How To Trigger Revenue With Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping.

You will agree that your business still struggles with optimum sales because of a broad disconnect with customers. I have decided to proffer a suitable solution to that problem using this write-up. If you approve of my hypothesis that your business has not reached its entire potential customers’ spectrum, you just find a solution to your business problem right here, and right now. 

The knowledge you will be parting with here is all you need to know and nothing more. Super cool 🆒. It's not just enough to have your business listed on Google Maps or elsewhere online, you need to know and do more than that. I am going to show you how the efficient use of journey mapping perfectly connects your niche with the addressable market. 

By the time you are done interacting with and applying the strategies penned down in this article, your business will be completely renewed because I will walk you through the important moments of your value chain. You will be amazed by those touchpoints you never gave meaningful attention. Those are your strong selling points that work magically. They are sensitive segments that prioritize the most important moments of your offer. 

Now let’s start. Like I used to advise, don’t be in a hurry. You have to read every line and in between the lines to have a great benefit of what I want to pass across to you here. The process of having eventual sales is not straightforward. It’s sig-zag in real life though depending on the complexity of your product/service plus the lifestyle of your customers. 

A real estate customer's journey stages are more complex compared to a grocery product. Converting a prospect to a loyal customer takes lots of effort and strategy, my plead is that you optimize your map for what interests customers not what you feel. It’s a journey with multiple distractions here and there that can frustrate your entire energies but you don’t have to give up. Customer's behaviour will apparently differ from yours.

At every point of intersection between prospects and your venture touchpoints, potential sales are feasible and they need to be adequately optimized. Now before we continue, let me describe to you what customer journey mapping will do for you. It will open your eyes to the mid-journey points of your business.

You can equally see them as the stop-over points that are peculiar to your products/services. Those are your touchpoints but you will get to know more as we continue. Just as I told you earlier, they are the phases in your value chain that you need to enhance otherwise the output of your sales funnel will produce little or zero sales. 

I want to make it very simple for you to understand what touchpoints are all about. So I will ask you some practical questions to make sure you perfectly comprehend it. You will only have to respond with a YES to confirm it's a touchpoint or a NO answer to indicate otherwise and that’s all. Trust me after these few exercises, you will confidently know what touchpoints are all about.  

Just pick a pen and a piece of paper to write down your responses so that you can grade yourself once you are done. It’s going to be fun🙋 so I don’t expect you to sweat at all. Keep calm and here we go…

News about your product quality

When someone is talking about your brand

When someone is looking for a solution to a problem addressed by your product/service

When someone is trying to establish a product comparison before drawing a conclusion

When someone is seeking knowledge about integrity in your sector

Your after-sales service events

Benefits of your product/service

If you responded YES all through, kudos to your great insight. No worries😟 if you still have some confusion. That’s why you are here to learn it correctly. One fact I need you to know is that your customer journey starts from that particular point where the prospect first interacted with your brand. It can happen online or offline, right inside your bricks and mortar shop is a possibility.

Customer journey mapping is basically creating or crafting a map of your entire niche touchpoints; must be back-to-back mind you. It will significantly help you understand how your brand interacts with customers at each touchpoint by satisfying their needs/aspirations and vice versa. 

If you really want your sales funnel to successfully hold prospects through to the end where sales ultimately happen, this is the important thing you must do right now. A customer journey map avails you the opportunity to look deeply into that moment a prospect first intersects with your product, the perception about it, purchase, deployment for the intended purpose, post-purchase experiences, testimonies, and personal resolutions are all that can either make or mar your ability to bond with that first timer customer. 

If you are not serving customers, you aren’t in a sustainable business. You need to thoroughly sketch your customer journey map so that you can experience a rising profit curve. When you are deeply committed to your customers, you can’t be ignored. Let me tell you something peculiar right now. I believe you have grasped deep insights from what I have said so far, it will be nice I share this crucial moment with you again. 

Please take everything seriously and you will be amazed at the transformation your business is experiencing right now by virtue of the ideas you are gathering. Your ability to craft a fruitful journey map means you truly understand how your prospects/customers are more likely to interact and engage with your brand. To tell you plainly, it is the only proof that you have a superior knowledge of how your products/services perfectly fit into the lives of your addressable market. 

You have a lot to benefit once you achieve this milestone in your business. It will help you to plan and do virtually everything optimally. Your ads strategy will be effective because you understand the specific pain points of your target market. Can I tell you something again? The mapping strategy will help you enjoy more organic patronage and same time you will turn in huge savings in your ad cost plus fewer distractions about competitors' actions. 

Knowledge of what is required at each touchpoint will help you to drop the right message to the right people at the right time. Friend, you will not forgive me if I fail to tell you this evergreen truth. What is it you may ask? Every marketing effort must have a specific objective it is intended to achieve. I always recommend a singular goal per action so that you don’t get the customer confused and at the same time, your metrics will not become complicated or messed up. 

