The elimination of the third-party cookie will profoundly impact e-commerce. This shouldn’t be a shock. We were headed down this path long before Google announced that it would deprecate the cookie in Chrome in 2022. Perhaps more than any arrow in the marketer’s quiver, e-commerce’s targeting accuracy has traditionally been built around the cookie. However, Happy Cog’s Lee Goldberg says instead of viewing this scenario as dire, e-commerce players should view this inflection point in data-driven marketing as an opportunity to rethink it all.
During the era of the third-party cookie, the e-commerce community has fallen prey to the fixation on short-term sales conversions. As tempting as this paradigm is, over the long haul it can actually stunt long-term consumer engagement and limit lifetime customer value. The opportunity and challenge in 2022 and beyond is to flip this script – and get customers and prospects to voluntarily opt in. Yes, emphasizing lead gen over sales in the short-term doesn’t sound particularly sexy, but over the long haul it will actually increase ROI.
A more methodical, incremental approach will bear greater results. Instead of driving hard for a purchase, perhaps appeal to your customer base through softer engagement promotional activity that targets an email address or an account creation instead of a purchase. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google (through Discovery campaigns) all offer lead generation opportunities. By deploying a robust CRM platform (such as MailChimp, Klaviyo or Salesforce) to organize these emails for dynamic ad targeting, e-commerce brands can focus on establishing ongoing, positive relationships with both prospects and customers. If you have a compelling offer or value proposition, customers are generally willing to opt in.
By rewiring your priorities to place demand generation over sales, your brand will forge deeper connections with consumers. E-commerce marketers tend to get hung up on quick conversion metrics while losing sight of the RFM model (recency, frequency and monetary value). RFM modeling is an under-used marketing analysis tool to help companies better predict which customers are more likely to make future purchases, as well as to glean insights to turn occasional buyers into habitual ones.
Interestingly, there has already been growing pressure on e-commerce retailers to re-orient around first-party cookies, built by the collection of data from their own domains like user log-ins, passwords and shopping cart data. Google and Facebook have both been pushing this with their evolving product suites. Before third-party cookie deprecation picked up steam over the past few years, it had become readily apparent to anyone paying attention that dynamic retargeting through networks like Criteo and AdRoll were not long for this world. Both of these retargeting pioneers have now adapted and repositioned themselves for a post-cookie world.
The winners of the post-cookie world
While most of our industry was retargeting customers with abandon, Amazon was quietly off to the side for years amassing an enormous amount of first-party data. Amazon’s dominance in the paid search world will now pay off by orders of magnitude. It wouldn’t be at all shocking to see Amazon sunset its relatively nascent demand-side platform (DSP) despite the heavy investment. With the growing marketer interest in other formats such as connected TV (CTV) and connected audio, expect Amazon to reshape its DSP to meet these opportunities – much as players such as The Trade Desk have already done.
In a post-cookie world, the push towards first-party data will make it easier for brands to do their own attribution rather than relying on Facebook and Google. While true multi-touch attribution remains elusive, e-commerce folks will be able to attain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of full-funnel consumer behavior.
Life beyond the third-party cookie will be complex and there will be many new twists and turns, but a new paradigm will coalesce around stronger customer engagement. Privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have been the catalysts for change. While compliance may be a big motivator, ultimately an ability to maintain the big picture by putting engagement – not targeting – first is the secret to long-term success.
That lesson may not be resonating at scale yet, as evidenced by the continuing obsession with targeting within the context of new identity solutions like Google’s Privacy Sandbox, as well as in the conversations around first-party data utilization and contextual targeting 2.0. Unless we flip the script and focus on engagement first, the mistakes of the past will likely be repeated.
1. It can work for the small and mid-size brands as well as big-budget brands
First things first, it would be wrong to go into all the weird and wonderful things brands can do with programmatic advertising without first debunking the myth that you need endless bags of cash to get started. The beauty of real-time, audience-focused programmatic buying means we end up with far less wastage and far more bang for your buck. So if you don’t have tons of budget to play with, or you want programmatic to prove itself before investing more, rest assured there will be an approach for you.
2. Programmatic reach is huge
“I don’t want to reach as much of my target audience as possible,” said no one ever. We’re all agreed that the most efficient forms of advertising reach their desired audience at scale. Programmatic advertising allows us to do just that. With access to ad space across millions of sites, programmatic opens up the opportunity to find and engage your audience, wherever they are (almost).
3. You are in control
Programmatic advertising has many a perk, but one of the most invaluable benefits is the freedom it gives brands to press pause and make changes to campaigns in mid-flight. From a performance perspective, it allows optimizations to be made to upweight the best performing audiences, sites, time of day and so on, helping to continuously boost results. Plus, from an ‘oh no, our website is down’ point of view, it allows brands to get out of jail free and stop paying to drive their audience to a dead page in an instant. What a dream.
4. You can show off your brand using funky formats
Long gone are the days where click-focused banner ads were the only formats associated with programmatic. These days, brands can engage their audience with highly interactive digital creative units, drive them to store using in-built maps, or simply wow them with a beautifully-designed web takeover format, which – yes, you guessed it – can be bought and served on an individual user basis in real-time.
5. The targeting possibilities are pretty much endless
Browsing for your SO’s birthday present only to be stalked forever by an ad of that very product? We’ve all been there. As much as retargeting can play a key part of a brand’s programmatic strategy, there are many other targeting strategies brands can employ to find and engage key audiences. These can be a bit sexy, such as overlaying previous purchase data via Mastercard, real time and historic geo-location data, email data, Amazon purchase data, or household data, or they can be slightly-less-sexy-but-still-effective, with strategies like contextual targeting, where the ad appears alongside relevant content.
