Every successful product or service is backed by a deep understanding of the people you are marketing and selling it to.
How much time have you invested in your customer experience? According to Forbes, 84% of customers expect an excellent experience from any business they buy from.
If you feel like your customer experience is falling short, customer journey mapping is one of the most effective ways to spot gaps and areas where you can add value.
By visualising the entire customer experience, you can clarify the pain points, needs, and expectations of your target customer upfront – leading to strong long-term relationships when they buy from you.
The more you know about your audience, the better sales and marketing content you can create – including engaging lead magnets, such as quizzes, that help you build a list of perfect-fit prospects!
Benefits of customer journey mapping
First, let’s dig into what customer journey mapping really does for your business…
Understand your audience better
If you take the time to plan your customer journey, you will do some deep-dive research on your target customer. This will give you a much richer insight into their needs, motivations, pain points, and behaviour.
Improved marketing
All of your research will lead to a better understanding of what your audience struggles with and the solution or transformation they are looking for.
The process therefore helps you create better, more compelling marketing materials because they are more relevant to your target customer.
Improved ROI
Marketing costs money, and finding new customers costs 5x more than retaining existing ones. If you can optimise your customer journey and exceed expectations, your customers won’t just be satisfied – they’ll become loyal to your brand.
The more raving fans you can create = the less money you spend trying to acquire new leads and customers. Result!
Better customer experience
Mapping out your customer journey also improves the buying experience. When you examine each stage individually, you notice gaps and friction – alongside opportunities for personalised marketing.
This leads to better quality service, longer customer relationships, and brand advocates who do the selling for you!
4 steps to map your customer journey
You will need to map out the steps of your customer journey for:
- Each core service you offer
Each of your services is individual – they have different steps, touchpoints, and delivery methods. To properly optimise your customer journey, you need to look at them one by one.
- Each customer persona you target
Alternatively, you might have one core service, but a couple of different customer groups purchase it.
Each group will have their own pain points, expectations, and required touchpoints – so you need to get a clear view of what they need so you can market and sell to them effectively.
Now, let’s dig into the four steps you need to take to map out your customer journey.
1. Understand the different awareness stages
Every customer journey consists of a series of stages.
Each stage creates a different buying experience for the customer, so you need to optimise all of them to deliver the best service.
Awareness
This is the first interaction a customer has with your business.
Question to ask: How do customers first become aware of my brand or product?
Consideration
This is where customers will start doing their research – not just on your product or service, but on your wider business.
They will want to learn as much about you as possible to make the best buying decision for their needs.
This could include:
- Exploring your website
- Reading your reviews
- Engaging with your social media activity
- Watching your videos
They will also look at your competition and compare you with them.
Question to ask: What factors do my customers consider when evaluating my offerings?
Decision
This is where the customer decides whether to buy with you or not.
Many factors will contribute to their decision, but typically the biggest ones are how confident they are that you can help them, price, and how you compare to your competition.
They will also make decisions based on their experience interacting with you so far.
Question to ask: How does my customer make their purchasing decision?
Retention
Once you have acquired a new customer – how do you keep them?
You need to evaluate every touchpoint of your offer to understand which elements help you build long-term relationships.
Quizzes, for example, offer a great opportunity to boost customer loyalty and increase repeat business.
Question to ask: What keeps customers coming back to my business?
Advocacy
This is the gold star of customer experience: customers who love what you do so much, they effectively start selling for you.
Whether it’s leaving you 5-star reviews or recommending you to friends and family, you need to make becoming an advocate for your business as easy as possible.
Question to ask: How does my customer become an advocate for my brand?
2. Map customer touchpoints and channels
It isn’t enough to provide a great customer experience when someone is buying from you.
These days, prospects expect every interaction they have with your brand to be first-class.
Therefore, the next stage in customer journey mapping is identifying all the different touchpoints customers have with your business.
You should also ensure you understand which channels are used at each stage of the customer journey.
The channels you use to engage with prospective customers could include:
Online channels
- Your website
- Social media
- Content marketing, such as blog posts, YouTube videos, and podcasts
- Paid ads
- Google search
- Review sites
- Email marketing
Offline channels
- Adverts – Billboards, TV, and radio
- In-store
- Direct mail
- Events
For example, social media is likely used at the awareness stage, while email will typically be more common at the consideration or decision stages.
The better you understand where each channel is used in the customer journey, the more effectively you can optimise it to reduce friction for your potential buyer.
