Customer journey mapping has been an important part of marketing for both small and large business owners. A good customer journey map can help you better understand what your customer experiences before making a purchase from you.
The only problem is that not everyone knows how to understand your customer goal to create the most accurate customer journey map possible. Hence, here is everything you need to know about customer journey mapping.
#1 Understand Customer Journey Mapping
Firstly, you need to understand customer journey mapping. What is it used for? How are customer journey maps created? How to make them more effective? All of these are crucial for being able to use customer journey maps correctly.
Customer journey maps are meant to help business owners and marketers understand what consumers need to do to become customers. The maps are used in marketing to guide customers through every necessary stage for them to make a purchase in the end.
#2 Know Your Target Audience
Secondly, you need to know your target audience. If you don’t understand who your potential customers are, you won’t be able to create a comprehensive customer journey map that you will then be able to use in your marketing and advertising campaigns.
The best thing you can do is collect both primary (demographics) and secondary (interests, pain points, etc.) information about your customers and then create the so-called buyer personas to better segment your audience. Once you have the segments ready, you will need to create a customer journey map for each of them separately.
#3 Start with The Foundation
The foundation of your customer journey map is by far the most important part of your map because you will be building on it. The foundation of your map will consist of touchpoints or stages that your customers go through before they reach the final stage and make a purchase.
As Caroline Jones from an online writing services review site says, “Customer journey maps are often very complex, so it’s important to have a strong base before you can move on to smaller details to personalize your map even more.”
#4 Consider Customer Goals and Pain Points
Both customer goals and pain points are crucial for you to be able to create the most effective customer journey map possible for every segment of your target audience. Of course, other things matter too like age and location, but goals and pain points as well as interests are often some of the most influential factors when it comes to consumer behavior.
If market research doesn’t give you enough information about your customer goals and pain points, conduct a survey among your existing customers. You can then conduct such surveys regularly to add more data and adjust your findings.
#5 Think About Your Own Goals
Just like your customers, you have your own goals which you need to think about when creating your customer journey map. What do you want to use it for? Will it be the basis for all your future marketing campaigns or are you just experimenting?
You should also think about which part of your customer journey map matters to you the most. For example, you might want to focus on what happens after the purchase or, on the contrary, you may be more interested in the first stages to raise brand awareness.
#6 Plan Out Your Map
Before you actually start creating your map, you should first plan it out. You already have your own goal and all the information about your customers you will need. You also have the key touchpoints. All of these need to be used to create a basic outline of your customer journey map.
As Cillian Wilde, an expert in customer journey mapping, puts it, “An outline for your customer journey map will help you get a better idea of what the map will look like once you create it visually. For now, it may just be a numbered list.”
#7 Create Your Map
Once you have the outline ready, you can create your customer journey map (or maps if you are making them for several segments of your audience at once). Of course, the best way to create a map is by making it as visual as possible.
You can create the customer journey map digitally or you can do it by hand. If you are doing it with a team, consider using a whiteboard for the “first draft” and only then putting it on a huge piece of paper for everyone to access easily.
#8 Implement Your Map
After your customer journey map is ready, you will need to start implementing it in your campaigns. There will definitely be some issues with the map, but the only way to find out about them is by actually using the map as a part of your strategy.
For example, you can use the map to guide a segment of your customers through email marketing. Just remember that maps for different segments can’t be swapped. Maps for different types of marketing (email marketing vs direct mail marketing) can’t be swapped either.
#9 Collect Customer Data and Adjust Your Map
Last but not least, while using your customer journey maps, you will need to collect customer data. This data can then be analyzed and used to adjust your map accordingly. For example, if you notice that many customers actually skip a particular touchpoint in your map, you may want to create a separate segment for these customers – or you might have to get rid of the touchpoint completely.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, customer journey mapping can be very effective when done right. If you understand what your customer goal is, you will be able to guide your potential customers through all the necessary steps to get to the stage where they make a purchase. Use the tips in this article to create your own customer journey map and better understand your customer goal.
