- One of the greatest challenges in marketing
is knowing which marketing messages
would be compelling to your audience,
and also knowing when and where they should be delivered.
As you begin to evaluate your customer journey,
I encourage you to create a customer journey map.
Now, there's no one set form for this,
but you can create a very simple template
to get you started.
Along the top as columns,
I'll list out the funnel stages.
Awareness, interest, desire, action, and loyalty.
Then I'll create a few rows and give them labels.
Start with activities.
What is the customer doing in this phase?
Then goals.
This is what the customer wants to achieve
during this phase.
Next, thoughts.
What are some questions or thoughts the customer might have?
From here, emotional state.
Is the customer happy, excited, sad, frustrated?
Are they curious or interested?
And how are they feeling during the portion of this journey?
I usually draw a one to five scale using smiley faces,
and then I'll put a small quote
reflecting on that customer feeling,
such as a thought of, this seems interesting.
Next we'll look at touch points and channels.
What will the customer interact with and where?
Is it your website, social media, an email, and so on.
And then objectives.
What do you need to do to move this customer
to the next stage of the funnel?
Now, you might have multiple responses
for each funnel stage,
but this format will help you map out
your fundamental buyer journey.
Let's fill out one of these columns together.
Say we have a pet grooming business.
For activities, the customer is searching Google
for pet grooming near me.
Goals.
Well, they want to see what businesses offer this service.
Thoughts at this stage might be,
I wish I thought to do this sooner,
or, I've never taken Fido anywhere before.
Maybe we'll give their emotional state
a neutral smiley face.
Next we'll look at touch points within the awareness phase.
This could be a Google map listing and our website.
And then we have the objectives.
We want to make the customer aware of our business,
but most notably, we want them to be aware
of how to book an appointment
and see how well-reviewed our business is.
with this first piece of the journey built,
we can then move through the columns.
And what's great is now we can look at this column
and see exactly what we need to do.
It's important that we consider
how we might make the customer feel more comfortable
about our grooming salon,
perhaps making them excited about how easy it is to book.
And it's also evident that we need to be sure
that our Google My Business listing and our website
are ready to receive this customer.
Consider the journey your customer's experience
and build a map.
This way you can make it more delightful, less frustrating,
and ultimately, successful.