6. You can sync up your programmatic activity with DOOH (digital out-of-home billboards)
Picture this: you’re walking down the street, it’s nearly lunchtime. You walk past a billboard advertising a lovely looking burger (sorry vegans) and it catches your eye. You continue walking, getting out your phone to check the weather. You open the app and there’s that burger again. Giving in to temptation, you make your way to those famous Golden Arches. You have just experienced a DOOH/programmatic sync that captures audiences as they come into proximity with your OOH advertising and retargets them on their phone. A simple, yet super effective way to increase frequency and maximize the impact of messaging on your audience.
7. Programmatic campaigns can be weather-triggered
Not only can you reach the right person in the right environment at the right time, you can also reach them in the right weather conditions. Weather signals are a powerful way of contextualizing your brand’s messaging and are an instant win among your audience. These triggers can be based on insight about your brand and can be as simple as ‘sales increase when it rains’. Setting these parameters in the programmatic buying platform means that budget can automatically be upweighted when desired weather conditions occur, or the messaging can change to become more relevant.
8. You know every single site your brand appears on
We no longer live in a world where programmatic campaigns are set up and delivered with no insight into where our ads ended up. Oh no. Goodbye black box, hello transparency. When running either across the open-exchange, or a pre-agreed list of sites, brand safety and transparency are paramount. With strict measures in place to exclude sites and content deemed unsafe, brands can be confident that they’re reaching their intended audience in perfectly acceptable, brand-safe environments.
Despite the rumors, the reason why we use programmatic advertising isn’t just to sell, sell, sell. Granted, it does this well, but more and more brands are increasingly turning to programmatic to help improve awareness and consideration too. Through a clever mix of the right targeting and, crucially, a well-executed creative, programmatic advertising has proven it is nothing to be sniffed at when it comes to increasing brand metrics.
10. Because you need to be where your competitors are
If the above nine reasons weren’t enough to persuade you, then let this be it. The chances are, your competitors are already talking to your potential customers through their own programmatic campaigns. This means they’re benefitting from the extra edge this type of digital buying creates. In an increasingly competitive world online, now more than ever it’s important for your brand to be active and compete in the programmatic space.
Feeling inspired and ready to explore how programmatic advertising could work for you? Good. Our team of experts at S3 Advertising agency will work with you to plan and execute a programmatic campaign that will speak to your audience and deliver against your objectives. Whether you want to raise awareness of a product or service, drive traffic to your site, drive people to your store or something else –get in touch with our team and we’ll do the rest.
Having a strong social media presence is one of the most effective ways to ensure continued expansion and growth for your business.
Building an engaged social media following is a crucial aspect of any businesses’ marketing strategy. For a modern business, having a strong social media presence is one of the most effective ways to ensure continued expansion and growth. The ultimate goal of having an engaged following is to create meaningful connections with existing and potential customers, establishing personal and long-term relationships through brand loyalty and brand recognition.
Social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tactic that certainly shouldn’t be underestimated, and the following reasons will outline why it is an opportunity that every business must avail.
1. Measure Your Engagement
One of the main measures of social media engagement is the number of comments, likes and shares you generate with your posts. Whilst having a significant following is important, it’s equally important that this following actively interacts with you regularly. There are a few metrics businesses can use to assess the levels of engagement they are attracting, such as shares, comments, likes, follower growth, mentions, tags, click-throughs, and hashtags.
This provides businesses with a wealth of information regarding the impact of their present marketing strategies and if they need to change or improve them. Traditional marketing strategies such as print and television don’t offer this level of insight – social media marketing is unique in the way that you can see in real-time the extent to which your campaigns are interesting, engaging and attracting customers.
Related: 7 Ways to Get More Engaged Followers on Social Media
2. Constantly Be On Your Customer’s Minds
Keeping followers is as important as attracting followers, and an effective way you can ensure this is by posting consistently and on a regular basis. If you observe the posting patterns of some internationally known and successful brands, you’ll find that many of them are posting multiple times a day. People tend to scroll through their social media platforms every few hours or so, and with two or three posts spaced out at strategic times throughout the day, your brand will be a constant presence on your followers' social media feeds.
This is actually an incredibly effective psychological trick. When an international brand posts at regular intervals they are maximizing their exposure. Increased exposure means that audiences will gradually develop a familiarity with the brand as well as the products/services it provides, and this will, in turn, generate engagement, interest and purchases.
The advantages associated with this type of exposure extend far beyond the immediate impact of seeing a post on social media and then scrolling past it. Frequent and memorable exposure creates long-term associations. If you have a business that manages events and you have established a powerful social media presence, for example, then whenever anyone or someone they know needs to arrange an event, they will immediately think of you.
Related: Beginner's Guide to Social Media Marketing
3. Don’t Just Say, Show Customers Why Your Product/Service Is So Amazing
With regards to the content you post, you don’t want to be just passively broadcasting your brand with product photos and product descriptions for the captions. Instead, you want to create the buzzing and interactive conversations with your followers. For example, if you’re a brand selling handmade winter apparel such as scarves and hats, you don’t want to post pictures of models wearing them.
Create videos with styling tips, create competitions where your followers can provide their input for the latest design, or engage them by asking them to choose their favorite product. These are all ways of making your brand truly memorable and distinctive.
Social media platforms are such an amazing marketing tactic because they can communicate any message or concept within a variety of different mediums or formats. Your mode of expression is not restricted as much as it would be with more traditional marketing tactics such as a magazine feature or a television advert.
