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September 20, 2021 Content Chat Recap: How To Use Customer Journey Maps To Improve The Customer Experience

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Great content aims to help its ideal consumer learn new concepts, overcome challenges, and perform better in their day-to-day work. To fully serve your community through content marketing, it’s essential to map your customer journey to understand the challenges they face and ways you can help them at each stage of their journey.

In this #ContentChat, we’re joined by Jenny Magic (@JennyLMagic), content strategist at Convince & Convert, to discuss how marketers can use customer journey maps to improve the customer experience. Read the full recap below, where we explain what is included in the customer journey, our favorite tools to map the customer journey, ways to improve this journey through content marketing, and more.

Q1: What is the customer journey? What is or is not included in this journey?

The customer journey involves every touchpoint a customer has with your brand (whether direct or indirect). This includes everything starting from when the customer first becomes aware of your company through to their post-purchase experience(s) (if they get that far).

The customer journey includes every online and offline/in-person interaction. In many ways, the customer journey and customer experience are closely intertwined.

Marketers use customer journey maps to understand their buyer needs and the hurdles that customers face when exploring or purchasing from a brand.

To reiterate: The customer journey does not stop when the buyer makes a purchase. The journey involves all post-sale interactions, too, encompassing the full customer lifecycle.

For successful customer journey mapping, departments have to align their strategy and KPIs.

And the customer journey can differ based on each unique audience (let’s dive into this for Q2).

Q2: How detailed should an audience persona be? What are the essential elements to include?

Per Jenny, less is more when it comes to audience personas. Adding too many details could invite unconscious bias or introduce unnecessary “considerations” for your team.

Focus personas just on the must-haves. What influences each persona’s purchasing decisions, what value do they seek most, and what hurdles do they face in their day-to-day work.

Be conscious of how many personas your team creates.

Define personas with emotional drivers instead of gendered names.

Christian advocates for thoroughly detailed personas, which could be helpful for some organizations. However, Jenny urges marketers to assess if each detail is relevant to purchase decisions.

Q3: How can brands get started in mapping their customer journeys? What tools or methods do you recommend?

Several members of the community enjoy Airtable for customer journey mapping. If you attend CMWorld 2021, check out Jenny’s session to access her Airtable templates for journey mapping.

Other customer journey mapping tools include Miro (Masooma shares a template below) and Mural.

Keep persona highlights, CTAs, and journeys in a central location for all members of your team to access and cross-reference. Ask questions like “what was the customer thinking, asking, doing, needing from us” at each stage of the buyer’s journey to fill in your map.

Customer surveys and 1:1 conversations, focus groups, and third-party research are essential for refining your personas.

And your customer database or CRM will provide a wealth of information to inform your personas.

Q4: What should brands look for in their customer journeys to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience?

List all calls-to-action associated with your customer journey and the key touchpoints between stages. Assess where your funnel breaks down. Refine your messaging by asking “what can we do for the customer at this stage” instead of providing a brand-centric message.

Assess where various departments like sales, marketing, and customer success can better align for customer coordination.

Consistently use and update your customer journey maps so all departments can effectively use them.

Q5: How can marketers use a customer journey map to identify potential #contentmarketing opportunities?

Audit your content alongside your customer journey. List your top-performing content and group it by persona, stage, and CTA. Use this to identify gaps in your strategy.

Ensure every persona at every stage has a core piece of content that is tailored to their needs.

Reference frequently asked questions on social media or through various channels like your email newsletter or blog. Use these questions to create new content that addresses your customer needs.

After you cover the essentials for each persona at each stage, diversify your content and create multiple relevant CTAs and content assets to enrich the customer experience.

Q6: What challenges do marketers often face when mapping their customer journeys, and how do you recommend teams overcome these challenges?

Customer journey maps are often created and then forgotten. Make your maps easily accessible by all departments, and create a hub that links to all relevant documents.

Partner closely with sales and all customer-facing teams to refine your maps.

Ensure that all teams appropriately prioritize all personas (not just those with a high commission).

Adopt technology that can aggregate your disparate data sources.

Q7: What is the most interesting or unexpected outcome from a customer journey mapping project?

Through customer journey mapping, one of Jenny’s clients was able to cut their content creation in half! Also, another team was able to abandon personas that were no longer relevant (thus streamlining their resources).

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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