Do you need to increase conversions for your startup? Discover how mapping out the customer journey can help you optimize engagement and ROI.
As a B2B startup business, it can be difficult to fully grasp the minds of your customers. You can spend hours dwelling on why a customer spends so long on your website without converting or why it’s taking them several steps to take a final action. Whatever the confusion, the root cause could be that you don’t have a full understanding of your customer journey.
Whether it involves learning about your brand through social media or receiving a transactional ‘thank you’ email after filling out a form, your customer journey includes many steps. Mapping and optimizing these steps allow you to influence every stage in your lead funnel to increase your ROI and engagement.
However, with only four in 10 B2B companies prioritizing the customer journey, building an effective map gives you a competitive advantage within the consumer landscape. How does a mapping framework help you visualize the customer experience? Let’s dive into how a customer journey map can lead to big results for your startup business.
Quick takeaways:
- A journey map helps you visualize your customer experience and interactions with your brand.
- Understanding your customer’s emotions, actions, and pain points through a journey will allow you to engage and influence them more efficiently.
- Re-evaluate your journey map over time to keep delivering an exceptional experience that drives conversions.
What Is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the process a prospective customer goes through to achieve your end objective. The map gives you a deeper understanding of your prospect’s motivations and pain points so you can more effectively meet their needs. With a comprehensive customer map, you’ll be more effective at engaging and converting your customers.
However, understanding the journey isn’t simple — especially when you have other stakeholders involved in the process. For startups, it is beneficial to develop a visual diagram for your team that outlines customer touchpoints and areas of friction.
Why Is Customer Journey Mapping Important?
Many startups are working with limited resources and experience immense pressure to meet annual objectives. For these reasons, you may think focusing on an experience map isn’t worth your time. However, breaking down the process step by step will maximize your overall customer success rate.
If you’re not sold on the idea yet, consider the following benefits of mapping out the customer journey:
- Utilize a more effective inbound marketing and sales strategy.
- Discover new target audiences who are more apt to engage with your brand.
- Empower your customer service team with better data.
- Increase your customer retention rate and ROI.
- Develop a customer-focused mindset throughout your startup.
Build an Effective Customer Journey for Your B2B Sales Strategy
A traditional customer journey is no longer a linear path from point A to B. For B2B startups trying to earn new business, your journey will include multi-channel, cyclical paths that will need robust visualizations for your team to utilize. To map out your customer journey, start with the following steps:
Set Clear Objectives
With any business initiative, setting attainable goals will help keep you focused. What objectives will the map help you achieve? Who are you targeting? What’s the main action?
Once you have these answers established, you can build buyer profiles that represent your average customer and will act as the focal point of your map. Use this opportunity to establish critically-important demographics and psychographics.
1. Dive Deep and Highlight your Profiles
With your profiles in hand, you need to use valuable customer feedback to better develop your brand. Your research should focus on actual prospects or customers so you have a deeper understanding of their real experience.
Focus on asking a few targeted questions:
- How did you hear about our company?
- What attracted you to our company?
- How do you choose which solutions to use?
- Do you prefer functionality over price?
- Have you ever required customer support?
These questions will give you a baseline for your journey map and need to be re-evaluated over time to ensure you solve customer challenges.
2. Determine the Touchpoints
Your prospective customers can interact with your brand through multiple channels. Based on your feedback, list out all the current and future touchpoints your prospects receive. Touchpoints may include:
- Website
- Social media
- Email marketing
- Reviews
- Paid and organic search
- Sales outreach
Touchpoints will give you insight into where strengths and potential gaps exist. For example, are there unexpected touchpoints that are turning away users? Are there too many steps, making the process complicated?
Identify Map Formatting
So, what should your map look like? Your journey map will be unique to your particular business objectives. When planning the format and visual elements, you have three main types to choose from:
- Current state: Visualizes your customers’ current actions and emotions while engaging with your brand.
- Day in the life: Visualizes your customers’ current actions and emotions they experience throughout the day, regardless of your brand.
- Future state: Visualizes your customers’ future actions and options when they engage with your brand.
4. Assess the Necessary Resources
It’s important to note that your customer journey won’t just influence your sales and marketing teams. It will affect nearly every part of your business, including customer service, information technology, and more. You’ll want to take inventory of your existing resources and what you will need to optimize the customer experience moving forward.
For example, your map may highlight flaws within your customer service team. You might notice that your team isn’t properly equipped with the right education or tools. Utilizing your map, you can advise that your startup should invest in better service tools or build an FAQ page to answer common inquiries.
5. Experience the Customer Journey Yourself
Now that you’ve built an accurate customer map, you need to test the results. Figuratively follow the journey of each of your profiles through your social media channels, website, email marketing, and elsewhere.
Your findings should give you a better sense of where you should adjust your map or channels to support customer needs. Whether it’s updating a call-to-action button or improving product descriptions, small changes within the experience can dissolve pain points and increase your conversion rate.
Building a Customer Journey Map for Your Startup
After developing and testing your customer journey map, you’re not done yet. Sure, you’ve gotten more insight into your customer’s motivations and solved their challenges. However, it’s essential to embrace a proactive and agile approach as you move forward with your brand development. As your startup continues to evolve, you should build new profiles, ask your customers for feedback, and adjust the journey as needed to keep meeting objectives.
Ready to get started? Target Customer Profile Workbook to build deeper customer insights today.