Creating an Effective Customer Journey Map

Pick a customer, any customer. There was a time that they had never heard of you, and now they’re loyal patrons of your product. But what happened in between? You might have noticed weird behavior while perusing your analytics — some customers spend hours on your site and put items in the cart, then close the tab and never come back. Some show up, add an item to the cart, and make a purchase in the space of five minutes.

Figuring out how and why those people arrive at a purchasing decision is crucial to getting other people to make the same purchase. But the customer journey is complicated these days. Customers can interact with your brand through social media, traditional advertising, email newsletters, friends of theirs, or any number of other channels.

Unlike some other aspects of marketing, you can’t just intuit this. A customer journey is all about the specific experiences that your customers have — so the only way to understand the journeys of your customers is to ask them yourself.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

It’s a visual representation of the process that your prospective customers go through to get from Point A to Point B. Points A and B can be whatever’s most important to you and your business goals, as long as you’re figuring out the pain points and needs that get you from one to the other.

Sure, you can write all this down, but a visual layout will be a clearer tool for your employees to refer to. A map lets you figure out exactly where your customers are in the process, from the first touchpoint to the last, so you can help nudge them along toward a purchase.

Why Do You Need a Customer Journey Map?

Back in 2009, a book called The Checklist Manifesto made the rounds. It shed light on the world of surgery — specifically, that even though surgeons are some of the best-trained, best-educated people in the world, they still miss important steps unless those steps are written down. 

Marketers are the same way. We tend to think we have all the answers and that we know our customers backward and forward, but it’s not that simple. A journey map is all about breaking down your customers’ thought processes step by step, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints to solve your customers’ problems.

Journey mapping isn’t just about helping out your current customers — it’ll allow you to expand to a new customer base, too. You can’t fully understand the customer journey without knowing the demographics and psychographics of the people you’re serving, and that lack of understanding is a shortcut to wasted marketing dollars. Best case scenario, you’re appealing to too broad a base, and worst case, you’re targeting the wrong people entirely. By looking into and planning around the pain points of your customers, you’ll start yo understand what makes them tick.

Getting Started On a Journey Map

A journey map is how you keep a growing company focused on your most important asset — your customers — even as different departments start to grow and thrive with less and less oversight. Here’s how to create a map that keeps everyone on the same page:

1. Set goals. Why are you building this journey map? What problem are you trying to solve, either in the company or for your customers? Look over your buyer personas and pick a specific one, then make a map for that persona.
2. Write survey questions. Remember, you can’t just use intuition when you’re building a journey map — you want it to be based on cold, hard data, and that means asking people who have already made the journey: your customers. Ask those people how they came to the decision to buy from you.
3. Focus on one persona in particular. Different people are going to take different journeys to making a purchase, so you want to direct your attention to just one of them. If you’re journey mapping for the first time, pick the most common path based on the data you’ve collected.
4. Write down your touchpoints — all the places your customers can interact with you. That means social channels, paid ads, email newsletters, third party review sites, and, of course, your website. You need to know which touchpoints your customers are using, which ones they’re not, and how those touchpoints are leading them to a decision.

For each of those touchpoints, you’ll want to consider the emotions and motivations that drive them closer to a purchase. On the flip side, what are the obstacles and pain points holding them back? Are parts of your content confusing or too complicated to use? 

1. Take stock of what you have. Virtually every part of your business is a component of your customers’ journey, so you need to know where the weak links are. If you’re creating top-notch content but falling down when it comes to converting leads to sales, your sales team might need work. If you’re signing customers up, but they’re frustrated with the product once they dive in, you may need to tweak your onboarding process a bit. By examining the tools you have to work with and figuring out what you need, you can streamline the entire process.
2. Give it a test drive. Pretend you’re a new prospect who knows nothing about the company and go through the process — or better yet, recruit a friend who’s truly impartial. Did the website guide you where you needed to go? Did someone answer your email questions promptly or pick up the phone on the first call? A journey map is hypothetical until you actually try it, so a dry run can be very revealing.
3. Always be iterating. As with so much in marketing, a journey map is an evolving document. Changes to attitudes, technologies, and products will always change the way that people do business, and something as simple as faster internet or a new review site can completely change the way that people discover you. You’ll need to be ready to see the new journey, adapt your map accordingly, and create a new methodology to bring people on board.

Your customers are the people that keep the lights on at your business. To keep them, you need to keep them happy, and to keep them happy, you need to understand them. A customer journey map is a crucial component of your ability to satisfy your current customers, bring in new ones, and be ready for whatever the future brings.