What is customer journey mapping?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of all the experiences your customers/clients have with your brand. It tells a story, beginning with the first engagement, and hopefully ending with a long-term loyal relationship. At first, a customer journey map might appear simple – the steps towards making a purchasing decision might seem linear…. You offer a product or service your customer wants, they find it, and then they buy it. In reality, however, it just doesn’t work that way most of the time. I took the following quote from Forbes, which states:
“Customers experience roadblocks, dead ends, and frustration in their journey. The more friction we put in front of potential customers, the less likely they are to complete the journey.”
So, your customer journeys are less ’rigid’ and more ‘choose your own adventure’. Prospects might find your brand via an internet search, social media ad, or even a billboard. They might engage with your brand in several different ways, such as subscribing to an e-newsletter, downloading an e-book, following you on LinkedIn, etc before they eventually make a purchasing decision. Potential clients are likely to visit your company website several times as well.
What is your view of its value?
“Every successful marketer understands the value of personalisation, but scaling personalisation and delivering truly bespoke customer journeys is a different ballgame entirely. It’s an area where a number of organisations fall short.” – Web Insights
This demonstrates the complexity of customer journey mapping. Simply put, it’s priceless, because it is about gaining a greater understanding of both the logical and emotional decision-making processes that your clients/customers undertake at every stage of the sales funnel.
So having a detailed and accurate picture of that journey is a rare commodity for any business to have.
How to do it well
It is about identifying customer needs and creating relevant buyer journeys. We have a tendency to reinvent the most fundamental marketing models, but the one I always begin with is AIDA:
This can be tailored to suit the target audience. The customer journey map is a lot like the sales funnel – you need customers to consistently move forward. Therefore, content which is accurately mapped to the customer journey allows your company to steer conversations rather than react to them.
An example of who does this well is Cencora, a global specialist in medical logistics for clinical trials and the commercial supply chain…
I worked closely with the company to develop how they approached their customer journey. They had a wealth of content for their target audiences, and over time this growing library of information meant that a thorough review was required and a better alignment with customer needs across the buyer journey and sales pipeline.
- The initial stage was to conduct a thorough audit of World Courier’s content portfolio, across all ‘sales materials’ and ‘marketing insights’ – deciding which content to ‘keep’, or ‘review’, or ‘archive’ based on its relevance and effectiveness.
- The next stage was content analysis, which we approached by hosting interactive workshops with each Service Line Director, discussing specific aspects of their business. This covered the following:
- Customer ‘pain points’ (e.g. cost, timescale, capacity)
- ‘Key stakeholders’ in the supply chain (their goals, activities, obstacles)
- ‘Differentiators’ (are they unique? are they valuable? are they proven?)
- ‘Competitive positioning’ (how This analysis paved the way for creating new and compelling content as well.
- The final stage was sales enablement, where we refined our audit and analysis work before investing in a bespoke software platform to map specific content to specific stages of the customer journey. This supported sales teams in their day-to-day interactions with clients and prospects, mitigating the all-too-familiar problems of version control and wading through endless files and folders in an attempt to find relevant/up-to-date sales materials. The software also integrated with the company’s existing CRM system, creating a more robust and consistent approach to: – Handling new business enquiries.- Managing the lead conversion process.- Maintaining customer loyalty.
The Latest Trends
Customer journey mapping is essential in the modern-day marketplace because people interact with brands multiple times on a variety of platforms. Consumers have shifted from offline to online, and so too have company marketing budgets. Further to this, offline advertising methods have taken an online dimension – scannable QR codes for example, and calls-to-action which encourage your target audience to download phone apps. Digital interactions create a wealth of insightful data, and if a modern-day business is to safeguard its future, it must use this data wisely.
Customer journey mapping is a way to bring disparate sets of data into one place, to produce a story which is based on emotion but also backed by verified evidence..
The Pitfall
A common mistake made by business leaders is underestimating how critical and complex this process can be. It takes time, so any attempt to avoid crucial steps in creating an accurate customer journey will prove costly. Getting down to the details is not easy, but absolutely essential if it’s to stand the test of time.
How to get started
A business should aim to shape the best possible experience for its customers, so creating an effective journey map is vital in order to achieve this. A few tips to keep in mind as the process gets underway:
- Include every single point of customer interaction in your journey map. This means any exposure your brand might have with the customer – e.g. events, printed ads, local business directories, social platforms, email campaigns, etc.
- Gather quantitative and qualitative data from multiple sources such as web analytics and CRM software, which should provide insight into what’s working, as well as what’s causing friction.
- Think about the post-purchase journey. Your interaction with the customer is ongoing, so it’s important to track performance of marketing activities after the ‘conversion’ – highlighting obstacles to avoid, and opportunities to seize – which foster repeat business.