12 steps to create an effective customer journey map

What is a customer journey map? Isn’t it the first question that came to your mind when you read the title? Well, a customer journey map is a pictorial representation of all the touchpoints by which a customer comes into contact with a brand and makes a purchase both online and offline.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING

Customer Journey Mapping is the process of creating this representation to understand consumer’s purchase journey and identify places where marketers can smartly advertise their products and services. Customer journey mapping is important in the modern world to keep a tab on the customer’s buying habits and how well they connect with your brand.

Let us imagine your brand as a person, customer journey mapping helps you to understand what kind of image or impression you are making on your consumers as a brand. It also allows your customers to actually become a part of the brand journey.

So now that we have understood the answer to what is a customer journey map , you need to know how to create customer journey map in an efficient way.

So, let’s begin with the stages of a customer’s journey with a brand and how it actually affects a brand. Now before you go and search for how to create customer journey map online, you should consider reading the whole blog.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP

A simple customer journey map consists of briefly four stages. Let us go through each stage of how to make a customer journey map together and explore the world of customer journey mapping.

• Awareness: It is the first step for most people, when a customer realizes the need of a product and service, for example, a customer first needs awareness about his need to buy a t-shirt only then he can make a decision of buying it. This is the first touchpoint where once realizing the need for a product the customer researches about how and where to get the product and when they stumble upon your brand it’s your chance to make an impression. Whether it is an e-commerce customer journey map or an offline one, this process would remain the absolute same.
• Consideration: Once the realization of need hits a customer they start to research and figure out the best available options and to make them consider your brand your content and visualization should be on point. You can increase the engagement through various activities such as videos, reviews, expert choices, and customer testimonials. In case of an e-commerce customer journey map, this is where the customer will go into the depths of different websites to figure out their favourite one.
• Decision: This is the final step in case of buying a product where a customer makes a decision to go along with one brand after being aware of its products and services and considering all the other available options, the customer at this point chooses the best according to his budget, preference, and choices. At this point, he’ll be looking at product-specific content and your duty as a brand is to provide them with product-specific content and data. A well written detailed description of the product works wonders for the customer in case of the e-commerce customer journey map frame.
• Advocacy: This is the stage of loyalty towards a brand by its customers, once the customer is happy and content with the product and services he/she will develop a connection with the brand and will consider to buy a similar product in the future and also recommend it to others if they are looking for a similar product. This is very important as no matter how good your advertising is your product and services need to match the standards and also should be able to connect with the customer as if the product or service will be lacking nothing else can save your brand from losses and you can once compensate on other aspects but not on the products or service quality.

These are the steps to make a customer journey map. You can either create customer journey map online or you can brainstorm and create it on paper.

12 STEPS TO CREATE AN EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Nurturing the customers is going to help you grow as a brand and also to make sure that these customers will become unsaid and unpaid ambassadors for your brand. Now let’s understand how to create customer journey map in 12 simple steps,

• Set goals
• Know your competitors
• Understand your audience
• Develop a buyer persona
• Decide platforms to reach out
• Correlate your brand story with your audience
• Create content buckets with timelines
• Empathy mapping
• Journey mapping
• Touchpoints route mapping
• Content posting
• Review, analyze and modify.

TAKEAWAYS

You need to set your goals based on what your brand requires and how can you provide it. A simple customer journey map also requires you to know your competitors, understand what they are doing and how are they doing it and use these analytics to grow your brand and do not repeat the same mistakes.

Once you are well aware of your competitors understand your audience and know what they expect from you as a brand and how they reach out to you for the same. After getting a proper understanding of your buyers, develop the buyer persona, and decide on which platforms you want to reach out to these buyers, it can be online and offline as well. Always correlate your brand story with your audience in order to create an emotional connection with your customers. Once done with these points, create a content bucket which will help you to develop your content calendar in order to work in your favor.

Do not forget empathy mapping, we repeat again -do not forget empathy mapping as this can be a very important aspect for your brand’s growth.Map your journey and then map your customer’s journey with all the important touchpoints, and finally post the content that’s relevant to your customers and also reflects you well as a brand.

Lastly, analyze and review it to make the required changes, you must be thinking it’s too much to do on your own. To know what a customer journey map is and how to create a customer journey map is one thing and to be able to make a simple customer journey map is another. Don’t worry, you can always reach out to us and we’ll provide you with the 360-degree solution for the same. As a digital marketing company we create customer journey maps online for you. Whether you’re looking for an ad agency in Mumbai or digital marketing company, we also offer affordable seo services and have all the services of a social media agency or website development company. For more information, contact us now!