Journey Mapping: Guiding Interest Into Action

By Billy Cripe and Eric Lehnen

TL;DR: Marketers who are seeking a transformation in the organization can achieve better results and scale them faster by creating and using forward-looking and predictive journey mapping. We have created a tool that you can copy and use for free - link.

Journey mapping is an important sounding buzzword that marketers like to toss around. It sounds definitive; “Here’s the map. Here’s the route.” It is something we can support with data; “See here? The prospect was searching our website for answers. And here? The customer requested help from support.” This is easy, quantifiable and wrong.

Maps can do two things. They can look forward into the future to plot routes of where you want to go or they look backward into history to show you what was there. They can chart the routes that have already been taken and give you a view of what already happened. Or they can identify possible and optimal routes to your destination and help you plan for what’s coming.

Mapping that takes the route-planning approach achieves 3 critical objectives, each of which revolves around a tipping point that is ideal for you and your user.

1. It predicatively identifies inflection points in the prospect’s journey; all the places where a prospect makes the choice to go deeper or go away
2. It identifies the moments that matter; the particular kind of inflection point where the choice to go deeper leads to a transaction decision (buy / not-buy, download / not-download, register / not-register etc.)
3. It prescribes intentional engagement at those moments to transform interest into action; the best type, style, medium and presentation of information and opportunity that tips the prospect toward your side of the journey route.

While marketers find it easy to talk generally about the customer’s journey, it is much more difficult to actually plan a prospect’s route.

So we decided to help.

We have collaborated with each other and pooled our collective experience to create a journey-mapping template and tool that you can download and use for free, no strings attached. It’s not perfect. No template is. But our free journey mapping tool is a very good starting place for you to identify inflection points, focus on the moments that matter and proactively prescribe engagement that will delight and serve your prospect.

Access it here on Google Drive. Make a copy for yourself and enjoy!

Then let us know what you would add or remove!

AMAZING CC0 IMAGES ATTRIBUTION:

Header image: via Pixabay artist Dreamypixel

Treasure map: via Pixabay artist Pexels

Lego Journey Mapper: via Pixabay artist Aitoff