Editorial
Every marketer's goal is to design satisfying customer interactions for every touchpoint consumers have with their brands.
They've updated the classic Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action model of marketing funnel to include segments for customer loyalty or retention, or an arrow back to the top of the funnel signifying the repeating nature of the customer lifecycle.
But in spite of this evolution, the classic marketing funnel provides only a rudimentary glimpse into customer behavior.
Customer Journey Maps Follow Every Step of the Customer Lifecycle
Marketers are better off integrating customer personas with journey maps. These maps offer insight into what each customer is doing, thinking, feeling, experiencing at each stage of the customer lifecycle.
These customer journey maps are invaluable to customer experience strategy — they provide a blueprint that should rightfully stand at the core of an enterprise’s marketing efforts.
To implement journey maps that are useful for all executable components of a CX strategy, begin by defining personas.
Personas, compiled through customer data, research and observation, are representative profiles designed to convey the behaviors, goals, wants, needs and even the frustrations of each type of customer the business interacts with.
Each persona is then connected to one or more customer journey maps in order to delineate the details of that customer type’s experience as they progress through their relationship with the brand, and to recognize those specific brand touchpoints where calculated marketing tactics should be most effective.
A Persona Mapping Framework
Here is a recommended framework for mapping a persona onto a customer journey map:
1. Stages
What precise stages does this customer pass through on their journey? This likely covers the progression from initial awareness of the brand, to selecting a product or service, to being a user, to becoming a brand advocate and purchasing again as the customer lifecycle comes full circle.
2. Thoughts
Now that we know the stages of this customer’s journey, what are the most pertinent thoughts going on in this customer’s mind at each stage? What key questions and common objections does this customer have before moving forward with the brand, and what are the best methods for helping them overcome hurdles?
Learning Opportunities
Webinar
Jun
6
The Future of Social Media: Emerging Trends and How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
The impact of emerging technologies like AI on social media
Webinar
Jun
7
The Building Blocks of Personalization
This webinar will explore how personalization can create powerful ecommerce shopping experience.
Webinar
Jun
8
Attracting—and Keeping—Your High-Net-Worth Investors
Join PwC to dissect their recent survey findings on a specific customer subset — high-net-worth investors.
Webinar
Jun
13
The Future of Contact Centers with AI at the Helm
Learn how to balance human intuition and interaction with the potential uses of AI to create delightful and lasting CX
Webinar
Jun
20
3 Steps to Unlock Your Customer Data and Drive Revenue
Discover how Twilio Segment’s #1 Customer Data Platform helps implement data-driven strategies.
Webinar
On demand
AI for Marketers: Optimize Personalization Across the Funnel
Understand the benefits of utilizing AI across your entire marketing stack
3. Actions
What actions, relevant to the journey, is this customer performing at each stage? What primary and secondary goals do those actions seek to address, and how can the customer experience support their actions and move them past any roadblocks?
4. Feelings
What are this customer’s feelings, both positive and negative, at each stage of the customer journey? What causes those feelings to evolve over the course of the journey, and how do specific customer experiences impact those feelings?
5. Experiences
What are the three most important experiences for this customer, and how does their importance change as they advance through every stage? Considering the needs of this customer at every stage and the brand’s goals, what should those experiences be?
6. Opportunities
Which measurements best represent successful advancement to the next stage of the customer lifecycle for this customer? How should messaging and content evolve and be tailored for each stage, and which assets should remain constant?
Knowing Your Customers, At Every Stage
The mapping process produces a highly detailed view of every customer type. Brand marketers can use this as their blueprint for designing targeted, customized marketing strategies and campaigns.
Marketers can and should refer to these customer profiles at every stage and know the goals, questions and challenges each customer is thinking about then and there. They can know the actions customers are taking, and the gateways they must pass through to move through the stages. They can anticipate the emotions each customer is feeling, and know the messaging and content they are absorbing.
Leveraging these rich insights, marketers can take full advantage of these personas and journey maps to execute customer experience campaigns with precision, propelling customers towards advocacy and long-lasting brand relationships.
Learn how you can join our contributor community.
