When a friend asked told me she was setting up a new business, I knew she was about to spend money on all the things she thought she had to do to get it to market. She spoke about an expensive website she wanted, Facebook ads she’d seen, an exhibition she was about to sign up for. I asked her two things:
When she didn’t answer, we set to work. I wanted to show her how mapping out her customer journey and getting it right, would save her ££££ and not be a time drainer when it comes to marketing. First of all, I gave her an overview of the customer journey and the importance of doing this bit first. You can find this in Why walking in your customers’ shoes is the first place to start in marketing.
We then took one of her services and talked through a typical journey – from how they first noticed her to how they signed up and went on to refer. We used cards to represent the six stages of the customer journey. Also, post it notes to show what she was doing now and what she could improve on.
You can do this too. Even better if you have a team, you can get them involved too – I guarantee, based on past experience, the ideas will flow!
Six stages of the customer journey
Lay cards or paper on a desk in horizontal rows with titles as follows on top.
Awareness – be in the right place at the right time for when they need your product or service.
Consideration – impress and have evidence in place to show them you can fix their problem.
Trial – a free offer or smaller paid product so they can sample what you do (a blog or workshop).
Purchase – invite them in with a warm welcome to help them realise they made the right decision
Retention – give them such a good customer experience they won’t want to leave.
Advocacy – find ways to wow them even more and ask for reviews or recommendations along the way … to attract more customers just like them!
Actions within each stage and how to add value
With post-it notes use one colour for what you are doing now and choose other colours to how you can improve. You could use blue for what you are doing now, orange for what you need to do straight away and yellow for an idea to plan in.
An example being:
Blue (doing) – we are on LinkedIn
Orange (need to do) – we must book LinkedIn training for the team so we can use it better
Yellow – (an idea) we need new photographs to make us look more professional
As you walk through the stages you can add notes, actions and ideas you can plan in. You can spot any gaps that are obstacles in the journey and work on immediate opportunities.
For example:
Gap – enquiries are coming in but we’re not logging them on our CRM system therefore missing out on leads.
Opportunity – we can sell other services into existing clients by introducing quarterly review calls. See our article on How to maximise your customer journey to win more business to discover the real power behind your existing clients.
Bring in new processes or marketing collateral to fill the gaps and work on the opportunities. For example, refine your enquiry process or create a promotional graphic to promote other services.
What Next
Book time out of your diary, grab some paper and get to work with your post-it notes to identify where you can improve your customer journey and add value to win more business.
If you have an accountant, they should be your first stop for business advice. If you don’t have an accountant or they can’t help, BuBul has a wide range of experts available. For more advice on mapping your customer journeys contact our expert* Nigel on LinkedIn.
*We’ve picked experts we know and trust who are good at what they do. All of them will give you at least an extra 30 minutes free advice if you contact them and would then charge their normal prices. They don’t pay to be on BuBul and don’t give us any money from anything they earn as an expert.