Whilst there is certainly a place for these promotional strategies, the truth is that nothing quite compares to the creative freedom you can have on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Infographics, tutorials, albums, edits, compilations and collaborations – you can show your customers the merits and virtues of your product/service from every conceivable angle.
4. Manipulate The Algorithm
Keeping up with social media trends and topical events such as pop culture and international sporting events are great opportunities for your brand to connect with audiences instantly. Other ways of boosting engagement are contests, asking questions, polls, contests, GIFs and spotlighting customer posts or stories.
There are countless ways you can encourage social media engagement and interact with your followers; it’s just about experimenting and discovering which strategies work the best with your brand and your goals.
Social media algorithms are incredibly intelligent, and once you understand how they work, you can ensure that you are constantly appearing in the feeds of a diverse and varied audience. These algorithms exist so that relevant and interesting content appears in users’ feeds, and certain actions are more likely to be rewarded by the algorithm.
Essentially, the more engagement you receive on each of your posts, the more likely it is that the algorithm will notice you. So remember to post regularly, ask questions, interact with your followers, use hashtags and tag other accounts to boost your engagement as much as you can. By manipulating the algorithm to your advantage, you vastly increase the extent and reach of your business.
Related: Top 5 Social Media Marketing Pitfalls
Social media impact
In this contemporary digital era, social media platforms and their users are at the forefront of the creation, publication and distribution of digital content. Whether it’s a review or testimonials, social media comments, detailed captions and posts, interactive discussions or video reviews and commentaries, social media has provided users with a powerful platform to have their voices heard and have a real and tangible impact on brands and businesses. It’s crucial that brands and businesses learn how to capitalize on the marketing opportunities provided by social media.
The benefits provided by a robust social media strategy extend far beyond merely increasing sales. An essential part of branding is creating a recognizable and memorable brand image, and this is because that consumers prefer to buy from brands that they know and trust. When it comes to building a strong brand, social media is the perfect platform for achieving this goal. For example, using the logo of your brand as a profile picture will ensure the visual elements of your brand are communicated immediately to whoever visits your social media pages.
Compared to traditional forms of marketing such as television commercials or radio advertisements, social media allows you to reach a wider audience much more quickly. Millions of consumers scroll through their various social media accounts multiple times throughout the day, and by strategically posting, collaborating and marketing your page, you can attract potential customers even at times when they’re not actively shopping around or thinking of purchasing your product or service.
In 2018, PwC research found that 82% of U.S consumers felt the need for more human interaction in their digital experiences. Let’s think about that for a moment. Before a time of lockdowns, humans wanted more out of their online interactions with a brand. And then came a global pandemic and what we saw was the use of digital channels accelerated at an unimaginable pace in an attempt to bridge that gap.
We are starting to see a new sense of normal return with people going back into offices, restaurants, bank branches, and other places they didn’t even realize they missed. One thing that will remain is the need to support online strategies and initiatives that came out of this need to recreate the in-person experience. Innovators know that they need to solve the human connections gap in their online channels. We call this new shift in momentum to better service customers online the Guided CX. Here is how we got here and what it is.
Making a complicated journey less complex
We did a lot online last year. Many of these tasks were pretty simple and straightforward, such as switching a password or ordering takeout for the umpteenth time. It wasn’t so much out of the ordinary. Then there were the challenging and emotional journeys—the first-time home buyer escaping the city for more space in the suburbs—the business owner filing a PPP loan online because bank branches were closed. These were a few of the many reasons for an empathetic lifeline that could help guide a customer to the promised land.
The true winners of 2020 understood the need for the customer journey and presented a customer journey that solved every puzzle piece. They knew there were those easily solvable and automated answers, and then there were the high-touch engagements we call Critical Advisory Moments.
What is a Critical Advisory Moment?
Critical Advisory Moments are forks in the customer journey – where one path advances the process, and the other terminates it (and often starts a new journey with your competitors). Critical Advisory Moments, when executed correctly, can provide some of the highest value outcomes for a business by providing real-time, in-the-moment assistance.
A guided customer experience empowers your staff to reach customers in the moment, build relationships, and solve problems quickly. There’s no guesswork because now your associates or advisors can see what’s going on and guide your customers to the best possible outcome. “Do it yourself” doesn’t cut it in these high-touch moments but, “Do it together” does.
What an ideal Guided CX looks like
The Guided CX provides the human connections customers are looking for in the digital space. When you put the idea into practice, here are some key things to look for:
In-the-moment service and support – When consumers go online, they are often doing just fine… until they are not. When things go wrong, they need assistance immediately, within the website or app, and it needs to be easy. With a simple click of a button, your employees can connect with your customers, view what’s on their screen, and guide them to a solution.
Digital consultation and sales engagement – Sometimes it is not just a navigation issue, instead the customer needs advice or reassurance from your sales person or specialist. A Guided Customer Experience allows your product or sales expert to join the customer in the app or website, to deliver consultation and reassurance, and prevent the digital transaction from stalling.
Frictionless – Getting to a Guided Customer Experience should be frictionless. It shouldn’t require the customer to open an email or download some screen share or online meeting software. They shouldn’t have to leave your website or app to get help. And getting connected shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.
Secure – Not having to leave your website or app or click on a potentially suspicious hyperlink helps here, of course. But the customer should also be able to be reassured that any sensitive, personally identifiable customer information in the shared view will be automatically masked (redacted) so the agent can’t see anything they shouldn’t. Again, this is about increasing trust.
