If you think that selling your product or service is just about showcasing them on a billboard or a website, you need to get your facts right. The selling process entails a long and complicated journey, during which buyers move through several stages until they close the purchase. As a marketer, mapping this journey gives you a head start with conversions and ROI.
According to a McKinsey study, improving the end-to-end journey can deliver the best ROI on CX improvements. Other benefits of journey mapping are faster sales cycles, an increase in cross- and up-sells, and a lower cost of customer service. Not surprisingly, 25% of organizations expect to integrate sales, marketing, and customer experience by 2023.
While customer journey mapping (CJM) may seem as simple as adopting an analytics tool, there’s much more to it when you scratch the surface. You may encounter several pitfalls along the way. The worst thing about misunderstanding CX is that it may lead to wrong decisions.
Let us make you aware of the blunders that can keep you from making the most of customer journey mapping.
Blunder #1: Not Setting Goals
As a beginner, you may feel tempted to map the customer journey without establishing the end goals. A successful process starts with in-depth research. Here are the questions you can ask to set your goals from the outset:
- What do you want to analyze?
- Do you want to target specific customer segments?
- Which processes do you want to improve?
- What departments do you want to be involved in?
- Who should own the initiative?
- How will the organization benefit from CX improvement?
Once you answer these questions, you can define and implement an effective CJM initiative for your business.
Blunder #2: Building a Single Journey for All Personas
Businesses often have multiple buyer personas, ranging from a couple of them to dozens, depending on the type of business. Statistics show that 93% of companies segmenting their database by buyer persona exceed their lead and revenue goals. Not applying persona segmentation to CJM can be the worst mistake.
Although using a single map for tracking the customer journey across all segments sounds easy, you must take a broader approach. You may end up with a cookie-cutter approach to identifying flaws and addressing them with improvements. It is like wasting the hard work doing things that hardly improve the CX for a big chunk of your buyers. Fortunately, you can rely on an analytics tool for the process.
Woopra notes that journeys vary for different touchpoints. For example, a first-time visitor may start with a live chat, sign up for a free trial, and upgrade to a paid plan. Conversely, ad targeting involves the prospect seeing a retargeted ad, arriving on a landing page, moving on to a free trial signup, and upgrading to the paid version. Although both maps end at the same place, they take different routes.
You need to know the bottlenecks both customer segments may encounter and address them with different steps. Using the same measures for both groups will not drive the desired results.
Blunder #3: Starting Late and Stopping Early
Did you know that 86% of customers prioritize CX when it comes to buying decisions? That means marketers need to go the extra mile with CX excellence. It starts with building an end-to-end journey map and checking for cracks therein. You may want to cut corners by ignoring the stages of the journey. But starting too late, stopping too early, and missing out on anything in between can land you in a problem.
For example, you may want to focus only on the middle part of the journey. But overlooking the initial stages means buyers may never know your business well enough to move down the funnel. At the same time, stopping near the end (post-sales) indicates they may not be happy with the overall experience. In that case, they will not come for repeat purchases or recommend your brand to others.
Pay attention to all interactions of leads with your product or service and ensure each one is good enough. A holistic approach can help you build a winning customer journey.
Summing Up
Customer journey mapping can give you a clear view of the buyers’ interactions with your brand and products or services. But it is more than applying analytics to the entire customer group. You must segment buyers and create a map for each of them.
Also, begin on time and avoid missing out on any stage of the journey. Skipping these common mistakes can help you elevate your CX for long-term satisfaction and retention.