Approximately 26% of all adults in the United States are always online. Despite this huge number, many companies and entrepreneurs are still struggling to increase their sales revenue when using digital marketing.
This failure is often attributed to various factors. But what many companies fail to understand is their target customers.
Changing your company’s perspective to focus more on the customer is the key to increasing your sales and ensuring the long-term success of your company.
Customer journey maps are an important tool in understanding your customers' thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Customer journey maps can be created in various ways but the best should be focused on the customer's perspective.
Many companies experience challenges starting a customer journey map. So here are five easy steps to starting your own customer journey map. Let's begin the journey below:
1. Begin By Conducting Research
Gathering and evaluating information about your company’s customers is the first step to touchpoints that your company has with its customers.
The research should be focused on the customer’s journey before and after purchasing your product. You can use customer feedback, and market surveys as sources of information about your company.
The research should also focus on the customers' emotions as they move through the main stages of the journey. These stages are:
• Discovery
• Research
• Purchase
• Delivery
• After sale
The stages may be different depending on the nature of your business model. Hence, make sure your research follows every stage of your company’s business model.
2. Use the Customer’s Point of View
After conducting your research, visualize the customer experience from the customers’ point of view. This will give you an idea of what the customer feels, thinks, and behaves as they move through different stages of their relationship with your company.
The visualization of the customers’ experience should be unbiased. You can ensure this by attending a workshop on customer journey mapping.
3. Find out Your Customers’ Goals
Knowing what your customers’ goals are in each stage of their journey is a primary step to making a great customer journey map. The information on your customers’ goals can be obtained from the research stage above.
This step is challenging because it’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly the customer wants during each stage of their experience. But you can make it easy by creating questionnaires and encouraging honest feedback as to what your customers were expecting. And if your company fulfilled their expectations.
4. Visualize Your Customers’ Journey Through Many Touch-points
Your customers’ experience with your company is connected through multiple touchpoints. Starting a good customer journey map should visualize each of the touchpoints rather than using only one.
You should also identify the differences in the customers’ expectations and feelings in different touchpoints.
5. Plot Each Step in a Map
You can create a flow chart or visual map of each touchpoint your company has with its customers. The map should include all information about how the customer feels, expects, and behaves as they move through each touchpoint.
Customer journey maps should be easy to read and interpret. You can also incorporate models that predict the customer’s behavior in the future by using the information you have gathered.
Using Customer Journey Maps
You can use a customer journey map to understand how to design your marketing campaigns. This action will help you cater to the needs of customers from different contexts.
Customer journey maps also help the company identify areas of improvement that can be used as opportunities for growth. A customer journey map will save your company a lot of money used in marketing strategies that do not work.