Trust builder – As mentioned above, security is important when building trust with your customers. Focusing on trust, is there a way you can build a rapport with the customer? With Guided CX, you want to earn the trust of your customers because that is how you strengthen the relationship and create lifelong loyal customers.
A win for your customer is a win for your enterprise
Businesses that employ a solid Guided Customer Experience see short-term and long-term gains. Short-term, you’ve helped solve customer frustration. Long-term, you have gained trust and built a loyal customer. In big picture terms, a Guided CX improves efficiency, which increases close rates and conversions and creates more revenue streams for your enterprise.
The Guided Customer Experience bridges the human connection gap for businesses selling and supporting complex products and services. And not only does it remove pain, frustration, and friction from digital CX – it also opens up new possibilities for generating revenue.
If you want to learn more about the human connection gap and how Guided CX can help, download our latest ebook. No forms to fill; just download and enjoy!
Summary. While using customer journeys to guide what teams build and how they operate is common practice, small differences in approach produce vastly different results. But today, as we enter a new stage of profound change, those differences will be more important than...more
As vaccinated millions step tentatively back into an in-person economy poised for growth, the relationships they had with companies they preferred before will resume — but on a trial basis. Spending loyalties will be cemented (or potentially lost to others) based on how well companies understand customers’ new priorities that were forged by the degree of uncertainty, fear, strife, or loss each individual experienced. These considerations will influence not only what customers choose but also how they go about choosing. Your customer journeys must change to reflect your customers’ new preferences and behaviors.
While using customer journeys to guide what teams build and how they operate is common practice, small differences in approach produce vastly different results. But today, as we enter a new stage of profound change, those differences will be more important than ever to business performance. Companies that have adopted different approaches to customer journey and experience practices have seen more than six times greater growth in year-on-year profitability.
Regardless of one’s industry, whether B2C or B2B, the following three simple but critical factors will determine whether your post-pandemic customer journeys will help amplify or impede business growth.
Customer-Centric, Not Company-Centric
Customers happily serve as the engine of business outcomes when doing so is a byproduct of achieving their own intended outcomes. Every time a customer achieves their purpose, the company that enabled them to do so receives revenue or some other value (loyalty, advocacy, etc.).
Insight Center Collection
Opportunities for Midsize Businesses in 2021
Set yourself up to thrive.
But the vast majority of customer journeys I see focus on company outcomes. They guide marketing or sales or service teams, perhaps inadvertently, to manipulate customers toward a business outcome. This practice is so engrained that we have a name for it: The funnel.
The least customer-centric companies often have a single customer journey that is essentially the vertical funnel turned on its side, like a livestock chute through which customers are prodded toward a fate of the company’s choosing. The corralling pens customers pass through — awareness, interest, evaluation, intent, purchase, loyalty — are all in the context of a product and what the company wants, not what customers want.
Many other companies have recognized that customers engage in multiple journeys over the lifetime of their relationship; however, those different journeys are typically aligned to and named for specific outcomes, such as acquisition, retention, or upsell. The question for these companies is: Which customer segments wake up with a burning desire to be acquired? Which think their lives would be so much better if only they could be retained or upsold? These journeys, too, are entirely company-centric. Customer-centric journeys start and end with the outcome customers are trying to achieve: Their intended purpose.
For example, the pandemic has spurred many people to relocate from cities to suburbs. Many are first-time homeowners, unsure what tools they might need for planned improvements or unplanned repairs. Some might want to build a treehouse with their kids but don’t yet have a specific model chosen or the plans, instructions, or tools to realize it. What new offerings, journeys, or experiences might manufacturers of power tools create to enable customers to achieve this purpose?
A traditional journey might start with ads or emails with images of a family building a treehouse that link to the company home page, and then expect the customer to discern what tools or other things they need. Without further guidance, customers will likely leave the company’s site (and the company-designed journey) for a search engine, which provides links to numerous articles, blogs, or competitor sites — any of which might better help the customer achieve their purpose and, as a result, prompt them to purchase elsewhere. The company-designed journey might include stalking customers around the web with retargeting ads. But not only is this practice being phased out, it squanders marketing spend by trying to bring customers back to a site that doesn’t address key needs in their journey.
A more customer-centric journey might start with the ads or emails described above, but link to a section of the company website organized by types of projects, from decks to sheds to treehouses. They might show multiple treehouse designs, filterable by size or the type of trees for which each is suitable. The detail page for each treehouse might show a video of the project from start to finish to build confidence in the customer and excitement among the family. All the tools and parts required might be listed, with options to buy them a la carte or as a full package. Each purchase might include assembly plans with illustrated instructions, and a mobile device–optimized step-by-step version, with guidance on what age child can handle each task so all family members can participate safely. Options for contactless delivery or curbside pickup at a local retail partner could be presented. The company might include an offer from a partner like DoorDash or Grubhub for lunch/refreshment delivery, to address that part of the journey.
Companies can better drive growth by creating journeys that align with their customers’ purposes, then develop and operate experiences that enable customers to achieve them. This isn’t to say companies shouldn’t be trying to influence customer decisions along the way. Influence can be more effective when journeys and experiences are customer-centric, designed not as a path to purchase, but as a path to purpose.
The tool company above influences purchases by designing an offer, journey, and experience that addresses customer purpose. They could influence future purchases by triggering an email a few weeks later asking customers how the treehouse project went or if they need help. Doing so demonstrates commitment to the customer’s purpose, which can influence loyalty and future purchases. If the email also encourages customers to post finished treehouse photos on Instagram (which can also appear on the webpage for that treehouse), the company aligns with customers’ desire to share family accomplishments, which might influence others to buy.
