What Is A Customer Journey Map and Why Are They Important?

What is a customer journey map?

Customer journey maps or user journey maps are visual representations of the steps a potential customer takes to make a purchasing decision. They help you identify where your customers are coming from, why they are there, and what actions they take once they arrive.

A customer journey map can help you answer questions like:

• Where do my customers come from?
• Why do they come to me?
• What do they buy?
• How does our product/service fit into their lives?
• And much more…

The key thing about a customer journey map is that it provides insight into what makes the average customer tick. By understanding what drives people to action, you can make sure that your marketing messages hit the mark to convert them into paying customers.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

A customer journey map is important for many reasons. Customer journey mapping helps you identify where the company stands now and how to improve upon that position. This process maps out the customer journey, giving insight into the customer’s requirements and expectations and allows you to identify key points along the path to purchase.

Another benefit is that it provides a roadmap for future improvements. If you see that some steps aren’t working as expected, you can make adjustments accordingly. You can see how different aspects of your marketing funnel interact with one another, whether there are any gaps in your strategy, and use this data to create a clear plan for future improvements.

Understand why

This is the most important question to ask yourself when creating a customer journey. Why does someone want to buy my product/service? What are they trying to accomplish? How do I help them achieve their goals? Knowing what kinds of questions potential buyers are asking about your products or services allows you to focus on answering those questions in ways that resonate with your audience.

Think about them and how they would interact not just how you want them to. Few customers think about the purchase straight away and buy within minutes, especially if what you’re selling is expensive.

The answer to “why?” is often the key to unlocking the next questions about your customers’ needs, wants, and desires. Once you understand why, it becomes much easier to build a customer journey that meets those needs, wants, and desires.

Planning your customer journey map

The buying process begins long before a consumer makes a purchase decision. In fact, it starts well before customers even know they want something. This is why it’s important to know exactly how consumers start their journeys. Understanding the complete path they take to buy a product or service will help you better serve them throughout the entire experience.

By understanding each step, you can determine where to invest resources to increase conversions. You can use the information gathered from the journey map to develop strategies to guide buyers down the path most likely to convert into sales.

When building a customer journey map, think about the following four key components:

Step One: Awareness

This is the initial awareness stage, during which prospects become aware of your brand and decide whether to pick up the phone or head over to your site. During this phase, you want to capture leads’ attention and encourage them to learn more about your offerings.

Step Two: Interest

This is the second step, where prospects start to show interest in what you offer. They may ask questions, request additional information, or simply express curiosity. At this point, it’s important to keep the conversation going by providing answers to any questions they might have.

Step Three: Decision

Think about why the customer makes the decision to purchase and what your business can do to help them reach this decision. Think about how you can persuade them and what value your product/service could add to their lives. Show them the benefits that they will receive if they decide to buy your product.

Step Four: Feedback and customer retention

This is the final step to create customer loyalty and improve your customer journeys. Ask their opinions. Find out how they feel, how satisfied with the product/service they are, how the experience was and most importantly will they be returning.

Identify opportunities

When looking at an issue or problem, there are many ways of identifying opportunities. For example, you could ask yourself questions such as: What do we know about our customers? How does our current product work? Is it working well enough? Do we have a good understanding of our competitors? Are we aware of emerging trends? Can our customer service be improved? If you don’t already have an answer to each question, now is the time to start asking those questions.

A journey map helps you understand where your customers are coming from, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and where they might go next. This allows you to better understand what they want and how you can help them achieve their goals.

The most important thing to remember when creating a journey map is to keep it simple. You don’t need to include every single step in your customer’s path; just focus on the key milestones along the way.

Once you’ve identified some opportunities, it’s time to think about how to solve them. In particular, you’ll want to consider the following three questions:

• “What are the problems?”
• “How can I make my solution better?”
• “Why should someone use my solution over others?”

Creating an accurate customer journey map

Customer journey maps help you understand what happens between your actual customers and your company. They show you the steps they take to buy, interact with, and become loyal to your brand. You should also consider your customer persona at this point, thinking about what platforms they are usually on and what language you can use for their age group to understand. Also think about any common customer pain points to avoid and trust points you need to utilise.

Try to include data from multiple channels. This way, it represents the full picture of your customer experience. You can use it to find out why people don’t convert into buyers, why some people bounce, and what makes others stick around. Data should be taken from sources like Google Analytics. For example, you might create one chart showing the percentage of visitors who come directly to your site versus those who arrive via social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. Another chart could show whether people purchase online or over the phone.

You can start with a simple chart showing the essential steps of your customer journey. Then add additional charts showing key events along the way. This could be events like opening an email, interacting with an ad and spending time on your website.

Once you’ve collected all of the necessary data, you need to decide your customer touchpoints, these are specific moments for the customer in their journey when you want them to interact with your business. A touchpoint may be a certain form to fill in or a certain ad you would like them to see. These touchpoints are also going to help you decide what sort of language you use e.g. if it’s a touchpoint early on in the journey don’t assume the person viewing knows everything about your business, add more information about why they should pay for your product/service.

In addition to helping you understand your customers’ behaviour, customer journey maps help you improve your product, customer experience and marketing efforts. You can see any gaps you have in your journey where nothing is being marketed to the customer and help understand why customer retention is low, if a customer feels valued and has effective communication from a business, they are more likely to keep buying with you.

How do I utilise my customer journey map?

Mapping out many different customer journeys to suit different customers can be time consuming. You might even find it hard to keep up with the changes that happen within your business. After all, there are hundreds of things that could affect a customer’s decision to buy from you, but it does help to try to understand why these people are not fully converting and how we can do improve the sales funnel to combat this.

Once you’ve mapped out your entire customer journey, you’ll want to make sure that every single interaction your customers have with your brand is tailored to match their needs. This way, you’ll be able to provide a better omni-channel user experience. Look at the specific products and services they are looking at and target this through remarketing and automated emails.

In addition to helping you improve your customer journey, a marketing automation system, such as what we include with XposureHUB can help you automate marketing activities such as email campaigns, social media posts, and landing pages. Creating a seamless experience in your marketing is essential to improving a customer experience and making sure they convert.