What Is the Customer Journey & Why Does It Matter?

As a business owner, tracking the customer journey can help you attract customers and turn leads into sales. Customers engage in specific behaviors when engaging with business websites or apps, so organizations should rely on journey mapping to zero in consumer actions. That way, forward-thinking owners can learn vital information on how customers interact with their platforms, turning interactions from passive clicks into sales.

Ultimately, mapping the customer’s journey helps businesses analyze results and the user experience (UX) to optimize conversion rates.

What is the customer journey?

Businesses create customer journey maps to visually illustrate how customers move across their favorite company’s platforms. Maps usually include social media posts, emails, chats, and personal interactions with sales teams—all critical in building a comprehensive analysis.

Though it may take time to analyze consumers’ patterns, creating a customer journey map helps businesses determine where their strengths and weaknesses live.

What are the stages of the customer journey?

The customer journey has five stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy. The awareness and consideration stages involve gathering leads and sending information to them about products or services that fit their needs. The conversion point is where the customer makes a purchase.

At the retention stage, customers return to make another purchase. Ideally, businesses want their customers to become advocates, where they share their experiences to encourage others to make similar purchases.

How does the customer journey benefit businesses?

When businesses know their customers and move through a systematic marketing procedure, they are more likely to convert leads to sales. Companies can share special offers with their customers, especially when they know their customers’ needs and wants.

The customer journey gives businesses an accurate picture of where to focus their marketing dollars. For example, if customers are making purchases based on Facebook posts, companies should spend more time sharing offers and gathering leads through Facebook.

Businesses can also pause marketing campaigns from contact points that aren’t attracting customers. Overall, the customer journey helps companies spend their money wisely and eliminate time-and-money-wasting campaigns that don’t convert.

How do businesses build their customer journey maps?

When businesses build journey maps, they should use the lens of the customer. By investing in website analytics, you gain valuable information about where consumers spend their time on your site. The numbers expose the truth about your website, making it easy to see what pages are high-traffic areas and which aspects get ignored.

Along with gathering analytics, businesses should also collect information from customers. Anecdotal research allows marketing teams to gain insight into consumer thoughts. Companies can collect this data from social media and surveys before, during, and after purchases.

Why should my business build a customer journey map?

Businesses should create customer journey maps to optimize their marketing funnels and help companies learn how to onboard customers. Consumers can also share their experiences, allowing businesses to develop a logical journey that fits their customer profile.

Wrap up

The customer journey is an invaluable aspect of competitive marketing because it helps businesses learn about their ideal customer and how they move through the funnel. Ultimately, companies learn about internal weaknesses, enabling them to make changes that benefit the bottom line.

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