<span style="font-weight: 400;">A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps customers go through when considering, making, and utilising a purchase. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s a valuable marketing tool because it defines the path to purchase from the perspective of the customer—not the company. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Because journey maps are developed from the customer’s perspective, they can be used to form a plan for engaging prospects and customers, earning their attention and trust, in order to guide prospects deeper into the sales funnel and improve customer retention.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Agencies can use customer journey maps to create a timeline of the purchasing lifecycle, for both their own business as well as client businesses, and identify the goals customers have at each stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Knowing where customers are in the journey and what goals they have at each stage allows you to deliver the right information, on the right channel, at the right time.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The end result: increased engagement, revenue, and brand loyalty.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">Customer Journey Mapping Examples</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">To better understand what a customer journey map is, it’s helpful to look at some examples:</span>

<img class="" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Basic_Customer_Journey_Maping_Example.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="233" />

<small><span style="font-weight: 400;">Source: </span><a href="http://www.business2community.com/strategy/buyer-journey-content-marketing-versus-sales-enablement-01164181#YpIy6SojuKX83HIy.97"><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Business 2 Community</span></i></a></small>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">A basic customer journey map shows the major stages prospects move through before making a purchase. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The steps in the buying journey will vary based on product, selling model, and industry.</span>

<img class="" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/IntermediateCustomer_Journey_Maping_Example.png" alt="" width="700" height="454" />
<small>Source: <a href="https://accent-technologies.com/blog/resource-lib/mapping-content-buyers-journey/">Accent</a></small>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">A more advanced customer journey map might detail the stages in the journey, along with the types of content that should be delivered to prospects at different stages.</span>

<img class="" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Advanced_Customer_Journey_Maping_Example.png" alt="" width="700" height="471" />

<small><span style="font-weight: 400;">Source:</span><a href="https://go.forrester.com/blogs/15-05-25-b2b_buyer_journey_mapping_basics/"> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Forrester</span></i></a></small>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">An advanced journey map can be developed over time to include many additional details that can be helpful for companies and marketers. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It may contain details on key decision-makers, customer needs and goals, influencers, appropriate content types, and appropriate channels for each stage. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It may also extend beyond the purchase to map the entire customer lifecycle.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">How to Create a Customer Journey Map in 6 Steps</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">A customer journey map can be an extremely useful tool for hitting, or exceeding, your digital marketing goals. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Map out the stages of the journey for different buyer personas to engage prospects and customers with more targeted and personalised communications.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Follow these six steps to develop a customer journey map. </span>

&nbsp;
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">Step 1: Conduct Research</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The starting point for creating a customer journey map is collecting as much information as possible about your prospects and customers. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">There are many ways to do this:</span>
<ul>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Interview existing customers.</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Existing customers are a wonderful source of information. Gather their input by </span><a href="https://growandconvert.com/marketing/conducting-user-research/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">conducting user research</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">—send surveys, schedule interviews, and organise discussion panels.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Interview sales and customer service staff.</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> You also need to gather information about prospects who didn’t convert, and former customers who left. Salespeople are great sources of information on why some people don’t become customers, and customer service reps can provide common reasons why customers fail to renew.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>See what your competitors are doing.</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Review the websites of your biggest competitors. Take note of how information is organized on the site, and look at what CTAs are used on different pages. This can provide insight into competitor maps.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Collect user behavior data.</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> If you have an existing website, you can use an analytics program like </span><a href="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ruler Analytics</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to create a map of how users interact with your website and its content across multiple sessions.</span></li>
</ul>
<img class="" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ruler_Analytics_Visitor_Journeys.jpg" alt="" width="701" height="434" />

<span style="font-weight: 400;">
Once you’ve collected as much research as possible, review the information to find themes. The behaviors, concerns, goals, and actions that are repeated across multiple sources will become the stages of your customer journey.</span>

