How to Create a Customer Journey Map: The Simple Guide

For some companies, the customer journey seems simple on the surface. Customers recognise a need for a product, find the solution they want and make a purchase. Easy enough. 

Unfortunately, the reality is that a customer’s journey, from awareness, through to purchase, and even after conversion, can be a lot more complicated than it seems. Various factors influence how your target audience moves through the sales funnel, and make decisions. 

Consider the fact that around 70% of online shoppers add products to their cart and then walk away without buying anything. That alone should tell you it’s not always easy to understand what goes through your customer’s mind, and what “guarantees” a conversion. 

While it’s almost impossible to predict every aspect of a customer’s experience with your brand, customer journey mapping can give you a deeper insight, more information to work with, and more guidance when creating powerful customer experiences. 

What is a Customer Journey Map?

Basically, the map of your customer journey is a visual representation of the experience a customer has with your brand. They can come in many forms, and you can even create maps for different segments of your audience. These tools provide insights into the needs and expectations of your customers at every stage of their relationship with your brand, usually covering:

• Awareness: When customers realise they have a problem or pain point they need to solve and begin researching solutions. 
• Consideration: When customers recognise the need for a product or service and start comparing the solutions offered by brands. 
• Decision: Your customers choose a solution and they’re ready to make a purchase, often leading to an interaction with your sales team.
• Retention: Customers have made a purchase, and your customer success team works with them to ensure they stay with your brand.
• Advocacy: When you activate your loyal customers, and encourage them to refer new buyers and opportunities to your business. 

While the stages of a customer journey seem straightforward, how you help your employees navigate these steps has a huge impact on your company’s success. After all, 80% of customers consider the experience they get with a brand to be as important as its products.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

The process of mapping a customer journey involves significant research and the collection of data. There are tools that can make this experience a little simpler. For instance, you can download and use “journey map” templates from various websites online. 

Even with templates to guide you, however, you’ll need to follow a few steps to ensure success. 

Step 1: Set Goals

First, define the “objectives” for your customer journey map. In other words, what do you want to accomplish with this new document? Do you want to provide guidance to your sales, marketing, and customer success teams, to make them more productive?

Are you looking for opportunities to pinpoint “drop-off” points in the customer journey, so you can access more opportunities? Consider the metrics you’ll track to determine whether your map is accurate and effective. 

Think about who specifically this map will be for too. Which segment of your target audience are you focusing on?

Step 2: Profile Personas

Next, you need to gather as much information about your audience, their pain points, preferences, and behaviours as possible. There are plenty of ways to collect this data, from pulling reports from your website and social media tools to speaking to your sales and customer service teams directly. 

You can also consider sending surveys and questionnaires to your existing customers, to find out how they learned about your brand, what attracted them to your products, and why they made a purchase.

The right personas should give you a step-by-step overview of each of the most meaningful “points” in your customer’s experience with your company.

Step 3: List Essential Touchpoints

Now, it’s time to start looking at where and how customers interact with your brand throughout their journey. Based on your research, you should have a decent idea of where customers learn about your company (search engines, social media, referrals, etc). 

You should also be able to identify the touchpoints that drive customers through the purchasing funnel, such as your website, landing pages, and discussions with salespeople. 

Don’t forget to consider touchpoints that exist outside of your “owned” assets. For instance, customers might learn about you from third-party review sites, or compare your products with competitors by reading articles on thought leader blogs.

Step 4: Align Actions to Touchpoints, Emotions, and Obstacles

When creating your journey map, it’s important to think about the “state” of your customer as they interact with each touchpoint. Consider:

• Actions: What do customers do at certain points of their journey, when interacting with touchpoints? Are they using your blog posts and videos to evaluate your product, or compare it to competing solutions? Are they visiting your website to find out how to contact your team, or to make a direct purchase?
• Emotions and motivations: How will each touchpoint influence your customer emotionally? Will their interactions with you on social media make them more likely to trust your company? Do your landing pages create feelings of demand and urgency?‍
• Obstacles and pain points: What might stop your customer from taking the next step in their journey? Do they often have questions your website doesn’t answer? Could they struggle to choose the right product for their specific needs?

Step 5: Define Ways to Optimise the Journey Map

Once you have a clear view of your customer’s journey, the next stage is to figure out how you can improve it. Taking the customer journey yourself can help with this, as it offers an insight into the bottlenecks and issues your customers might face when interacting with your brand.

You might discover that after reading blogs from your business, your customers want to reach out to your sales team, but don’t know how to get in touch. Or you might find that they want more ways to communicate with your brand than just phone calls or emails. 

Based on your discoveries, determine the resources you’ll need to make necessary changes. Will you need to invest in new customer service tools? Do you need to create new marketing assets? Are you going to have to invest more time into sales enablement?

Step 6: Make Changes and Review the Results

With all of the information you’ve gathered, you can start making changes to your resources to support and empower customers throughout their purchasing journey. It’s a good idea to make changes slowly, so you can monitor the results of each strategy. 

Pay close attention to your metrics as you implement each new campaign. For instance, do your engagement rates go up when you add new marketing assets to your mix? Do you retain more customers after building a loyalty program?

Regularly review the map you’ve created, and pay attention to the feedback your customers give. Remember, the customer journey can and often will evolve with time.

Mapping Your Customer Journey

While it’s difficult to predict every step your customer will take when interacting with your brand, or purchasing your products, journey mapping can give you useful insights. It’s an opportunity to learn more about the experiences your customers have with your brand, and what exactly turns everyday people into loyal, dedicated customers. 

With your customer journey map, you can ensure you’re prepared to delight, engage, and impress your customers at every stage of the purchasing funnel.