This customer-centric, purpose-led approach is even more important for B2B companies. Longer buying cycles mean keeping prospects engaged in longer journeys with more interaction points. It’s also more challenging when decisions involve multiple people, each on their own journey, with varying purposes depending on their role. Marketing and sales teams can increase win rates by aligning individual journeys to each person’s purpose, while managing the group’s purposes collectively in a multi-buyer journey.
Flexible Journeys Based on Need-Points, Not Touchpoints
Customers have greater choice than ever before in terms of how and where they engage. And being forced in the last year to interact only via phone, websites, apps, chats, text, or social channels means customers are more comfortable with these methods than before.
This democratization of new interaction channels has made it more important that customer journeys not be rigidly tied to specific touchpoints. For example, a customer journey that portrays a linear series of interactions — customer sees offline ad, then goes to search engine, then is directed to landing page on website, then is retargeted on Facebook, then comes back to website and provides email address, after which an email to customer is triggered, etc. — is only useful as an example of what could happen if all the stars aligned — or if customers were willing to follow the script.
But customers don’t follow scripts. They follow impulses, urges, whims, and preferences, often in unplanned moments of opportunity. So it’s important that journeys are not aligned to specific touchpoints according to what the company wants to happen. Rather, the company should seek to understand the series of need-points customers traverse in order to make decisions that achieve whatever outcome they ultimately intend.
For example, a person whose purpose is to quit smoking might traverse a journey of need-points, from understanding the easiest way to quit, which method is best for them, how fast it will work, where they can buy it, how quickly they can get it, and (once received) how they use it. Each customer might choose from a variety of touchpoints at each moment of need, depending on their preferences or context at that moment.
It’s your job to be present with the content, expert, recommendation, answer, or product relevant to the customer need at that point, in any and all of the channels a customer might choose, including any operated by the company (website, app, chatbot, call center, salespeople, stores, branches, etc.) or by third parties (search engines, review sites, blogs, retail partners, etc.).
The company that successively addresses these needs most relevantly, clearly, and quickly at any potential touchpoint is likely to maintain engagement and influence throughout each customer’s journey until each achieves their ultimate purpose — and generates value for the business.
Measuring (and Optimizing) Customer Journeys and Experiences
Company outcomes depend on the number of customers who successfully achieve their intended purpose. The better a company measures and manages how well they’re enabling customers to progress across need-points, the stronger the resulting business outcomes.
Teams can measure the effectiveness of their customer journeys — and the experiences based on them — using Customer Performance Indicators (CPIs), which I’ve written about before. This method measures how well a company is performing for customers at each need-point. The better a company performs on outcomes important to customers (CPIs), the better it will perform on outcomes important to the company (KPIs). And because certain need-points in the journey will influence customer decisions more than others, companies should prioritize performing well on CPIs in these moments that matter.
You may find that some need-points are specific to certain customer segments. So, while revising journeys and experiences for your largest or most valuable customer segments is advisable, catering to the unique needs or preferences of other segments should be added over time. Do this by creating off-ramps and on-ramps to and from your main journeys, as a map would depict side roads merging onto a major thoroughfare.
For example, the simplified insurance journey from my previous article reflects three key need-points: Fast Quote, Best Price, and Payments That Fit My Budget. Some customers may need to understand the benefits of bundling home, auto, or other insurance policies before looking for a fast quote.
So another need-point (and CPI) for Understanding Bundling Benefits might be added with an on-ramp to the main journey. This helps marketers ensure they have relevant content for the new need-point (at all touchpoints), and designers can ensure a more relevant and seamless experience for more customers, which results in more customers won.
Looking Ahead
If your company has already adopted these practices, you’re well-positioned to thrive. Simply refine your customer journeys and experiences for how customer needs and values have evolved. For those still using company-centric, linear journeys rigidly tied to specific touchpoints or measuring only business outcomes, now is the time a change in approach will pay off the most.
Small and midsize businesses have a window of advantage here. While larger companies might have greater resources and reach and some have recognized the need to pivot their customer journeys, experiences, and operations for new realities, for many, forward progress will be mitigated by operational, organizational, and cultural inertia. So, until larger or slower players ultimately get there, opportunities abound for more nimble companies to better align with customers’ new purposes and forge new relationships that accelerate growth and strengthen loyalty by providing them with greater confidence in a still-uncertain world.
PR is often overlooked by many businesses and entrepreneurs as they feel like they ‘don’t need it’ – here’s 4 reasons why you do.
Public relations (PR) is often overlooked by many brands, businesses owners and entrepreneurs. Whether it’s because of the expensive price tag that traditional PR companies come with, or the lack of guaranteed results, many a great opportunity is missed out on due to a lack of PR and a digital footprint.
PR by definition, is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organisations and their publics. It is the perfect way to build trust, credibility and authority, and also to build your digital footprint to position your brand for long term success.
Like many of the clients I’ve personally worked with, you could be missing out on dozens of potential clients. When a prospect see’s your competitors’ articles flooding the first page of google, with yours nowhere in sight, who do you think they’re going to go with? In my opinion, you shouldn’t leave it to chance.
Here’s 3 reasons why PR needs to be a part of your marketing strategy in 2021.
Trust & Social Proof
Competition is at an all time high, and trust is at an all time low. This makes it tough for businesses just starting out, or businesses who have been around a while and have not much to show for it. When it comes to marketing ourselves, people don’t really care how good we say we are – they care about what others say about you.
People associate you with the places where they get the information about you from, which is where psychological biases like social proof come into play. Having PR in the right places builds instant trust with your audience, and gives you and your brand third party credibility and social proof, that you won’t get from screaming the loudest from your own roof.
