Understanding the customer journey is crucial for any business that wants to create meaningful and lasting relationships with its customers. The customer journey is the path that a customer takes from the moment they become aware of a product or service to the point of purchase and beyond.
Mapping this journey will help your business identify key touchpoints, understand customer behavior, and optimize the entire experience to meet customer needs better.
As Simon Sinek, the author of Start with Why, once said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” So why do you think your business is a right fit for your consumer? Perhaps it is not a right fit… Mapping your Customer Journey insurers that you are partnering with the right clients.
Step 1: Identify Customer Personas
The first step in mapping the customer journey is to identify the different types of customers that interact with your business. These are known as customer personas, which represent distinct groups of customers with similar behaviors, needs, and goals.
To create accurate personas, businesses must gather data from various sources, such as customer surveys, social media analytics, and sales records. Understanding who your customers are and what they care about is essential for tailoring the customer journey to meet their specific needs.
Just like any small business starting out, we too said yes to any and all customers. When you are the new kid on the block, all business is good business.
However, as our business grew, we fount that their is an ideal customer that fits with us and our team. There is a perfect if for us and a perfect fit for them. This will be true for your business as well.
It may take some time to identify this “perfect customer,” but as an owner, it is your job to recognize this when you see it. Then once you can pick out your perfect fit, the job becomes finding more customers just like that.
Businesses must understand their customers’ unique characteristics and create personas that reflect the diverse needs and motivations of their audience. This is a hard skill to master especially when you are trying to keep a steady flow of business coming in to your company.
We all work hard to understand our own companies identity.
To take a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk, (entrepreneur and author of Crush It! and The Thank You Economy) “You have to understand your own personal DNA. Don’t do things because I do them or Steve Jobs or Mark Cuban tried it. You need to know your personal brand and stay true to it.” If we all know there needs to be a focus on our brands identity, shouldn’t we to understand the customer just as well.
8 Key Metrics for Customer Persona
Build better customer personas with our essential guide to the key metrics every business should focus on.
- Demographics & Psychographics
- Buying Habits & Online Behavior
- Pain Points & Preferred Channels
- And More!
Step 2: Define the Stages of the Customer Journey
Once customer personas have been identified, the next step is to define the stages of the customer journey. Typically, the customer journey can be broken down into five main stages: Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Retention, and Advocacy.
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- Awareness: This is the stage where customers first learn about your product or service. It’s important to identify the channels and touchpoints where potential customers are likely to discover your brand.
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- Consideration: At this stage, customers are evaluating your product or service against competitors. They may visit your website, read reviews, or engage with your content to make an informed decision.
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- Purchase: This is the point where the customer decides to buy your product or service. It’s crucial to ensure that the purchasing process is smooth, easy, and intuitive.
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- Retention: After the purchase, the focus shifts to retaining the customer by providing excellent post-purchase support, engaging content, and ongoing communication.
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- Advocacy: In the final stage, satisfied customers become brand advocates, recommending your product or service to others and helping to attract new customers.
Each stage of the customer journey has the potential to be a tipping point that can significantly impact your business’s success. One of our favorite reads her at Collecting Heads is The Typing point by Malcolm Gladwell. It is a great read for anyone wanting to understand what makes trends happen and how can we not only identify them, but manufacture them.
“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” Malcolm Gladwell This quote highlights the importance of understanding these stages.
Step 3: Identify Customer Touchpoints
Customer touchpoints are the various interactions that customers have with your brand throughout their journey. These can include visiting your website, interacting with your social media posts, reading customer reviews, or contacting customer service. It’s important to map out all the possible touchpoints for each stage of the customer journey, as this will help you understand how customers interact with your brand at different stages.
One thing to note is that a customer may see and or be influenced by your brand seven times before they even make a buying decision. Although there Will be touchpoint throughout the customer journey, we need to not forget they are not a customer until they are. The average of 7 touchpoints at the onset of this relationship must have equal to, if not a greater amount of focus.
As Marcus Lemonis, entrepreneur and star of The Profit, says, “The customer is always going to choose the business that makes
them feel like they are valued, like they are part of the family.” By identifying and optimizing touchpoints, businesses can ensure that customers feel valued and supported at every stage of their journey.
Step 4: Analyze Customer Behavior
With the customer journey stages and touchpoints identified, the next step is to analyze customer behavior at each stage. This involves collecting and analyzing data on how customers interact with your brand, what content they engage with, and what factors influence their decision-making process. This analysis can help identify pain points in the customer journey, such as high drop-off rates at certain stages or negative feedback from customers.
Because a lot of business comes through a digital door way opposed to a brick and mortar, it is important to make sure your online customer user experience has been tailored to the customer personas. Although this is just one of many touchpoits in the customer journey, we believe it is a cruel step.
As a whole, businesses should aim to inspire their customers by understanding their behavior and motivations, leading to a more personalized and effective customer journey. Similary, we as business owners, do this with how we hire. Simon Sinek’s insight is particularly relevant here: “Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them; they hire already motivated people and inspire them.”
We are not looking for buyers. We are looking for the right customer that fits our business, only then can we inspire them to buy our services/goods. When we put the customer personas first, we have the confidence needed to know that we can over deliver for them.
Step 5: Optimize the Customer Journey
The final step in mapping the customer journey is to optimize it based on the insights gained from the previous steps. This can involve making changes to the website to improve user experience, refining the content strategy to better engage customers, or providing additional support at critical touchpoints.
The goal is to create a seamless and enjoyable customer journey that meets the needs of your customers and encourages them to continue doing business with you.
As Daymond John, entrepreneur and star of Shark Tank, advises, “Align yourself with the right people, forge the right relationships, and you’ll set yourself up for the long run.” By optimizing the customer journey and aligning your business with your customers’ needs, you can build long-lasting relationships that drive business success.
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Mapping the customer journey is an essential practice for any business that wants to understand and meet the needs of its customers.
By identifying customer personas, defining the stages of the journey, identifying touchpoints, analyzing customer behavior, and optimizing the journey, businesses can create a more effective and personalized customer experience.
As the experts have highlighted, understanding and aligning with your customers’ needs is key to building strong, lasting relationships and driving business growth.
If you need further assistance putting together your customer journey, feel free to reach out to our team.
We are happy to help!