&nbsp;
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">Step 2: Define Your Customer Journey Stages</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">As you’ve taken time to conduct research, you should have a good idea of the steps your prospects and customers go through when considering, making, and utilising a purchase.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The most important thing at this stage is avoiding making things overly complicated. Because you have a lot of data, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the details that you end up creating complex flow charts with dozens of steps and points of diversion.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Keep it simple. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Remember that you’re not trying to account for the detailed experiences of every single customer over every single touch point. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You’re simply creating a high-level version of the journey based on the majority of the research you collected.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Start with a basic set of stages that you know prospects and customers go through. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Here’s an example: </span>
<ul>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Awareness</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The prospect becomes aware of a problem or need.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Exploration</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The prospect is actively researching solutions.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Comparison</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The prospect is researching vendors.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Purchase</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The prospect decides to make a purchase.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Validation</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The customer uses the purchase to solve the original problem.</span></li>
 	<li style="font-weight: 400;"><b>Renewal</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> – The customer decides whether or not to renew.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Go through your research, sort customer goals and behaviors into these stages. When you’re finished, you may have additional information that doesn’t fit into any of these stages. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In that case, you may need to add a new stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, say you have a lot of research where prospects tried to solve the problem initially with a free service. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">It wasn’t until those services failed to solve the problem that customers decided to make a purchase. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In this scenario, you may want to add an experimentation stage before the purchase stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You may also find that the steps are out of order. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Say for example that most of your customers start with a free trial. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In this case, the validation stage may need to be on the timeline before the purchase stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You can also remove stages if you find they don’t apply. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If you only sell one-time purchases, you probably don’t need a renewal stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">When you’ve finished this exercise, you’ll have a complete timeline showing each of the most important steps your customers take on their journeys.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">To keep things simple, create the initial draft in a program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.</span>

<img class="" src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Customer_Journey_Stages_Excel.png" alt="" width="700" height="177" />
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">
Step 3: Adjust Stages for Different Buyer Personas</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Not every buyer will take the same journey, so you may need to go one step further and refine the stages based on specific buyer personas.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Say your company targets both SMBs and corporations. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Review those personas and your research to determine if either persona needs a distinct journey.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, your SMB persona is probably more likely to experiment with free solutions before deciding to make a purchase. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Your corporate persona probably doesn’t bother trying free services. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For the corporate persona journey, remove the experimentation stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">However, the corporation is more likely to have an implementation stage, where the SMB is more likely to self-service the purchase and its onboarding. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The corporate persona journey, then, will have an implementation stage that doesn’t appear in the SMB journey.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">List each persona above its journey on your draft, and edit the stages of the journey as necessary.</span>

<img src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Customer_Journey_Stages_and_Personas_Excel.png" alt="" />
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">
Step 4: Identify Customer Goals for Each Stage</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Now that you have timelines created for each customer journey and have identified the major stages in those timelines, it’s time to take the most crucial step: determine what goals customers are trying to achieve at each stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The research you did upfront is very helpful in this step. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Ideally, you’ll have information directly from your customers on what goals they were trying to achieve.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If your research doesn’t provide answers, you can still move forward. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Just imagine that you’re the customer in that stage, and think of exactly what you would be trying to accomplish.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You’ll come up with the right answer from the start, but if you don’t, it’s really not a big deal. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Your customer journey map should be a living document that you test, edit, and refine frequently as you gather new data. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For the initial version, use your best-educated guess, and take time to validate the information later.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Add a “customer goal” row to your draft, and add at least one goal to every stage of the journey.</span>

<img src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Customer_Journey_Map_with_Customer_Goals.png" alt="" />

&nbsp;
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">Step 5: Map Stages to Different Digital Touch Points</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">Once you know what customers are trying to achieve, you can determine what sources of information they’re likely to use to achieve those goals.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Start by seeking these answers in your research. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If that doesn’t work, educated guesses, that you’ll validate later, are just as effective in an initial customer journey map.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Add another row to your draft, this time for “digital touch points.”</span>

<img src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Customer_Journey_Map_with_Digital_Touch_Points.png" alt="" />

&nbsp;
<h4><span style="font-weight: 400;">Step 6: Map Goals and TouchPoints to Content Types</span></h4>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The final step in creating a digital customer journey map is identifying what content types are appropriate for different stages of the journey and different goals.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Use your research or make your best guess, and validate the information later. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Add a content row to your draft, and add types of content that are appropriate for each stage.</span>

<img src="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Customer_Journey_Map_with_Content_Types.png" alt="" />

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">Using the Customer Journey Mapping Process for More Effective Marketing</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">With a draft of your new customer journey map complete, you’re ready to start using the information to boost engagement with anonymous visitors, undecided prospects, and existing customers.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The information you’ve collected can be used to improve the effectiveness of many different digital marketing approaches.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">How a Journey Map Helps with Content Marketing and SEO</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">First, use tools like</span><a href="https://moz.com/explorer"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Moz Keyword Explorer</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,</span><a href="https://lsigraph.com/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">LSI Graph</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, or</span><a href="https://adwords.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Google Keyword Planner</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to build a list of search terms that are relevant to your business, products, and services.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Once you have a list, conduct a search for each keyword. Click each page-one search result, and see what type of content appears.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Click each page-one search result, and see what type of content appears.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Compare the content types that were in the search results to those that you recorded for the different stages of the customer journey. This should give you a good indication of what stage of the journey users are in when they search for those keywords.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This should give you a good indication of what stage of the journey users are in when they search for those keywords.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, if the results are all third-party comparisons, user reviews, and price comparisons, people searching for that keyword are most likely in the comparison stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The content you create for that keyword should be designed to help the user meet their goal of narrowing down her options for potential solutions.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Not only does this help you cater content to the user’s specific needs in that stage, it also provides you with clarity on potential CTAs or related information to include in the content.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">You know users in this stage are also interested in case studies, so link to relevant case studies from that content. You also know that they’re considering free options, so you may want to link to a feature comparison chart that compares your product to free services.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Finally, since you know the prospect probably isn’t yet ready to make the purchase, you can avoid wasting your CTA on demo and purchase offers. Instead, consider using a subscribe CTA to encourage users to opt-in to receiving marketing emails. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This will provide you with an opportunity to stay at the top of their mind while they’re in the process of testing free solutions.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">How a Journey Map Helps with PPC and Display Advertising</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The process described above can also be used to point PPC ads to relevant and contextual content. After conducting the research, you know where people are in their journey when searching for the terms you plan to bid on, so you can link to the types of content and promos that are most likely to meet their current goals.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">In terms of display advertising, the customer journey map becomes very helpful for</span><a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/retargeting-campaigns-beginner-guide"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">retargeting campaigns</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Setup retargeting ads to trigger when users visit specific pages of your site that indicate what stage of the journey they’re in. Then, use display ads to either re-engage those visitors or guide them further along their journey.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For example, say someone looked at your pricing page and then left the site. You can assume they’re in the comparison stage. Show them ads across other sites and social media channels that promote case studies or free trial offers.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">How a Journey Map Helps with Email Marketing</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The best approach to email marketing is to segment your audience so you can deliver personalized content. The journey map allows you to do this easily.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If you’re sending introductory-level blog post promotions to your entire email list, you’re missing an opportunity to drive prospects deeper into the sales funnel.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Instead, you should be segmenting your email list by each subscriber’s stage in the buying journey. You can identify stages by reviewing the types of content subscribers engage with. If they’re engaging with introductory blog posts, they’re probably in the awareness stage. If they’re engaging with promotional offers, they’re probably in the experimentation stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If you know what stage the user is in, you can follow up with content that’s designed to cater to that stage, as well as to guide buyers into the next stage.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Keep in mind that segmenting your subscribers into the appropriate lists and sending personalized emails to different segments is a lot of work if you’re trying to do it manually.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If this is an approach you’re interested in, you may want to look into a</span><a href="https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/best-drip-email-marketing-apps/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">drip email or marketing automation platform</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that will perform these tasks automatically.</span>

&nbsp;
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Importance of Digital Customer Journey Mapping</span></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">The spray and pray approach to digital marketing no longer works. The most successful marketers and agencies are</span><a href="https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/online-marketing/digital-marketing-in-2018/"> <span style="font-weight: 400;">those that cater to their audiences</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Take time to build a customer journey map. Abandon your business goals briefly, and learn more about the goals of the people you’re trying to engage. This is the best approach to driving true engagement—and one of the simplest ways to hit, or exceed, your marketing goals.</span>
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