How Digital Customer Journey Maps Strengthen Your Brand

Whether you sell your products and services online or off, your organization needs a digital customer journey map. That’s because at some point in their customer journey, your audience will be making contact with digital touchpoints. For instance, according to a recent study, 48% of U.S. consumers use their mobile phone in-store to research products, and 37% have made an in-store purchase after receiving an email or an SMS message; another study found that 55% of consumers rank online search as their top source for pre-purchase information.

Digital customer journey maps show channels – from email to social platforms to ratings websites – that consumers engage with before, during and after making purchases — or opting not to make purchases. Just as importantly, they reveal how consumers interact with these channels. What search terms do they enter into Google or Amazon? If they visit your website, which pages do they explore and where do they drop off?

Below, we’ll explore why digital journey mapping is critical to your organization, what it entails and how to get started.

The Benefits of Creating and Maintaining a Digital Customer Journey Map

To effectively engage with your audience, you need to know when and where to find them. The explosion of digital channels during the past two decades has made the path to purchase much more complex, regardless of where the purchase is ultimately made. Without digital customer journey maps, businesses are forced to guess how consumers arrive at their purchase decisions. But with these maps, your organization can understand journeys better, optimize strategies and improve outcomes in a variety of ways.

• Better informed allocation of marketing investment.
  A recent survey revealed two-thirds of U.S. social media users are at least somewhat likely to research products on social media platforms before making a purchase. A digital customer journey map can show you if this applies to your target audiences – or which of your segments it most applies to. The map can also indicate which social platforms they’re turning to and at what point in the purchase funnel. You can then reallocate your marketing spend appropriately.

• More effective cross-functional collaboration.
  In omnichannel environments, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Once a digital customer journey map demonstrates how consumers flow to and from social channels, SMS, search, programmatic ads and other touchpoints, those teams can work together to optimize the overall journey, not just their individual channels.

• Greater customer retention and loyalty.
  The digital customer journey doesn’t end once a purchase is made – or at least it shouldn’t. Learning which digital channels consumers interact with post-purchase suggests how your brand can continue to engage with customers to encourage repeat sales and advocacy.

A digital customer journey map isn’t a one-and-done proposition. Update your map regularly as your products and services evolve – and to stay abreast of changes to your audience’s needs, behaviors and preferences.

The Stages of a Digital Customer Journey Map

A common way to understand how brands can improve their digital interactions with consumers is to break down the digital customer journey, and the related map, into five stages.

1. Awareness

The consumer has a need but they’re not sure which brand or product can best satisfy it. Perhaps they’re scrolling social feeds for inspiration or reading blog posts for advice. Knowing where consumers begin their journeys allows brands to position themselves with top-of-funnel content.

2. Consideration

Consumers are looking more closely at their options, comparing products and brands. Digital customer journey mapping reveals not only the channels they’re using to guide their decisions but also the factors they’re prioritizing: Are they shopping around for the best price? Looking at review sites for information about quality and ease of use? Brands can use this knowledge to determine where they should meet these consumers and what they should emphasize to move them onto the next stage.

3. Decision

This is when the customer makes the purchase – and it might not be via a digital channel. Even if the purchase occurs in a brick-and-mortar store,  there might be digital components to their journey. Customers might conduct last-minute price comparisons on their phones or capture a QR code before taking the product to the checkout. A digital customer journey map can indicate why customers selected one purchase channel over another so that you can better direct their next decision.

4. Post-Purchase

Brands sometimes neglect this phase, also known as the retention stage. Digital customer journey mapping reveals whether customers interact with online customer support and in what way, as well as their level of satisfaction. It also helps gauge the most productive ways to continue engaging with customers, such as personalized emails or rewards apps.

5. Advocacy

Some repeat customers go beyond loyalty to advocate for brands, most often by sharing positive reviews and experiences through digital channels. By reviewing the touchpoints on the digital customer journey map that consumers use during the awareness and consideration stages, brands can determine where to encourage loyal customers to share their experiences.

How to Create a Digital Customer Journey Map

Digital journey mapping relies on both quantitative and qualitative research and first-party transactional data. And while you might think creating a map is simply a matter of tracking consumers as they move from touchpoint to touchpoint, obtaining actionable insights requires a few additional steps.

Step 1: Determine clear objectives

Your overriding objective is to better understand how customers interact with digital channels throughout the purchase funnel. Determining which facets of the digital customer journey you most want to improve, such as conversion rates, return on ad spend (ROAS), loyalty or advocacy, will help you narrow your focus and allocate your resources.

Step 2: Define your customer persona(s)

Your customers differ in terms of demographics, behavior and psychographics. Decide whether you’re going to map the journey of a single composite persona or create distinct digital customer journey maps for several audience segments. Your goals and the differences between your target audiences will help you identify the best option.

Step 3: Identify the digital touchpoints

This step can seem daunting, as there are so many channels and touchpoints, from TikTok, YouTube, emails and online marketplaces to your brand website and loyalty apps. Be sure to include both owned and outside channels, and account for which devices the customer is using at each touchpoint, as that can greatly affect the customer’s experience.

Step 4: Map the touchpoints to the purchase stages

It’s not enough to know your customer downloaded a white paper from your website. Knowing if they did so during the awareness stage or the consideration stage will help you hone your content and tactics going forward.

Step 5: Identify challenges and opportunities

Along with analyzing web browsing and tracking data, layering in qualitative data about how consumers feel about your brand at each touchpoint can reveal points of friction in the digital customer journey. And consider going on the customer journey yourself; this gives you and your team firsthand experience of gaps and pain points.

Once you’ve created your digital customer journey map, determine where your brand could benefit from increasing its presence. If your products are not showing up on the first page of Google results, consider redoubling your SEO efforts. If a significant portion of consumers are going from product pages to chatbots with questions about delivery, think about including that information on the product detail pages (PDPs). The digital customer journey map is likely to yield a list of areas ripe for optimization, so refer to your objectives from step 1 when prioritizing what to tackle first.

Mapping the Digital Customer Journey with Material

At Material we understand the power of customer journey mapping to improve customer acquisition, retention and revenue – because we’ve created these positive outcomes ourselves. In addition to researching and charting customer journeys through the purchase process and beyond, we advise organizations on how to transform insights into actions to boost growth. Contact us today to see how we can help with your digital customer journey map.

FAQs

What are the most common challenges in creating a digital customer journey map?

Gathering the necessary data is probably the most common challenge when mapping the digital customer journey. Each digital touchpoint tracks and measures user behavior differently, creating inconsistencies in data and making it hard to form a holistic view. Collecting and analyzing qualitative data from throughout the journey can be particularly difficult.

How often should we update or refine our digital customer journey map?

You should update your digital customer journey map every six months, though quarterly or even more frequently is preferable. Significant changes to your business, such as product or campaign launches, warrant revisiting the map, as do major external changes such as the emergence of a new competitor. Changes in customer behavior or audience makeup should also trigger map updates.

What key elements should we include in our digital customer journey map?

Every digital channel the customer interacts with at each stage of the purchase funnel forms the basis of your digital customer journey map. It’s also critical to include the customer personas whose journey you’re mapping, as well as how the customer feels during each touchpoint.