Ranking in Google
Now I’m not 100% sure how you found this article, however the chances are that you probably found it near the top of the first page of google – am I right? Regardless, having a strong digital footprint is key in a competitive market.
The perfect example I like to use is this: If a potential client were to google you, and then google your biggest competitor, to find they had dozens of articles in notable publications and you had nothing but your facebook page – who do you think people will choose to work with? Just because you have a great business and testimonials, doesn’t mean you’re going to be the pick of the people. Don’t leave it up to chance.
Omnipresence
Now, following on from the last point, having a presence everywhere in 2021 is paramount to success. Do you think big players like Gary Vee are just going to use one platform or marketing channel? Not a chance. They understand how important it is to be everywhere – including the media. Google any of your favourite influencers, and you’ll find their PR everywhere.
As they say, it takes an average of 7+ touchpoints for people to want to work with you, and by showing up just about everywhere they look, the chances are you’re going to be the one top-of-mind when it comes time to purchase.
Increased conversions
One of the biggest trends I’ve noticed in 2021, is companies using their press articles to direct their ads to. These big brands know how much power having “as seen in” or simply a reputable publication logo on their ad is going to be for increasing conversions. The same thing goes for websites, landing pages and funnels – without an as seen in, section you could be missing out on over 40% increases in conversions.
In the competitive environment of business in 2021, you need to do everything you can to stand out. As one of the best PR agencies, our team at Boost Media Agency can get you great press guaranteed, without the ridiculous $4k monthly retainers of most PR companies.
If you’re interested in learning more about how we can help you with this, visit our website here to find out more.
Traditional video on Instagram tends to outperform IGTV videos (Instagram's long-form, immersive format), according to a recent analysis conducted by Social Insider.
The research, which is summarized in an infographic below, was based on an examination of 10,563,463 Instagram posts from 60,737 accounts.
Traditional Instagram videos garner higher view counts, on average, compared with IGTV videos both for small accounts (fewer than 10,000 followers) and for large accounts (more than 100,000 followers). IGTV videos garner higher view counts, on average, for midsize accounts (between 10,000 and 100,000 followers).
Across all account sizes, traditional videos garner a higher average engagement rate (likes and comments) compared with IGTV videos.
Check out the infographic for highlights from the report:
Any company that wants to understand its customers and create better, more helpful experiences should have a customer journey map.
That doesn’t mean every company needs an elaborately designed infographic poster, or a Figma file with 100 different color-coded elements representing each and every action a user takes within your product.
An effective customer journey map is one that promotes empathy and provides a clear vision for improving customer interactions. There are no rules about what, exactly, a visualization of that has to look like.
That being said, there are some excellent customer journey maps out there. We’ve rounded up 144—yes, 144—customer journey mapping templates and examples. Chances are good that the perfect one for your team looks something like one of the CJMs on this list, give or take a few details. We highlighted 31 of the best, and put the rest in a Google Slides deck for easy reference.
Customer journey maps (CJMs) typically include touch points, customer sentiments, pain points, and actions, plotted in sequential order. The goal isn’t just to create a timeline—it’s to encourage empathy and help designers and stakeholders understand how their customers’ needs and feelings fluctuate over the course of their journey. With this shared understanding, teams can better identify opportunities for innovation and improvement.
Your finished map can be fairly simple, like this one:
This is an example of a simple, straightforward customer journey map based on an individual customer’s (or customer persona’s) experience. From Lucidchart.
Or, it can be complex, like the multi-channel journey map made for Rail Europe below, which is notable for its scope—a customer base of “everyone”—and the intricately detailed thought processes and behaviors.
Caption: This experience map is informative, but dense. Depending on your goals, this level of complexity may actually be counterproductive. Image source.
For some audiences, you may even decide to turn your customer journey map into an infographic.
Caption: This customer journey map infographic has both style and substance. Image source.
Why you need a customer journey map
Successful, long-term customer relationships are built on empathy and a solid grasp of customers’ needs and frustrations.
Mapping out the customer journey is a prerequisite for creating a shared understanding of what your customers think, feel, and struggle with as they interact with your brand. A customer journey map can help your teams align around solving known problems, identifying new user pain points, and removing barriers to your customer’s (and therefore your company’s) success.
Every company should do customer journey mapping, but not every company’s customer journey map will look alike or have the same level of detail. A customer journey map that is primarily used by hotel management to optimize touch points with guests, for example, is going to look very different from a map that is meant to help UX designers understand their B2B SaaS users better
Likewise, the CJM you present to design stakeholders may be quite different from the format you choose to show executives fixated on the business’s bottom line.
This customer journey map infographic was made for an Australian company that offers disability employment services. The final customer journey map was a large poster meant to help staff and clients visualize the different stages of the path to employment.
How to create a customer journey map
At a high level, the customer journey mapping process will be fairly similar, regardless of which type of customer journey map you decide to create. We’ll be covering each of the steps in detail in our Field Guide, so we won’t go deep on the how-tos here.
In brief, here are the 8 steps to creating a customer journey map:
For the full step-by-step guide to creating a customer journey map, check out our Field Guide.
The full list of 144 customer journey mapping templates + examples
We searched high and low to find the customer journey map templates and examples to suit just about every use case, software, experience, and design skill level. You can see the full list below. You can also bookmark the Google Slides deck for quick reference.
Customer journey mapping examples by type
No two customer journeys are the same. You already know that, but it bears repeating.
That fact is part of the reason there’s no single best customer journey map example or template. The best journey map for any given situation will depend not only on your customers, but also on your product or service, your team, and the goals you’re hoping to achieve by creating a customer journey map in the first place.
