Harnessing the Potential of Customer Journey Mapping for Marketing and Branding Success
Customers often provide a wealth of information when they interact with brands. Google Analytics, for instance, can tell you where they came from and what pages they visit. The underlying intent of each entry point should be identified, like when someone lands on the FAQ page to ask for help. That way, you can optimize the site to meet their needs better.
Creating Goals
When developing a customer journey map, setting clear goals is essential. It ensures the whole team is working towards a common goal and will result in a better overall design thinking process. It also helps identify areas where a business can improve. It can be done by setting SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound) goals to help guide the process. A business can also create a day-in-the-life customer journey map, which provides a more holistic view of the customer’s experience and pain points. A good starting point is to enlist the help of your marketing and sales teams, as they’ll have a wealth of information about how prospects are moving through the customer journey. They’ll know, for example, how long it takes a lead to become product-aware and the average number of calls they receive from prospective customers. It will give a great insight into where the most significant drop-off points are. By identifying these moments and matching solutions to leads’ needs, businesses can improve customer engagement and ultimately see growth.
Identifying Your Target Audience
Regarding customer journey mapping, the first step is identifying your target audience. It means discovering who they are and their goals, challenges, and pain points. Creating customer personas helps you humanize this information, making it easier to direct marketing strategies toward your ideal customers. For example, if you are selling a new car, your target audience is people who still need one and maybe researching or considering the best options. You can use journey maps to identify the steps in their buying process and send relevant content at each stage.
A great way to collect feedback is through NPS surveys, which allow you to ask questions that prompt a numeric response from 1 to 10. You can also request additional questions for more detailed responses. Regularly using this data will help you keep your customer experience in check and identify areas where improvements can be made. It will increase brand loyalty and result in a better consumer experience. Consumers devoted to a company are more likely to return for more purchases and refer others to it.
Creating Personas
Everyone within your company must understand how their roles impact the customer experience. Cross-department collaboration is critical for this project, allowing each team to see their unique perspectives contributing to the overall picture.
Based on the results of your research, begin by developing buyer personas. It will help you identify the key aspects that must be addressed and allow each team to set specific goals for improving these areas. For example, if you discover that one of your buyer personas needs more ability to purchase Skyscanner flights in advance, this could be an opportunity to improve your product by offering predictive flight prices for up to 24 months.
Once you have your personas in place, schedule follow-up meetings with each team to discuss how they can use these insights to improve the customer experience. For sales, this may be in the form of differentiated messaging or calls to action; for customer success, this might include ways to rework how they liaise with customers; and for engineering, it might influence how they prioritize features based on what their audience wants.
Identifying Touchpoints
Identifying the touchpoints that your audience interacts with is crucial to improving the customer experience. These can be online or offline, including your website, physical store, social media channels, phone support, and more. You can use your buyer personas to help create a list of possible touchpoints but don’t stop there. It’s also a good idea to conduct additional research and create surveys to get more specific feedback about your audience’s interactions with your brand. It will give you a more accurate picture of your customer’s journeys and reveal pain points you may have yet to consider.
For example, what does it feel like for your customers when they can’t contact customer support or their package isn’t delivered on time? The responses to these inquiries can offer insightful information about your clients’ opinions of your brand and point out areas for development. These insights will also make tracking your customer’s satisfaction with their experiences more accessible and improve customer retention.
Creating Content
Creating content for each customer journey stage is critical to conversion success. To help you give them fulfilling experiences, your marketing, sales, and customer service teams must thoroughly understand your client’s needs, motivations, and challenges. For instance, your brand can offer product and educational content to assist customers in understanding their options and coming to a well-informed decision during the research phase. Once they reach the purchase stage, your brand should deliver a seamless purchasing process and provide content encouraging customers to return and buy again.
A customer journey map also helps companies identify gaps in their marketing strategy that may hinder the experience. With a tool, you can see how users interact with your website or app to determine if your content is delivered as it should at each journey stage. Using this data, you can change your digital customer experience to improve engagement and increase conversions.