Customer Journey: How to map your customers' path to give them a pleasant experience

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Customer Journey is the complete experience of a consumer with a company, from the first contact to the post-sale. Understanding this concept allows organizations to generate value throughout the entire purchasing process and actively participate in it, educating the market and its audience and generating value.


There was a time when the moment of making a purchasing why choose vk database decision was the focus of Marketing actions.

However, consumer behavior has changed a lot in recent years and today it is essential for companies to be part of the personal growth of their audience.

In this new communication scenario, Digital Marketing was born , and that is why its strategies are full of concepts related to empathy, behavior and humanization .

In general, what we need to understand is that, except for basic needs, people do not decide to buy something suddenly, nor do they become loyal to a brand spontaneously.

These decisions are gradually built on a process that is part of the so-called Customer Journey.

In this article, you'll learn how to map your customer journey so your business can generate even more insight and value for its audience.

Continue reading to learn more about this exciting topic!

What is the Customer Journey?
The Customer Journey is the path taken by the customer throughout their relationship with a company . It is your customer's history with your brand, from the first contact (visit, service, printed material or online content) to the purchase and after-sales.

In practice, what marketing professionals do is create a narrative to understand the doubts, pains and needs of the public at each stage of this journey.

In this way, we can design a personalized strategy capable of attracting , educating and transforming consumers into engaged customers .

This approach is based on the fact that it is not only the characteristics of a product or service that determine the purchase.

The modern consumer is looking for an experience that goes beyond the solution offered and often doesn't even realize they have a problem. That's exactly where Content Marketing comes in .

Why do you have to educate your audience?
Putting all your chips on the line when making a purchasing decision can make your brand's success very expensive.

Advertising channels are extremely competitive and generally rely on invasive and pulverized promotions that consumers no longer like at all.

Amidst an ocean of promotions and "unmissable offers", the impact of this type of promotion is minor.

This doesn't mean that this type of effort is useless, but it does make very clear the importance of having a content strategy capable of supporting your proposals and helping your leads find your company among the crowd.

What you sell is not as obvious as it seems. There is no point in bombarding your audience with slogans and offers before giving them the necessary knowledge to understand the importance of the solution you offer.

Companies that stand out are those that adopt an educational stance in the market and are willing to share valuable content, an attitude that also contributes to the authority of the brand in its area of ​​operation and to the relationship with its current and future customers.

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What are the stages of the Customer Journey?
We can imagine different journeys depending on the characteristics of the public, the market or the business itself. However, in a Content Marketing strategy, we usually work with four essential stages:

Learning and discovery: the consumer does not yet fully understand their problem and your company must help them do so;
Solution Consideration: Your leads are already aware of the problem and are starting to look for more details and solutions;
Purchase decision: Your leads are analyzing available solutions and converting into sales opportunities;
loyalty: your sales opportunities eventually become customers and maintain their relationship with your brand.
For each of these steps, there is an appropriate way to communicate and carry out your marketing actions, as you can see in our infographic .

What is the relationship between the Customer Journey and the sales funnel?
In Inbound Marketing , the Customer Journey plays a key role in building the sales funnel . The steps illustrated in the two models are equivalent. However, when we talk about the Customer Journey, we analyze the process from the consumer's point of view.

In the sales funnel we have the company's vision, that is, its objectives at each stage. These are:

attract: attract potential customers to your website or blog through relevant content;
convert: convert your visitors into leads (relationships and sales contacts);
selling: nurturing and converting leads into customers;
delight: invest in relationships and after-sales actions to build customer loyalty.
As you can see, the goal of the sales funnel is to guide the production of content, service and sales of companies to support your leads throughout their entire purchasing journey.

These models are very useful, either to design robust strategies or to align different business teams, especially Marketing and Sales .

However, it would be naive to imagine that all your customers follow this path in exactly the same way, as some already have extensive knowledge on the subject and go straight to the bottom of the funnel.

There are also those who come to your blog through consideration materials and then return to the attraction content.