To help you find the right format for your customer journey map, we’ve rounded up some of the best customer journey map examples for different use cases. Keep scrolling for top-notch examples of:
Current state customer journey maps
Future state customer journey maps
Day in the life customer journey maps
Service blueprints
Circular customer journey maps
Other types of UX maps
Current state customer journey maps
As their name suggests, current state customer journey maps help you visualize a user’s experience as it is today. These are fact-based journey maps—to create an accurate current state journey map, you’ll need to start by gathering data around actual, current customer interactions.
Current state mapping is a useful approach when your goal is to identify existing pain points and create a shared understanding of the end-to-end customer experience. A current state map—or at least the research that is required to create one—is also a valuable starting point for a future state map (see below), which focuses more on the customer experience as you’d likeit to be.
This is a relatively simple example of a B2B customer journey map, which focuses on the emotions and typical questions a customer experiences throughout their journey. This map also includes recommendations for interacting with the customer at each stage.
The journey map below is based on the real-life experience of a specific customer, but you could also create a similar persona-based journey map to visualize the nuances of different customer journeys.
In the example above, each stage of the customer journey has been broken down into activities. This level of detail allowed the creators to identify specific (rather than high-level) opportunities for improvement, like merging the domains grants.gov, benefits.gov, and govloans.gov to streamline customer journey.
Future state customer journey maps
While current state maps look at the customer journey as it exists today, future state maps focus on what the customer journey can and should look like in the future. Although data (like that contained in a current state map) is certainly an important input, future state journey maps also involve a fair amount of creative speculation and interpretation. These customer journey maps also focus on customer hopes and wants (future feelings), in addition to experiences and reactions.
Future state journey mapping is a useful approach when your objective is to explore possible customer expectations and to create new experiences and value. Mapping out a future customer journey helps teams align around a common goal.
In the example below, the company has mapped out what they would like or expect their customers to feel in the future. It’s a map of a future, yet-to-be-realized customer journey, including the touchpoints, devices, and environments involved.
Here’s that same format again, used to map out the journey Carnegie Mellon University wants students to have, along with proposed changes to optimize each step.
A future state customer journey map made for Carnegie Mellon University by Iris Tong Wu.
Day in the life customer journey maps
A day in the life map helps you visualize your customer’s entire daily routine—interactions with family, their commute, work meetings, afternoon coffee, etc—regardless of whether or not the activities are related to your company. It should be organized chronologically.
This type of customer journey map is great for providing context and giving you insights into all the thoughts, needs, and pain points a customer experiences throughout their day. You can use a day in the life map to identify moments in a customer’s day when your product or service will be most valuable.
The example below is fairly straightforward. It highlights the actions, thoughts, and feelings of a frequent business traveler over a 12-hour period.
Here’s an interesting example that shows all the activities in a dyslexic child’s typical day. This map not only visualizes the customer’s day (the child’s day, in this case), but also the days of the people they interact with (here, the child’s parent or caregiver and their classmates).
Creative day in the life customer journey map designed by Chiara Galiano.
Service blueprint customer journey maps
A service blueprint is a useful counterpart to a classic CJM. Whereas a customer journey map focuses on the thoughts, needs, and actions of the customer, a service blueprint reflects the perspective of the organization and its employees.
Blueprinting is an ideal approach to experiences that are omnichannel, involve multiple touchpoints, or require a cross-functional effort (that is, coordination of multiple departments).
Essentially, service blueprinting helps visualize all the things that need to happen behind the scenes in order for the customer journey to take place. (Sort of like peeking behind a clock face.)
You may create a blueprint when making organizational or procedural changes, or when trying to pinpoint solutions to particular roadblocks in the customer journey.
The example below shows a typical service blueprint: It’s chronological and hierarchical, and is split into four layers—the customer journey, frontstage employee actions, backstage actions, and supporting processes.
A service blueprint example for an appliance retailer. From NNGroup.
Here’s another, simper example of a service blueprint map showing the behind-the-scenes actions and processes that are needed to support a successful customer journey.
A hotel service blueprint example from Miro. (You can actually download and edit this template with a free Miro account.)
Circular customer journey maps
For some businesses—for example, SaaS companies with a subscription model—it may be useful to visualize the customer journey as a circle or loop. A non-linear map can help reinforce the importance of retention and advocacy for companies that rely strongly on recurring revenue, or for products that are meant to have a strong viral element.
In the diagram below, the stages of the customer journey are shown as a loop, which is annotated with customer activities and emotions.
A customer journey map can also be shown as a circle or flywheel, like this one.
This next example doesn’t include details about the customer’s activities, thoughts, or feelings, but it is notable in that it accounts for many different outcomes—including churn and reevaluation. If these are important considerations for your team, you could adapt this format to provide more insights into the customer’s state of mind at each stage in their journey.
This customer journey map example from Zendesk accounts for customer churn and reconsideration.
Other types of UX maps
In addition to the five categories of customer journey maps covered above, there are two more types of UX maps worth mentioning here: empathy maps and customer experience maps.
An empathy map is a tool used to create a shared understanding around the wants, needs, thoughts, and actions of a certain type of user. While not strictly a prerequisite for creating a customer journey map, you may decide to create an empathy map as part of your journey mapping process.
A customer experience map is used to understand human behavior as it relates to a certain topic or experience, but with no specific business or product in mind. Experience maps help visualize what the average person goes through in order to achieve a certain goal.
Like day in the life maps, customer experience maps provide contextual, anthropological insights that help you better understand your customers as people.
