Map Your Customer Journey to Increase Lead Conversion

Increasing the number of conversions requires increasing the quality of interactions between the customers and the business. This is a simple law that works perfectly in modern online business. To ensure the law is followed, businesses try their best to provide a cohesive customer journey.

This helps marketers to understand how a company interacts with its customers. Simply explained, the customer journey documents customers’ touch points and documents how a company measures the effectiveness of each touch point.

By having a customer journey map, a marketer can optimize the interaction, eliminate issues that decrease customer satisfaction and engagement, and use more opportunities to sell. As a result, the rate of lead conversion and the profits can increase.

Also, it’s called a journey for a reason. A one-time transaction with a customer is good, but it should involve much more than exchanging money for a product!

How to Map a Customer Journey

First and foremost, every customer journey is unique because it varies on management style, customer base, and industry in which the business operates. However, all of them have the same purpose: to visualize how a customer interacts with a company.

Second, an effective customer journey map should include both positive and negative emotions. You can’t expect to meet someone’s needs fully if you don’t conform to their expectations. To reveal customers’ emotions, one could use both qualitative and quantitative research.

Third, you need to anticipate change and consider the map as a living document that will evolve at some point in the future. The needs and problems of customers change and require customized solutions, so you need to anticipate that.

There are four essential elements of a customer journey map: Discovery, Activation, Transaction, and Advocacy.

Discovery

The main purpose of this element is to demonstrate how your target audience finds your business (online or offline). Most software discoveries and research occur on the web, so you can use Google data and marketing analytics to produce measurable results.

For example, a Nielsen Global Survey found that recommendations from people we know were the most credible form of advertising (83 percent), followed by online reviews with 66 percent. As for brand-managed forms, the website was the leading format with 70 percent.

Activation

Now that your business is discovered by potential customers, you must consider how you want them to interact with it. This consideration should include the needs of the customers as well.

For example, electing a call center as the default method of communicating with the customers might not be the best option, since it wouldn’t deliver a great service experience. To define which option suits the needs of the customers the most, you have to study them.

For example, in an online survey conducted by MarketingSherpa, emails were indicated as the preferred method to receive updates and promotions from companies.

Transaction

This element is all about understanding the factors that lead to a sale. What must your target audience see and know to be persuaded to click on “buy”? What factors drive their decision to make a purchase?

If your target audience does not buy from you after your marketing message is delivered, maybe they don’t understand the benefits of your product or feel it has perceived value. Whatever the reason, it is critical to find out and work to address the issue.

Advocacy

It’s estimated that it’s 6 times more expensive to win a new customer than to retain an existing one. You would have to start over to win the trust of a new customer, so why not focus on keeping the ones who have made a purchase happy?

The existing customers need to be valued and appreciated to become brand ambassadors and recommend your products to their friends and family, and we know first-hand how important personal recommendations are for raising awareness about the Maximizer brand.

Final Thoughts

Try to map the customer journey from their point of view and not an internal business one. Given that you need to capture their experiences and goals, your considerations should not be in focus. Also, use the freshest research that defines the preferences, issues, and needs of your target audience.

As a result, you’ll have a legitimate strategy to increase lead conversion as well as profits.