A customer journey map is a powerful tool in marketing and advertising. It’s not only useful for understanding the people who use your product or service, but also for inspiring new ideas that will grow your business. If you don’t have one already, you should start creating one today.
What is a customer journey map?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the steps a customer takes before, during, and after interacting with a brand. It’s an essential tool for marketers and advertisers because it helps them to identify opportunities for growth by showing areas where their product or service can be improved.
Customer journey maps are also helpful in getting customers to make purchases from your business, as well as keeping them loyal once they have made them. They help to identify what kind of content you should create or which platforms you should use to reach out to your target audience based on their needs at different stages in the buying process.
Goal-based journeys
A goal-based journey is the most powerful type of customer journey. This is because it breaks down an overarching goal, such as “purchase a new car,” into specific steps consumers must take to reach that goal. In other words, a series of smaller tasks that help people achieve a larger one.
For example, let’s say that a customer wants to pay off $10K in debt by 2025. The first step on this journey would be saving $5K in six months and then another $5K in another six months (essentially breaking down their overall target). This helps customers understand what they need to do next for them to meet their larger objective — like setting up automatic transfers from their checking account each month so they can save consistently over time without having to worry about missing any payments or forgetting when they last made one.
Journey maps are a source of inspiration
Journey maps are meant to be used as a tool for you to learn, understand and gain insights into your customers’ perspectives. You can use these insights as inspiration for new ideas, concepts, or products that will help improve your brand.
A journey map can help you understand how customers perceive your brand and how they feel about it while they’re interacting with it. It also gives an insight into how well various touch points work together when it comes to achieving the desired result of meeting customer expectations and will help you work towards the goal of making them loyal users of your product or service.
Journey maps are a team effort
It’s not just the marketing department that needs to be involved in the process. And it’s not just your customers who will use the journey map to understand what you’re doing and how they can get involved with your company. You also need everyone else on your team—from sales to customer care and support, to operations—to be able to communicate with each other about their role in bringing together every touch point along your customer’s journey.
The best way for teams across an organization to use a single document like a journey map is through collaboration software like Google Docs or Microsoft SharePoint Online, which comes with Office 365. This way anyone can add comments without having access to only certain documents on certain platforms. This also allows for easy tracking of changes as well as keeping everyone informed about what happens next during the lifecycle of one or more campaigns at all times.
The customer journey is ongoing
While a customer journey map is a great way to visualize your customer’s experiences, it’s important to remember that journeys are not linear and they’re not static. Your customers’ needs change over time, and their journeys will change as well. Your job becomes one of identifying where people are in the journey at any given time—and making sure you’re meeting them there with messaging that resonates with them.
Conclusion
A customer journey map is a powerful tool that can be used by marketers to guide their decisions. The goal-based model provides a framework for thinking about your audiences and how they engage with your brand or product. It’s also an opportunity to align with your company’s vision by providing insight into the experiences you want them to have along the way.