Digital Marketers in a SEO agency always question, how do we get the customer to align as per our marketing strategy?
Instead of this, the appropriate question is how the organization and customer can achieve their goals together on the website.
The answer to the above question is what we call a Customer Journey Map.
What Does A Customer Journey Map Mean?
The customer journey map is a powerful technique that helps you recognize and understand the need, concerns, hesitations, and other touchpoints with your brand.
It is well-said that, as a marketer, you need to put yourself in different customer shoes to get an idea of what they seek in your business. You need to work backward from customer experience to technology and not the other way round to offer a one-of-a-kind customer experience.
Why Customer Journey Map?
Many organizations rely only on the data collected through various sources, which may not alone help in understanding the customer experiences.
A customer journey map is developed for the same that helps to understand your customer more precisely and implement Search Engine Optimisation effectively.
You can picture the complete customer journey on your website on a major level.
Based on the customer experience on their platform, businesses can prioritize their actions. It helps in recognizing the gaps amidst departments and channels.
With all the small and big steps and hurdles probability in each, teams come together to resolve each problem that helps in the understanding of core customer journey paths.
Build A Customer Journey Map For Your Brand
During the process of creation of a customer journey map, any point can be the starting point, but the end goal is always the recognition and elimination of pain points of the customers. Start by following the below-given step by step guide.
Step 1: Set your end goals
Before you rush to make a customer journey map, it is better to give a thought as to why are you making it or what is there that you want to achieve from the customers visiting your website.
Having a clear vision helps you build an accurate customer journey map for your brand.
Step 2: Persona Research
Discover your persona to understand your potential customers, their wants, their interaction with your brand, and other touchpoints.
Do not rely on a handful of pre-existing data to bestow SEO services to the clients, instead compile your fresh findings to what the customer journey may look like.
Strive to collect more meaningful data from your existing customers who are in regular interaction with your brand. You can conduct interviews, email surveys to your users, leverage web analytics, talk to employees who interact with your customers, and more.
The information from questions like,
- Problems encountered by customers that your brand solve or didn’t,
- At what point does your customer purchase or cancel the same,
- Website ease of use for customers,
- How the customers did came to know about your brand and others.
It will help you make data-driven decisions along with qualitative and quantitative information collected by you based on the real-time customer experience.
Step 3: Recognise customer touchpoints
Touchpoints are the locations on your websites anytime customer interacts with your brand. It can be offline or online through various forms of marketing.
All the touchpoints need to be taken into account to make your customers happy by listening out to them.
Once you have recognized them all, you can arrange them well on your customer journey map.
Step 4: Conduct research on roadblocks
It’s time to look at the bigger picture once you have recognized all the touchpoints of your customers.
Analyze your online platform for the following questions.
- Are your customers acknowledged with the solutions to existing problems on your website?
- At what points the customer is facing the problem and leaving your website?
and others.
Step 5: Resolve the issues
Customer journey maps can be any format you wish to make and not illustrative at all times. Try to prioritize the touchpoints that need to be addressed first. Narrow down pages based on cost-effectiveness and ease before proceeding with changes for improvement.
Step 6: Experience the customer journey yourself
Once you finish making the map, it is time that you analyze the results by pursuing the customer journey yourself. It will help you understand the smoothness of the process and the valuable experience you are ready to deliver to your customers.
Without testing it, the whole journey map stays hypothetical.
A Customer Journey Map Is A Constantly Evolving Document!
A customer journey map is not something that you make once and follow for a lifetime. It needs to be reviewed on a quarterly or monthly basis to identify any gaps or issues regularly.
It will transform your online platform as per the recent trends and latest data.
So, head on to build a customer journey map for your business and eliminate any roadblocks on your website.
Author Bio:
Rajesh Bhimani is the Founder at Skynet Technologies, Website Design and Development Agency. He has 20 years of experience in Technology and Marketing industry. When he isn’t working, you can find him cooking for his family or reading some fiction. You can connect with him on Twitter.