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Week 59 |
This is not a map of what your brand does. It’s a map of what your audience is thinking, feeling, doing and encountering in regards to your product or brand.
1 SKILL TO LEARN
A customer journey map is a visual roadmap of every step your audience takes with a brand, product or service, from first awareness through purchase. It’s written from the perspective of your customer, not your brand. They’re useful for identifying pain points and opportunities that can help you reach a specific goal.
That goal determines the altitude of your map. If you’re trying to improve the overall brand experience, map the customer’s entire relationship with the brand. If you’re trying to improve the launch or performance of a specific product, zoom in on the journey surrounding that. For a new product, that means understanding how people navigate the category today and identifying where your product could naturally enter the picture. Map only as much of the journey as you need to solve the problem at hand.
These maps tend to look different depending on who is making them. They can be incredibly intricate or fairly straightforward. Personally, I prefer simple. Fewer variables makes for a more powerful document; one that’s easier to understand, share and use. With that in mind, below are the ingredients needed for a customer journey map:
Goal: Your overarching brand or product goal that the customer journey map will support.
Audience: Who are you trying to connect with, at the highest-level. Ground yourself in any existing persona work. And if you don’t have an audience persona, this post can help you.
Phases: The major stages your customer moves through. Start with a marketing funnel, then rename the stages to reflect how people actually move through your category. For example, a hotel journey might be dreaming (awareness) → planning (consideration) → booking (conversion) → staying & returning (retention).
Job To Be Done: What your audience is trying to achieve at each stage.
Think: What’s going through their head. What are they wondering, considering, questioning or telling themselves at each stage? Ideally, write these almost like quotes; e.g.“Is this actually worth the money?”
Feel: How your audience feel at every stage of the marketing funnel. Dramatize it. Think of this in terms of peaks and valleys. Use research, speak to people you love, and/or consider how you’ve felt if you’ve ever been in this situation.
Do: The high-level action(s) your customer takes at each stage.
Touchpoints: The moments and places along the journey where your audience encounters your brand OR where your brand could meaningfully show up because what you offer is relevant or useful.
