Do you know how most of your customers actually came to be your customers? Did they find you on Google Maps, see your Facebook ad, or did a business peer or friend refer them? If you don’t know how your customers are finding you (or why they aren’t!), learning their journeys can help you discover how to attract, convert and nurture your customers.
Customer journey mapping is an effective process that my digital agency, StringCan Interactive, implements for various businesses. We use this tactic to reveal how your customers are discovering your company and what they do after finding you. This can expose several gaps in your marketing that are preventing consumers from working with you, such as inactive accounts or links.
Listed below are the five most common business gaps we discover during the steps of completing the customer journey mapping process:
Gaps Between Personas
Sometimes businesses forget that not everyone in their target audience is the same; many of their prospective customers research, react, and interact differently.
That’s why before we begin the customer journey map process, we identify the company’s personas (fictional representations of your target market). This way, as you build your customer journey maps, you can discover whether or not each of your personas has a journey that meets their unique needs. You’d be surprised how often customer journey maps expose that many businesses are accidentally avoiding large segments of their target audience!
Gaps Between Identities
I think we’ve all experienced those businesses that are clearly having an identity crisis. It happens when you find a company’s Facebook page, and they seem like such a laidback and fun company! Then you visit their website, and all of a sudden they become very serious and dull.
You start to wonder, “Is this the same company I found on Facebook?”. During our customer journey map activity, we often discover these inconsistent identities and find ways to align them. This way, your brand personality and company culture always remain true and evident–and online users won’t be thrown off.
Gaps Between Devices
A few times now, our customer journey map activity helped us discover that a certain business website looks great on a PC, but the website is unappealing and difficult to navigate on a mobile device.
Of course your PC performance is important, but with mobile usage growing more than ever, it’s essential that your company is easily accessible on smartphones too. This is also true for laptops, Kindles, television, etc. If you want to reach different types of consumers, your company must perform well on various devices. Thankfully, customer journey mapping can reveal how you’re performing on each one.
Gaps in Digital Marketing Efforts
More than anything, our customer journey mapping process tends to reveal huge missed opportunities in digital marketing. Ignoring or not pursuing these opportunities could mean that few online users are discovering you. If people can’t discover you, they can’t purchase your products and/or services!
The most common digital marketing gaps we find are when companies aren’t discoverable on search engines for the actual keywords their audience is searching on vs. the keyword phrases you think your audience is searching on, or when they have no presence whatsoever on social media platforms. Recognizing these pitfalls can help reveal areas of improvement.
Gaps Between Online Platforms
If your company is already prominent on a social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter, that’s great! But what matters even more is being prominent on the right online platforms. Customer journey maps expose which channels your prospective customers are using to look for you, which reveals which ones you should be taking advantage of.
These maps can also reveal when your online platforms aren’t performing well and when they aren’t leading online users to your website. Whether your customer journey map shows that you aren’t utilizing the right websites or you’re using the right ones ineffectively, discovering this problem can help you find a solution.
If your business is trying to attract more customers, you need to experience your marketing efforts from your target audience’s perspective. By doing so, you’ll finally see what gaps are preventing consumers from connecting with you! When you eliminate these gaps, your consumers will have a more seamless and successful experience with your company.
We recently completed customer journey mapping with one of our clients Endless Entertainment and they provided some great insights into the value of following this strategic process.
If you have any questions, please comment below. If you want help to create your buyer personas, customer journey mapping or to discover your business gaps, connect with me or StringCan Interactive today!
