HOW TO CREATE A CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP
A comprehensive guideIt is therefore a fundamental tool for every marketing expert during the implementation of a strategy, allowing the planning and prediction of all stages of a campaign for the purchase of a product or service.
Knowing the exact moment and channel of the first customer contact is essential for a company, as it enables the creation of a customer journey through solid strategic planning.
The consumer searches for a product or service when they feel the need to satisfy a requirement, and identifying its touchpoints, which are the stages of the purchasing process, allows for the optimization of the marketing campaign, interpreting needs, and possibly even anticipating them.
Before the advent of digital and omnichannel strategies, it was considered a linear process, developed according to five key moments:
- Awareness: In this first phase, the consumer becomes aware of the need to satisfy a requirement; the product or service in question is provided by one or more companies, and the user becomes aware of it through various channels.
- Familiarity: The product becomes familiar to the consumer and recognizable among the range of offered products.
- Consideration: Here, the consumer is oriented towards a specific product, choosing between different brands based on features and prices and comparing their research.
- Purchase: The moment when the actual purchase takes place, the first of the two major company objectives.
- Loyalty: This is the second objective, making the customer loyal to the brand; the importance of post-sale services comes into play, such as customer care, without underestimating the importance of generating interest in related products.
Today, this model can no longer be considered, as the consumer no longer plays a passive role in the market, but rather has gained greater awareness and possesses many more tools, thanks to direct interactivity with companies.
Why It’s Important to Create a Map
So, what is the purpose of creating a customer journey?
- Understanding Your Customers: Knowing their experience can help understand when they might feel satisfied or frustrated, enabling you to understand mistakes and victories.
In case something is going wrong, you have the opportunity to redesign the customer experience by strengthening the weak points, while in positive situations, it helps to grow and bring about further improvements.
- Understanding the Product or Service Path: The Customer Journey will also be useful to verify the stages of products or services offered through their best features, in order to manage them better and refine them.
- Improving Audience Relations: By getting to know your users better, it will be easier to build solid relationships, offering a service adaptable to their expectations.
How to build a Customer Journey Map
There isn’t a single path to create a customer journey; however, you need to start with a framework composed of 4 phases that are necessary to proceed with creating the map:
- Definition of Objectives: Products are defined, interested segments are identified, and buyer personas, that is, typical customers, are pinpointed.
- Customer Experience Information: Customers are interviewed, and monitoring tools are used to analyze online data from the company and its activity on social media.
- Map Design showing interactions and online/offline touchpoints for each phase within a specified timeline.
- Map Implementation as a guide for marketing campaign strategies.
So, it’s a framework that analyzes the touchpointsbetween users and the company, the product, and the offered experience: the more touchpoint, the more complex the journey becomes.
Subsequently, one of the practical steps for creating a customer journey map can be summarized into four macro categories.
- Discovery: The moment when the user becomes aware of a brand as a response to a specific need.
- Consideration: The user acknowledges the existence of a solution to their problem but is still undecided about choosing a product or service.
- Purchase: The user reflects on various possibilities and ultimately selects the company they deem the best, purchasing the product or service offered by it.
- Retention: After purchase, the brand’s task is to retain the customer with additional information and build a stable relationship.
These can lead to developing concrete actions, thoroughly following each step to anticipate interactions and manage requests:
- Identify the User: First, gather all possible data about users to communicate with them clearly and exhaustively, considering the tastes and experiences of the ideal customer: Analyzing company data and maintaining useful results is a good starting point.
- Analyze Data from the Web and Social Media: The right tool to use for this activity is undoubtedly Google Analytics, creating reports on user flows and estimates the best and worst pages they interacted with.
- Analyze Customer Experience: In addition to this extensive amount of data, it’s important to specifically know every detail of the user’s customer experience: What are common problems? What channels does the consumer use to contact the company? What questions are most frequent? It might be useful to conduct a survey aimed at the public to gather qualitative and quantitative data regarding their experience with the product as well as their initial contact with the company.
- Create the Buyer Persona: The collected data will then be used to create the profile of the ideal customer, towards whom to direct the online marketing strategy.
- Mapping the Stages of the Trajectory: Only at this point can we begin to map a customer journey.
- Discovery Phase: Here, the map will include information about the moments and reasons why the user searches for a product and information about it, the actions they take, and the initial touchpoints of contact with the brand. It will also cover the positive and negative aspects they encounter and the most recurring questions.
- Consideration Phase: This is the moment when the user’s interests in a specific product are analyzed, along with the actions taken and specific touchpoints. It will explore the consumer’s feelings and any strengths and weaknesses.
- Purchase Phase: The next step the user takes in their customer journey is the purchase, tracked separately, by analyzing the same points as in the previous phases.
- Loyalty Phase: The final phase of the customer journey process aims to encourage customers to return for purchases, making the buying experience positive and memorable. Therefore, it’s important not to forget to include in the map the remarketing strategies and touchpoints dedicated to loyalty, based on lived experience.
- Developing a Timeline: Finally, when creating a customer journey map, the development of a timeline is essential. This timeline takes into account the time dedicated to each phase, from the initial interaction with the company to the receipt of the purchased product or service.
So, to get closer to your audience and be able to anticipate the stages of the journey they undertake while making a purchase, the Customer Journey is the ideal tool.
Get our comprehensive guide on how to use Google Analytics 4 to optimise your Customer Journey Map. Download it now and discover how to improve your marketing strategy
Strategies for Enhancing Your Customer Journey Mapping
- Personalized Touchpoints: Customizing the customer journey is paramount for achieving customer-focused success. Take into account individual customer interactions and preferences by integrating feedback. Address user pain points and meet their needs at each touchpoint to elevate the overall customer experience.
- Efficient Experience Platform: Customer journey maps can become complex, encompassing various pathways, touchpoints, customer personas, and staff considerations. Harness the power of a robust customer experience platform to enhance your mapping capabilities and deliver tailored customer experiences to your audience.
Want to know how to become a Marketing Specialist and carry out these types of strategies?
Check out the course programs we’ve designed for you!
Or, alternatively, request more information by contacting Digital Coach!
REQUEST MORE INFORMATION
"