The way to create a buyer journey map (even if in case you have no thought who your clients actually are)
Creating a customer journey map is enough to freeze even the best of marketers and realize how little they really know about their prospects.
If this sounds like you, don't worry.
Even if you've never created a Buyer Personality, I can help you understand the process by giving you some sort of "map" so you can better understand who your customers are and what they want.
Let's take a closer look.
Starting over: The basics of the customer journey map
A customer journey map is a diagram that illustrates each step in the buyer's journey, including who the customer is, what their needs are, and what objections they face.
This card makes it easier for sales, marketing, and executives to make more informed decisions and humanize your audience.
The very first step in a customer journey map is the most important demographic information about your customers, e.g. B .:
- gender
- Age range
- Job title
- tasks
- salary
- region
- Company size
You can probably find most of this data in your CRM. If not, a poll can give you a clear picture of who your audience is and what they're doing.
I also recommend "humanizing" the persona by giving them a name and a picture. This brings out more of our emotional, empathetic side than viewing the prospect as a number that can be inserted like a puzzle piece somewhere in a sales funnel.
Now that you know the basics, let's look at an example customer journey.
ONE Example of a customer journey map
For our example here, we decided to work with Lucy, a marketing director in her late 40s.
Your main job is lead generation, sales management and gathering competitive intelligence.
She organizes and prioritizes campaigns. She is a professional at gathering competitive information and uses it wisely to strengthen the brand while strengthening customer loyalty in a very competitive market.
With the tremendous growth in social media, Lucy wants to streamline the social media interaction process without losing the brand's "personality".
She is in the market for a solution and wants to make a confident decision quickly.
With this in mind, our persona card will look something like this so far:
In order to stick to the card concept, this is our starting point. Next, it's time to check out the trip.
Our first stop on the map is the needs of the buyer.
She has the basic research to know what's out there. If we look at this from the perspective of a traditional sales funnel, she is in the "comparison shopping" phase.
She will try to make a decision soon.
Understand the buyer's needs
Buyers are happy to tell you what they need. All you have to do is ask.
Basic executive tracking and care questions can reveal a lot. Simple polls and polls can often say a lot about where the buyer is actually at in the process (and whether they have an urgent need for your product or service as opposed to basic curiosity).
Even if we don't know exactly what they need, we can make some general statements that they apply to ourselves.
What would someone in this job normally need from our solution?
To start with, the buyer will likely need good documentation of the product. She will manage dozens, maybe hundreds, of employees, some of whom (depending on age) are more tech-savvy than her.
Some employees can pick it up quickly. others may need more time. We will add the person's needs and place in the decision-making process (a person can have multiple roles in the decision-making process – for example, they can be a user and an initiator).
In addition, any solution must be adaptable and flexible to support existing platforms and tools.
The company likely has certain procedures and requirements that will be added to the mix such as: B. Cloud-based access and certain security protocols.
These factors can influence and even contradict the wishes of the main buyer. The committee often makes decisions like this, which increases the time and functions required.
Dealing with general objections in customer journey maps
As with all cards, there are roadblocks that prevent your customer from taking action. You want to outline these in your customer journey map.
There are limitations and concerns, frustrations and problems that affect their decision. You can discuss these barriers and add them to your customer journey map to make sure sales know how to address the most common objections before they become a major pain point.
You also need to decide where that buyer falls on the decision making scale.
Will they use the product? Influence the decision maker? Contact the company? A mix of all of these?
Make a note of these objections and the buyer's place in the decision cycle on your card.
If we follow our example, we get something like this:
Here we managed to discover the potential of the buyer (and brainstorm):
- needs
- concerns
- Frustrations
- Urgency / time frame for the purchase
- Place in the buying cycle
- requirement
All kinds of promotional information required to acknowledge objections, concerns and frustrations while focusing on needs, requirements and urgency.
We received critical demographics about our buyers and critical information that might prevent them from taking action or details that could move a sale to the next stage.
Our customer journey map is less of a clear bulleted list and more of a mind map that is constantly being adapted and revised. It might not be as neat, but our customer journey map is closer to the actual customer experience – and therefore far more useful.
Think about the last time your business made a major purchase. It's rarely a one-off shot from start to finish, right?
There are many details to work out, presentations to sit through and suggestions and cancellations to be collected.
It's a big process, and a fancy bullet list just doesn't cut it anymore – not in today's two-way communication world.
Create a customer journey map for each type of customer
Now you need to go through this entire process with every type of buyer your business comes across. Each type of customer has a different buyer path, objections, and challenges.
For example, if you are in retail there are suppliers, wholesalers, resellers, and a whole range of personalities. Every buyer you have needs to be addressed individually.
Conclusion
Don't panic, prioritize. Focus on your most profitable customers first and find the connecting threads that hold them together, then build on that person. As soon as you no longer have these, work through the list until you have assigned all of your customer trips.
And remember, buyers are diverse people.
Sometimes they make decisions that run counter to even the most developed person. It happens.
Remember that the journey is just as important as the destination. The easier you make this journey, the more receptive the buyer will be to the actions that are to be taken.
Are you planning a customer journey map? What is holding you back