An experience map that visualizes the “generic” experience of pregnancy. From NN/g.
The good news: There are lots of tools available for creating customer journey maps, from popular prototyping software like Figma and Sketch, to dedicated CJM tools like UXPressia or Custellence, to good ol’ Powerpoint and Google Slides.
The better news: There are plenty of customer journey mapping templates available, regardless of the tools you choose.
Sure, you could create one from scratch. But why try to reinvent the wheel? You’ll save time and effort by finding a template that matches your needs and customizing it for a perfect fit.
We’ve rounded up some of the best customer journey map templates to make your search even easier. The simplest templates are listed first, followed by more intricate designs.
1. Current state customer journey map template
Sometimes, all you need is a nice, simple grid. Download this PDF and annotate in your tool of choice, or simply create your own table. You can also print this image out and fill it out with your team.
💾 This template is free to download.
2. Simple customer journey mapping PDF template
This is another ready-made customer journey map template from Nielsen Norman Group to print out, digitally markup, or replicate with your prototyping tool of choice. We like this template because it contains all the most important elements for an effective and actionable journey map.
💾 This template is free to download.
3. Minimalist customer journey grid template
Here is yet another simple journey mapping template that combines the fields from the two examples above in a clean grid format. This template offers a lot of flexibility—you could add visual elements, create a line graph in the feelings row, or keep it text-only, depending on the needs of your team.
💾 This template is free to download.
4. Day in the life customer journey mapping template
This template from HubSpot is another simple grid, made especially for a day in the life journey map. Instead of different journey stages, the columns represent times in the day. HubSpot also offers similar templates for current state, future state, service blueprint, and buyer’s journey mapping.
💾 This template is free to download.
5. Customer journey map template for PowerPoint or Slides
This is an easy-to-edit template for a more visual customer journey map. The centerpiece of this template is the emotional state line graph, but there are also sections for user needs and expectations and customer quotes. What’s great about this template is that you can edit it in PowerPoint or Slides—no design skills needed.
💾 This template is free to download.
6. Flexible customer journey map template for Figma
If Figma is your prototyping tool of choice, you can jumpstart your journey mapping with this editable template. The template is flexible, so you can keep the linear design or use the elements in conjunction with one of the simple grid templates above.
💾 This template is free to download. Figma comes with a free Starter plan, and paid plans start at $12 per editor per month.
FlowMapp offers dedicated tools for several UX deliverables, including customer journey maps. This template, which you can preview here, has pre-built blocks for each section of the customer journey map. We like this template because of the emphasis it places on the voice of the customer, but there are several other options to choose from as well.
💾 Your first FlowMapp project is free. Pricing for a single user starts at $15/month (currently discounted to $8.25/month, billed annually).
8. Circular customer journey map template
Depending on your business model or customers’ behavior, you may find it more useful to visualize the customer journey as a loop or flywheel. This persona-based template does a nice job of depicting both the customer’s fluctuating sentiments, as well as their cyclical journey from consideration to purchase and back again.
💾 This template is actually just a .jpg image, so you’ll need to replicate the layout with your design tool of choice.
9. Offline retail customer journey map template for Sketch
If you’re a Sketch user, we recommend checking out this tidy customer journey mapping template. It’s part of a bundle of four different journey maps, each of which allows for plenty of detail without becoming visually cumbersome.
💾 This template is free to download. Sketch pricing starts at $99 (one-time payment) for individuals, or $9/month per contributor seat for teams.
10. Service blueprint template for Lucidchart
If you want to create a service blueprint as a complement to your customer-focused journey map, we recommend checking out this template from Lucidchart. Like the service blueprint examples in the previous section, the template is divided into four layers, which are separated by lines of interaction and visibility.
💾 This template is free to use as part of Lucidchart’s Free plan, which includes three editable documents and 100+ templates. Individual plans start at $7.95/month.
11. Customer journey layer map template for PowerPoint
This customer journey map format emphasizes the organizational layers responsible for each stage of the journey. This template is one of 36 editable PowerPoint slides included in this pack of CJM templates. There’s a ton of variety—if nothing else, we recommend checking out the slide previews for inspiration!
💾 This template is part of a 36-slide package that costs $15 to download.
12. UXPressia customer journey mapping template for multiple personas
UXPressia is a dedicated platform for creating and collaborating on customer journey maps, impact maps, and personas. They have dozens of templates in their library, organized by use case. This template will help you map out the customer journey as it’s experienced by multiple customer personas.
💾 Your first project with UXPressia is free. After that, pricing starts at $16/month per user, billed annually.
13. SaaS support customer journey map template
This is another template from UXPressia. This CJM template is tailored to a specific use case: the customer support journey of a SaaS customer. You could adapt this template to fit a similar use case, or see if UXPressia's library has a ready-made example for your exact scenario.
💾 Again, your first project with UXPressia is free. After that, pricing starts at $16/month per user, billed annually.
14. Editable customer journey map PDF template
This template is designed to help teams align their customer journey mapping exercise with business needs. There are rows for business goals, KPIs, roles responsible, etc. We love that this template is an editable PDF—it makes it super easy to fill out. Unfortunately, the column and row headers are fixed, so you’d need to make your own version of this template if you want to mix it up.
💾 This template is free to download.
15. Customer journey mapping stencil for Omnigraph, Visio
This one’s a doozy. Available as an Omnigraph stencil, Visio stencil, EPS, or SVG, this customer journey mapping template is best suited for complex journeys with many touchpoints, or for when you need to provide a lot of visual information to your stakeholders.
💾 This template costs $12 to download from the creator on Behance.
