Business

Creating a Successful Customer Journey Map in a Digitally Driven World

September 05, 2018Joel Mehler

The customer journey map is an incredibly powerful tool for helping brands better understand their customers and improve their experience. It’s essentially a story of each of your customer’s journeys from the first point of contact through customer loyalty. The pinnacle of customer service is in providing tailored, relevant and personal experiences to your customers throughout their journey, and mapping can help you achieve it.

However, in an increasingly digital world, the art and science of mapping their journey has become more complex. There are multiple starting points, stopping points and ways of reaching out to them and the old rules don’t always apply. Here are a few tips for helping businesses like yours successfully map the customer journey in a digital world.

The Foundation of a Customer Journey Map

Everything has a beginning, including your customer journey map. Step one is to strategize about how to create a map that best illustrates your customer’s experiences and pain points along the journey while keeping in mind the digital landscape.

Secondly, you’ll want to look at your market as a whole and realize that they are not all the same. Your customers have different needs and motivations, will move along the journey at different speeds, take stops at different points and connect with you through various inbound marketing avenues.  In case you missed the key word here, it’s differentiation. Segmenting your audience according to the demographics and behaviors that influence their journey is key in a digital world.

Finally, don’t forget to have a clearly defined mission and customer service goals. Doing this is an important step in developing a digital marketing strategy – which is essential to moving customers along the path of their journey

Focus on Multiple Touchpoints

The customer journey, while relatively stable, is not set in stone and minor shifts should be expected. This means you have to be adaptable and always assessing if the current digital landscape is encouraging change in your customer’s path. It’s important to recognize that regardless of the path, there are almost always multiple points of entry, and you need to be able to capture and tend to the customer at each one. 

customer journey mapping

Additionally, there are also plenty of opportunities for them to venture off course. While you might think of these as separate journeys, your customer connects all of it together with your brand. In the digital world, you don’t want to think of the customer journey as a straight path from point A to the finish line, but instead a path with multiple touchpoints that provide you the opportunity to elevate your brand in the customer’s eyes.

Why an Internet Marketing Agency Can Help

Outlining your customer journey map is crucial for reducing customer service friction and keeping your focus exactly where it needs to be – on moving each customer one more step further along the path to conversion and loyalty. It’s a process that sounds simple but is incredibly complex.

Not being prepared to meet your customers needs and expectations is too risky in a digital world. By working with a digital marketing agency you can begin to understand your customer’s buying process and online habits in a way that will put you on a path to greater success. Contact us today and our team of experts can help you understand your ideal customer better than ever before.

Joel Mehler

A graduate of the University of Alabama, Joel was first introduced to digital marketing and SEO while participating in an international internship program in Barcelona, Spain. Joel maintains consistent oversight on strategy performance, client relations and day-to-day operations. Joel is an avid traveler and spends much of his free time in search of Atlanta’s next fun trend.