Doing journey mapping of your customers is not in any way different from crafting a marketing goal, each of your touchpoints must support your overall marketing goal. Would I be right to assume that you are confused about the first point in journey mapping? It is the point at which prospects are more likely to first encounter your brand. Hope that's is clear to you? Nice to hear your YEP response.

It may happen online or offline depending on where you are operating and your level of optimization right now. Conventionally, it should flow through awareness, consideration, buying decisions, and loyalty to the brand evangelist/advocacy phase. It is zig-zag in real life. How can you position your brand to meet the prospect's needs at each of these critical stages? Think and write down yours now. They are all avenues to drive prospects to your sales funnel and eventually make the sales happen. Have you done yours? 

Great if you have made some attempts. Get this, it’s not done based on your mere opinion. You get to do deep research about those magical moments where your niche should convert. You are in full control of providing remarkable experiences for your customers by focusing on their perceived and latent needs. 

Ideally, your buyer persona should help you overcome whatever glitches may arrive during the mapping exercise. I must confess that customer journey mapping is not an isolated tool, I recommend you use it in conjunction with other marketing strategies, especially in text content. Now let me tell you what you need to focus on at each of the traditional touchpoints I mentioned moments ago.

Awareness - Your customer is faced with a problem here and is completely confused about the way out or what to do. A solution is needed right now by this stranger. Do you know what I expect you to do at this phase? You should have content that clearly identifies the problem being encountered by this buyer. 

The prospect should feel at home after seeing how your brand clearly addresses the challenge in question. Remember the stranger is open to many solutions from your competitors at this level. Several of them are showcasing their capacity and competency to proffer solutions to the pain point.

Consideration - This is the next phase in a typical customer journey. At this phase, the visitor is weighing the different options available at the awareness stage. The prospect is now taking a cursory look at the credibility of each brand, and what people are saying in the review comments about the product or the brand itself. Prices are also being considered at this stage because everything matters to the prospect. 

The client is saying I can’t pay a higher price for the same value that is available elsewhere at a reduced value. Wait a minute, is it now very clear to you what you must do at this phase of the customer journey? How do the variables I used in these few lines of explanation resonate with your business? These are the things you need to optimize for right now once you get to this domain of the customer stage. 

What more? Proof your integrity, display your feedback and user-generated content especially. You know the funniest thing? The prospect is not pretty ready to buy at this moment but just scanning around for the best of the best or the best of the worst. That shouldn’t discourage you, just be sure you have done the needful here.

Decision - Amazing! That guy is ready to buy now. You know what? The only reason that the guest can become yours sincerely depends on all you did at the consideration state that I described lately. Can you imagine the interplays of the phases? Wonderful indeed!

Loyalty - Once the guest has made the first purchase from you, you should target how to create an eternal bond. Those things you can do to keep the relationship perpetually should readily come to your mind here. You should think about the discount now. Upselling and cross-selling strategies should not be left out.

Brand Evangelist/Advocacy- You need to nourish your loyal customers to the extent you start to get referrals through them. In a formal or informal way, they must be bold enough to recommend your products/services to their circle of friends and well-wishers.

I want to tell you one other aspect of customer journey mapping that is less considered. That’s empathy! So do this by assuming that you are a customer of that business you are doing. List out the attributes you want to see in the product/service that can entice you to go for it amongst several alternatives. Have you done that? Now reverse your position to ownership status again. Can you see those things you have listed about the niche? If not, optimize for those touchpoints instantly. 

When you put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customers, you should truly feel their pains and optimize efficiently. Let me also add this timeless nugget, your customers' online experience should be the same as the offline experience otherwise your brand promise will be in doubt and your mappings will be in disarray. 

How will you feel if your ads promise a customer delivery of paid tangible items within an hour of payment confirmation but on a visit to your brick-and-mortar shop, delivery is not done even after four hours of payment confirmation. Again, imagine a customer has seen your core statement with a line professing humility to customers yet you have an abusive customer services team? Too bad! These are all disjointed touchpoints you need to fix. 

Are you a clothing designer? How can you help your customers through the right path that helps them make the best design choice? I guess I haven’t told you this. Customer journey mapping isn’t a one-off exercise, it’s a continuous task. Keep reviewing and keep improving. We live in a dynamic and ever-evolving world. Let me begin to round off but I need to leave you with the following tips.

How to Enhance The Success Of Your Customer Journey Mapping

Define your business goal

List your customers' goal

What are your customers’ present journey to conversion?

Place yourself in the customer quadrant and make an imaginary purchase

What feedback will you give as a customer based on your experience of the product with you now? 

What are the feedbacks from outside customers?

Get the same product from a competitor and document your experience

What gaps can you identify?

What have you learned and unlearned by your visit to a competitor’s store?

I hope you will make the best use of all you have learnt here today. 

Congratulations on making it to the end ㈷.