4 Steps to Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey mapping has become more than a buzzword, it’s an effective tool to learn about how your audience becomes referring clients.

Most companies have sale teams that use sales funnels that determine how to determine qualified leads and move their behavior along a line of activities to become a client. There are also lots of digital sales funnels out there that know how to get you to continue to click through a series of options to ultimately hand over your credit card in exchange for a product.  

A customer journey map, succinctly put, maps out the entire series of touch points your clients experience with you from start to finish – including their first impression.

Why is this important?

When you know the route(s) your ideal client has taken to get to you, you can focus on providing more efficiency within that route. Providing better content that resonates with your ideal client is a “no-brainer,” but placing specific content along the route that allows that same client to take a faster course is one example of using a customer journey map strategically.

“So how does one go about creating a customer journey map,” you might be thinking to yourself. It can be as simple or as complicated as you like. I like to keep it simple. 

 

#1 – Know Your Client

Like your best friend. Go beyond basic demographics and get into their heads. What do they do on Sunday afternoons? What food do they keep in the fridge? Where is their favorite restaurant? What hobbies do they enjoy? Ask all the questions and seek all the answers to get a clear picture of your ideal client. This process is creating a Persona.

 

#2 – Take Inventory

What marketing touch points do you have in place now? Include everything from email signatures and business cards, to Google business page and website. 

 

#3 – Track The Data

Online analytics tools are amazing to be able to show you who’s doing what, when, and for how long. This kind of reporting is thorough. What about all the traditional ways like TV, Radio, and Networking? Take the time to map out what you are doing and how it affects client on-boarding (or items purchased in the store). For example: You place a short commercial on TV about a 50% item in-store. You see an up-tick of online and in-store traffic. The 50% item has an increase in sales, but not as much as planned. However, overall sales have increased a lot more than expected. This means it worked – increased awareness created increased traffic that increased sales. The TV commercial was the start of the journey, but if you aren’t including it in the data you’ll dismiss the effectiveness.

 

#4 – Design The Map

Remember, I like to keep things simple, so I have a four-phase journey that incorporates different methods:

      • Look at Me! (Get their attention)
      • Do you like me? (They decide they like me enough to keep going)
      • Now they need me (determining those points of need and when those decisions get made)
      • Buy Me (on boarding new clients)

I use a content strategy that fits within the customer journey map to determine key activities to focus on for my marketing and sales efforts. Using this tool keeps my work efficient and my clients sign-on faster because it makes more sense for them.