However, we shouldn't be too rigid about people's journeys; the important thing is that your company is prepared to serve consumers at different stages of their journey.


How to map your customer's Customer Journey?
The models we illustrated in the previous topics are the basis for understanding the current consumer purchasing process , but it is important to enrich this knowledge with specific data from each business's audience.

In this sense, we have the buyer persona , a semi-fictional character that represents the ideal client of a company.

This approach goes beyond the classic descriptions of the target audience and seeks to understand potential buyers in a more personalized way, that is, their:

values,
habits,
pains,
goals,
among other things.
Buyer Personas are also essential for guiding content production, as well as adjusting your brand's language and tone of voice.

Keep in mind that one of the great benefits of acting throughout the Customer Journey is, precisely, generating a productive dialogue between a company and its audience.

Once you've defined your buyer persona, it's time to map and plan the best actions for each stage of your audience's purchasing process. Keep reading, because now comes the best part!


Learning and discovery
In the first stage of the journey, your prospect is often unaware of the problem they have and is therefore unlikely to search for solutions at that time.

On the other hand, it is also possible that you have some idea of ​​what you require or that you have begun to feel a certain need that motivates you to begin a process of searching for information.

Let's say your company sells management software .

This is a fairly specific solution, probably unknown to many entrepreneurs, so in the discovery phase, it is not the time to talk about your brand or your product, but rather to educate your buyer persona so that they understand the value of what you offer.

To do this, it is best to publish more extensive and educational content in order to help your audience identify their problem and, in this way, motivate them to start looking for solutions.

The most interesting formats at this stage are:

blogposts;
videos ;
infographics ;
social media posts.
Consideration of the decision
At this stage, your future client already knows that they have a problem and begins to focus on solving it.

With this in mind, you may be eager to talk about your product, but it's best to keep this type of information discreet.

Your buyer persona isn't ready yet and there are still many questions to be answered. This means that the focus of your actions remains on educating your audience.

What we should do is provide deeper content, that is, more technical, richer and with more complete explanations.

The recommended formats at this stage are:

blogposts and videos of consideration;
ebooks ;
white papers ;
online events.
A very common consideration format is comparison videos. An e-commerce site that sells electronic equipment, for example, can create benchmarks to help its audience choose the best channel to purchase the products.

Service providers or companies selling more complex products can offer rich materials or invest in online events.

Webinars , for example , are a great way to introduce yourself and also get to know your audience by interacting directly (live) with them.

Purchase decision
Your future client has come a long way to get to this point, has learned a lot from the materials you made available to them, and has already established connections with your company.

Keep in mind that these facts alone already represent great benefits, such as:

your brand is being recognized in the market;
your business gained authority;
your audience is engaged.
Now is the time to reveal the details of your product or service and make it clear to your buyer persona why your solution is the best for them.

The most commonly used formats to motivate the purchase decision are:

sales letter;
success stories;
customer recommendations.
If you are a Marketing agency manager, it is highly recommended to feature the stories of successful clients or provide an open channel for them to express their opinions, such as evaluation areas on your website or social networks .

Understand that your consumer has already heard a lot from your company throughout the journey, but to be sure that your product is truly beneficial, they will look for an external opinion or some other type of social proof.

Therefore, it is also your role to offer or point out ways to obtain this confirmation.

Loyalty
Your buyer persona understood their problem, researched solutions, chose your company, and made the purchase. Mission accomplished, right? Not at all!

If your brand has remained attentive and present throughout the entire Customer Journey, the biggest mistake you could make is to simply disappear after the purchase.

This attitude not only arouses suspicion, but also wastes all the work that has been built on the relationship previously.

When your customers are loyal, they can become great advocates and promoters of your brand .

This behavior is most noticeable on the social media of successful companies, but it happens everywhere and on all channels.

Therefore, maintain a strong relationship with your customers, whether through your blog, email or social media.

Share your company news, continue to provide relevant content and offer all the necessary support.

Among the benefits of carrying out these actions, we can mention: