However, the marketer has little time to get to him with a sponsored message that fulfills its purpose – when we talk about online shopping, Internet users scan websites in less than 2 seconds and if they receive a personalised message at that time, 49% of them will purchase (Segment, 2017). Therefore, in order to create an ad-friendly lead, more and more marketing professionals decide to create Customer Journey Map. What is a purchase map and how to make it?
What is Customer Journey Map?
Customer Journey Map is the simplest way to say the purchase map, and if it still sounds enigmatic to you, imagine the way you are presenting in graphic form, which the customer is staying to buy your product or service. We're talking about portraying his experience from the first contact with the brand to the conversion. Thanks to it, you will learn the needs and objectives of the customer and evaluate his experience with your company at each purchase stage. This gives a concrete picture of the audience and the moments at which they should get in touch with your advertising. With Customer Journey Map showing you, where this moment is exactly located.
Quick reminder of the sales funnel
The purchase map should be readable, so it is best done in a format that can be printed on the A4 card. It should be intuitive and relatively simple. Are there certain stages that should appear in each version? Although in this case you are limited only by your imagination, it is best to eat the same phases you know from the sales funnel.
How to prepare Customer Journey Map? Step by step instruction
Before we move on to building the purchasing map, let's figure out a few things. If you want your company's marketing activities to be effective, Customer Journey Map will not be the same for all your customers, so you need to know your target group. You can get data about it from:
- Google Analytics,
- your company's CRM,
- self-executed research (interviews with customers, employees).
Customer Journey Map step by step:
1. Create Marketing Persons
Suppose you run a chocolate shop with unusual shapes. While millennials will find them easily online, the grandmother, who would potentially be interested in e.g. products in the shape of Polish dumplings (e.g. chocolates with cheesecake fillings), will not reach them via the Internet. However, if she had found their advertising in "Teleweek", she would have ordered them.
That's why as much as you make a person, so much as you should also make purchase maps. Their paths will penetrate, and they may be joined together.
What are people? These are user archetypes, which are the representatives of your target group.
We mentioned above the sources of information about the target group, it's time to use them to create a person.
2. Discover touchpoints
What are touchpoints? These are nothing but points of contact with the brand, that is, situations where a potential customer interacts with your company. She can see your advertisement, logo, product in magazine or newspaper, hear about it, visit her page or Facebook page. Touchpoints are also advertised on the radio, Google, Facebook, mailing or direct contact with store service or company employee.
3. What is the customer's experience with your brand?
There is a reason about Customer Journey Map that it is said that it is an entry into the customer's shoes and a journey through them leading to buying your product or using your company's services. At this stage, you need to look at the customer's experience through his eyes. Is he satisfied with the service? Are the messages clear to him? Did he have a problem ordering the goods?
4. Draw Lessons
At this stage, you realize if there is anything you can improve in your company's operation and its communication with the recipients.
Customer Journey Map – example
There comes a moment to confront theory with practice. Let's start with the persona. Since we've already called into an online store with chocolates in unusual shapes, let's stay with him for a while. After examining data from Google Analytics and an interview with employees, we know that the widest group of people using it are women aged 25-45 who shop in the evenings, and among their interests are culinary topics. This information combined with the people working in this store allows you to create a person:
Have you met Joanna yet? Great. Now get in her shoes and see how she got chocolate dumplings before Christmas, thinking she'd present them to her younger sister as a gift supplement. The story of Asi, however, does not end with happy endings, though also and not with disaster.
Joanna is the kind of guy who likes to sit on Instagram after a day's work and generally rock the Internet. He often shops, but never “in blind”. She reads reviews and reviews of products that interest her. It also comes from the assumption that it is worth telling others what he thinks about the company, hence on the network numerous product assessments he leaves.
When he sees pictures of chocolate dumplings on Instagram, he concludes that he must necessarily present them to his younger sister. He orders a package and sends a question as to whether it will be delivered before Christmas, because he orders it with gifts in mind. Although she received an e-mail saying that the traffic in the store was very large, the information that the package would be broadcast the next day calmed her very much. Her well-being was only shaken when she was on her way to her hometown the day before Christmas Eve, and there was no trace of her package. Just like after the e-mail with an explanation of what happened.
As you can imagine, Joanna is not satisfied with the services provided by X. Fortunately, the company is up to the challenge. After it turns out that the package was sent late, Joanna gets another shipment from the company – full of sweets to make up for her negative experience with the brand. It also leaves a handwritten apology card. Joanna gives her sister a late present, but she is not negative about company X because she feels that despite a terrible delay, the brand has taken care of her as a customer.
Customer Journey Map is a great tool to understand what the customer's purchase process looks like and to know the target group accurately. Without this knowledge, composing marketing activities is like traveling around the world of marketing with the lights off. The purchase map gives a perfect picture of where advertising should be placed (see contact points).
