with you. But that's only one side of the story because on the other side,

For the 58 % of people who do download your freebies, the pattern looks very different. Those clients don't just typically download one resource. My data shows that those clients tended to download two or three different freebies before they felt ready to buy. And that's telling us something as well. It tells us that for some people, trust builds over time through repeated exposure and each free resource acts like another touch point

that moves them closer to a decision. So for me in my business, this means that I have two completely different buyer journeys happening at the same time concurrently. One group of people who need very little nurturing, who are ready to buy quickly, and another group who need more time, more exposure, and more touch points before they're ready to buy.

And this is likely to be similar in your business too. So if your entire strategy is built around only one of those pathways, like advertising your services on a directory, you're probably missing a large portion of your audience. Because the people who are ready now don't want to wait through a long nurture sequence and the people who need nurturing just won't convert without it. So actually you need both. You need a free re-funnel for the slower buyers and a direct path for purchase.

for the people who are ready to act straight away. If you only set up one in your business, you're leaving clients and revenue on the table.

Now, another really interesting pattern that showed up in the data is that around a third of my clients were repeat buyers. So in other words, huge amount of people who went on to invest in high level support had already bought something less expensive from me before. And I think this is something a lot of people underestimate in their business.

because it's very easy to focus all of your energy on trying to get brand new clients all of the time. When actually your best highest paying clients are often already in your world. They just haven't bought the next thing yet. So this tells us that your past clients are one of your most valuable assets in your business. And this is one of the reasons that I recommend having low cost offers in your business, like a digital product.

These low cost offers aren't just about having another revenue stream in your business. They can actually do something much more powerful than that. They're trust builders that create future premium clients because they give people a low risk way to experience what it's like to work with you and leave people wanting more, especially if they've already had results or lots of value from that low cost offer.

So this is an offer ladder and I really recommend you having one of these set up in your business. Now the next pattern, I think might be one of the most interesting ones of all, and it's around the time it actually takes people to go from discovering you to buying from you.

and this was actually the revelation that made my hunch really make sense. So when I looked at the full data set, the average time from someone joining my list to purchasing was around three months. But within that average, there were people who bought almost immediately and others who took years before they made a decision. But the most interesting thing here is how those numbers have changed over the years. So back in 2021, things looked

very, very different. Half of my clients were buying within just a month of discovering me. But as we move through the years, that changes dramatically. By 2023 onwards, the average time jumps to over a year and more and more clients are sitting in that slow buyer category. People who take 12 months or more to decide that they want to work with me. And by 2025 and the start of 2026,

What I found is over half of my buyers have been on my email list for over a year or longer before purchasing. Some of those clients have been in my world for years. In some cases, up to four and a half years before they finally decided to invest in my highest ticket offer. This is a huge shift when you compare it to those early years where people would buy relatively quickly.

And what this tells us is really important. Decision making in your audience has slowed down significantly. People aren't just seeing something once and buying straight away. They're watching, they're observing, they're following along with your content for months, sometimes years before they're ready to take action.

The buyer journey has changed.

My data showed that my highest ticket client ever was on my list for four and a half years before buying. And my highest ticket buyers do tend to have the longest nurture periods in general. So if you've been feeling like people are just taking longer to make a decision, that business is slower. This isn't just you, it's a wider shift in how people are making purchasing decisions.

And I think this is why it's really important to stay visible long enough for people to build trust with you over time. It also means it's a really good idea to have different ways of selling the same thing, because if someone is sitting in your world for years and seeing the same kind of content and the same offer presented in the same way, they will likely start to tune out, not because they're not interested, just because they've heard you say it a million times already.

So I really encourage you to think about different entry points into your call offer and different ways of talking about what you do. That way, the more likely you are to stay relevant for people at different stages of their decision-making journey. Now, there's one last bit of data that I want to share with you here. And this one's really going to change how you think about selling, I'm sure. My data showed that almost half of my clients attended a live event before they bought from me, over half.

And when I say a live event, I'm basically talking about webinars or three or five day challenges. Now there's loads of noise online at the minute that webinars are dead. People don't show up anymore that they've lost their effectiveness. But actually my data tells us something completely different. And interestingly, I've had similar conversations with some of my coaches and mentors recently and their webinars are still working as well. Because the majority of my clients have

been through a webinar before they decide to work with me. It evidences beautifully in my business. But even more interestingly is this is actually happening long after I stopped actively running them. So in 2024, 85 % of my buyers had attended a webinar before purchasing. In 2025, that was still quite high, 65%.

even though I hadn't run any new webinars since the April of that year. And by 2026, nearly half of my buyers, 47 % to be specific, had still attended a webinar at some point in the past, despite there being over 15 months with no new live events of any sort. So this meant that people who attended my webinars way back when,

In 2023, 2024, 2025, they were still converting to paying clients over a year or longer later. And so this tells me that webinars aren't just a chance to convert clients there and then. They're not just about showing up live and hoping someone buys at the end. They're actually a huge trust building asset.

that continues to work in the background for a very long time after that live event has ended.

So hopefully this episode has given you some food for thought when it comes to where your clients are coming from and what's really influencing their decisions to buy and that the buying behavior has changed. I really recommend you start looking at your own data and the journey people take from finding you to buying from you because you can learn so much from that. As you can see from today's episode.

Now in part two of this series, I'm going to go deeper into why it's taking longer for people to buy from you and most importantly, what you need to change in your strategy because of that. So make sure you come back next week for part two.

Bye for now.