Successful marketing begins with finding out who your customers are and understanding how they make decisions; walking a mile in their shoes by mapping your customers’ journey with you can take you a long way towards gaining that insight and scoring big in customer satisfaction.
Have you ever visited a company’s website after receiving an email announcing a ‘big sale’ on athletic shoes? You follow the link included in the message hoping to find that new pair of kicks you’ve been wanting. Instead—after combing the entire site in vain—you leave frustrated…and shoeless.
Wouldn’t it be great if that online link took you directly to your preferred shoe brand in your sport and your size? That’s where journey mapping comes into play. And, it’s just as important for B2B organizations as it is to those working in the B2C market.
According to Forbes, “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.”
What is customer journey mapping and why is it important?
Customer attention spans are short, so if they encounter a roadblock along the way—such as not finding the answer to an important question on your website—they will likely retreat and find a simpler path to a competing good or service.
Journey mapping is a way to visualize how a customer interacts with your business across all channels. This strategy helps business leaders gain insights into common customer pain points which in turn allows them to better optimize and personalize the customer experience. Your goal to mapping their journey is to remove the obstacles and make the process efficient and intuitive.
“Marketing to customers without truly knowing them is like throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold on,” explains Kristin Thompson, Lead Marketer with Marketing Direction. “You’re just guessing. Good marketing doesn’t involve guessing; it is the strategic process of promoting a good or service to a target audience.”
Journey mapping is crucial to successful marketing as doing so provides an overview of the customer experience and maps how customers move through the sales funnel. It allows you to identify opportunities to improve and enhance the overall customer experience.
Some business owners may argue that their product or service can appeal to almost anyone so just about everyone is a customer. But marketing and advertising comes at a cost. Therefore, it’s not efficient to spend those dollars blindly, or on everyone. Attention should be given to determine who is most likely to purchase.
Kristen suggests finding answers to the following questions.
- Who are your customers?
- Where do they live?
- What interests do they have?
- What are the key factors in making their decision?
“Having good solid answers to these questions helps you not only position your product and service towards these customers, but also guides them along the decision process,” Kristen says.
Mapping Brings Rewards
Everything your customer comes into contact with regarding your business requires attention when developing a journey map. This includes everything such as packaging and manuals, point-of-purchase displays, public relations, mass marketing campaigns, messaging on social media, company website and much more. It should also include data-driven decision making from sources like CRM systems and Google Analytics.
“It is important after launching a campaign to collect and review data so you can really hone in and fine tune the journey,” explains Marketing Direction Chief Strategist Thom VanderKlipp. “Be sure to also study the post-purchase journey which can help generate repeat business by noting obstacles and opportunities encountered after conversion.”
Not only do customer journey maps help reveal silos or bottlenecks in your business processes, they also provide the necessary guidance across many touch points, putting your customers at ease and building trust. An effective journey map can help businesses address the following:
- Identifying key interaction points
- Defining customer needs at each stage of the sales funnel
- Gaining an objective view on the effectiveness of their sales process
- Understanding the gaps between the intended customer experience and the one actually delivered
- Determining development priorities
- Allocating expenditures for maximum gains
“Examining each aspect of your marketing campaigns, combined with a review of the actual buying process, can give you a crystal-clear picture of what your customers like about doing business with you,” states Kristen. “More importantly, it also shows you what they don’t like — giving you a clear path to improvement.”
