Understanding the customer journey is the key to any marketing plan you develop. A poorly thought out (or not considered at all) customer journey can truly make or break a sale, sign-up, download, etc. Not only that, but a complicated and frustrating customer journey can seriously impact how consumers and potential consumers feel about your brand. Once your brand reputation is impacted, it can be difficult to get it back.
Let’s walk through how to map out your customer journey so that you can see a higher return on investment (ROI) for your marketing efforts!
Understand Your Ideal Target Audience’s Pain Points
The most important rule of any marketing effort is understanding your target audience. If you know your target audience inside out, you will know what their pain points are. What do they need, what things hinder or frustrate them, and how does your product or service fulfill that need? Once you’ve understood this, that will play a significant role in how you promote your business.
Consider Your Touch-Points
Think about how your audience will receive your messaging. Will it be by email, social media, or both? As a general rule of thumb, the more touch-points the better to ensure the message is driven home, unless you are doing a soft launch to just your email list.
Ensure That Your Landing Page/Form is Functional and Straight to the Point
Whether you’re using a form or a specific landing page, your messaging should be clear, concise and relevant to your promotion. You do not want to send potential customers to a landing page that doesn’t reflect the messaging that got them there in the first place, nor do you want the checkout/filling of information out to be complicated. If it’s frustrating or difficult to do, you are probably missing out on a lot of potential conversions. This brings us to our next point.
Remember, the Less Steps the Better!
You want to make sure that you’re sending interested parties directly to the area where they can fill out a form or purchase a product/service, download an item in return for their email, etc. If they have to hop from page to page, the higher the chance of them dropping off, which is the last thing you want to have happen.
Use an Unbiased 3rd Party to Test Your Funnel
Send your marketing materials to someone you trust and ask them to give their feedback on your messaging and the checkout process. If it’s in any way complex, you want to take the necessary steps to fix it!
Follow Up with Your Consumer
If you received a customer’s email, send them a follow up email. Ask them what they think about the product, service, freebie, etc. and get their feedback. This essential to improving your customer journeys in the future and ensure the highest retention rate possible!
Quick Tip: Automate When You Can
We’ve talked about automation before, but we know it’s not always possible depending on your business. If you do have a marketing software that can automate things such as an abandoned cart email, program delivery, etc, make sure those are set up and functioning. You don’t want to leave anything to chance and life as a business owner definitely gets busy, so automation is often the key to most business’ success.
And there you have it, the basics to mapping out your customer journey! When it all boils down to it, just make sure your messaging is clear and that the path to completing the desired action is clear and easy. Start integrating these steps into your marketing efforts, and you should most definitely see an improvement!