3. Look for hurdles and opportunities
Now that you’ve mapped out the stages of the journey and how you communicate with your customers, you need to identify any areas where you fall short of expectations.
If there are key points in your customer journey where prospects are dropping off, you need to address them immediately and make changes to add value.
As you examine your customer journey, here are some questions you should consider asking based on common frustrations your customers may experience:
- Does my website take a long time to load?
- How long does my team take to respond to customer questions?
- How quickly do I send proposals?
- Is my onboarding process clear?
- Am I managing expectations in terms of the deliverables of my offer?
- Do I offer any incentives to encourage repeat purchases?
Here are a few examples of changes you can make to improve customer experience.
Customer experience problem and solution: Example 1
Problem: Website conversions are low.
Solution: Use a heatmap tool like Hotjar to collect data on how people interact with your website. From here, you can optimise your website by making content changes and updating CTAs.
Customer experience problem and solution: Example 2
Problem: You have an FAQ document, but prospective customers aren’t engaging with it.
Solution: Make your FAQs more engaging! If a document version isn’t working, could you record a video answering common questions instead?
Customer experience problem and solution: Example 3
Problem: Customers expect immediate value, but you run a solo business so there can be a delay in response time.
Solution: Set up a Scorecard! Create a quiz around one of the core problems that your target customers face. Once they have submitted their answers, they will receive an immediate report that breaks down their performance and suggests areas for improvement.
4. Create a customer journey map visual
Finally, armed with all your new knowledge, create a visual of your customer journey map.
A visual representation of your customer journey helps you see it from a different perspective, as it tells the story of your customer’s experience from beginning to end.
Make sure this map represents every key stage of the journey, including all touchpoints and interactions. Keep the focus on emotion throughout this map: how do your customers feel, and how does this change as they progress through each stage?
Don’t forget to share this visual customer journey with every department in your business.
Not only can you get feedback from representatives who interact with customers in a different way than you – giving you the opportunity to further tweak your map – but this way you also get everyone on the same page, so your customer is always put first.
Creating lead magnets based on your customer journey… with examples
Now that you understand what your target audience needs at every stage of the customer journey, you can create effective lead magnets to present your product or service as the solution they have been looking for.
Here are a few examples of lead magnets you could create for the different stages of the customer journey.
Example quiz lead magnet 1
Goal: Identify pain points
Stage: Awareness
Lead Magnet: A guide to solving a common problem.
Quizzes can be used effectively to improve customer experience at this stage as they get people to think more deeply about their problems.
Here’s how a few of our ScoreApp customers are using quizzes at the awareness stage of their customer journey.
Marketing: The Sales and Marketing Excellence Scorecard
Accountants: The Tax Efficiency Calculator™
Fitness: The Body Transformation Quiz
Example quiz lead magnet 2
Goal: Add value
Stage: Consideration
Lead Magnet: A comparison chart that breaks down your offer versus others on the market.
For example – we previously wrote a blog post comparing the different quiz software available on the market.
Example quiz lead magnet 3
Goal: Engage with customers as they decide to purchase.
Stage: Decision
Lead Magnet: A personalised landing page offering a free trial or discount to encourage people to make their first purchase.
Gather customer feedback with ScoreApp for better experiences
Finally, the best way to improve your customer journey is to ask your customers what they need!
Collecting feedback is often the missing piece of the customer journey mapping puzzle – and a quiz is one of the most effective ways to do it.
Use ScoreApp to send out feedback quizzes to your existing customers to get their thoughts on where you could improve your customer experience. You can use this data to send more personalised information and lead magnets, so you are adding value and encouraging repeat purchases at every stage.
You should also send out quizzes to people who didn’t purchase. This could help to re-engage them, but can also identify unexpected gaps in your customer experience.
As much as possible, offer people an incentive for sharing their thoughts with you, such as a discount, limited-time deal, or entrance into a prize draw.
Set up your new engaging lead magnet with ScoreApp
By following these steps, you can develop a deep understanding of your customer journey, create more effective lead magnets, and ultimately improve your marketing efforts and customer experience.
Why not gain even more awareness of your customer experience with our Customer Journey Scorecard?
Not only can you gain personalised insight into where you can make improvements, but you can also see how easy it is to set up a quiz for your business.
ScoreApp has been designed to make building a quiz as easy as possible. Our AI builder gets your quiz set up in minutes! We also have a variety of free ready-to-go templates that can be customised with your brand fonts, colours, logo, and more.
Discover an easier way to create lead magnets and collect customer feedback. Try ScoreApp for FREE today!
