Build your reputation around your customer experience
The importance of customer journeys in brand communication
Today, experience is everything. It is physical, digital, and it needs to be authentic. The way a customer interacts with a brand is becoming increasingly complex, making it more difficult to always ensure a great customer experience. The more complex or inconsistent experiences we have with a brand, the less likely we are to complete the journey with them. The trick is finding out how to stand out amidst the noise and forge meaningful connections with audiences to drive brand equity.
One way to create consistent and engaging brand touchpoints is through customer journey maps. Understanding the customer journey has become paramount for brands seeking to thrive rather than merely survive. Let's delve into why customer journeys are crucial and how brands can effectively map and utilise them to guide future brand communications.
According to Salesforce:
- 88% of customers now consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.
- 71% of consumers switched brands at least once over the past year
- 73% of consumers expect brands to understand their needs and preferences
What are customer journey maps?
Customer journey maps are built around singular crucial experiences or by mapping touchpoints, barriers, and motivators to a user persona. They are visual representations of how your customers interact with your brand – encapsulating the entirety of a consumer’s interactions across all touchpoints, whether physical or digital, internal or external. It is a mutually beneficial tool that benefits brands and their customers.
Maps are unique to your business, whether that’s B2B, B2C, e-commerce, or retail. It is a comprehensive plan for engaging with your clients and building a relationship that will last, mapping out the best path for the typical customer journey. Every time you buy a takeaway coffee from somewhere like Starbucks your experience at each stage has been mapped to the letter, to ensure a positive and consistent experience.
Customer journey maps help brands to understand and streamline each touchpoint along the user journey, offering profound insights into customer behaviours and preferences, identifying opportunities to improve the brand experience, and increase brand equity and loyalty. It enables brands to emotively and authentically connect with audiences around the world (often known as ‘moments of truth’) and tell their brand story consistently across all channels. Creating unique, engaging experiences that resonate in a way that no other competitor can replicate, and enabling brands to strategically position their company for future success.
Why they are important?
- Understanding the customer:
By mapping out the customer journey, brands gain valuable insights into consumer behaviour, preferences, pain points, and motivations. This understanding allows brands to tailor their communications and offerings to better meet customer needs. - Make informed strategic business decisions:
By identifying touchpoints and customer sentiments at each stage, brands can align their resources and initiatives to meet evolving consumer needs effectively. - Experiential personalisation:
Brands can tailor their communications to resonate with individual preferences, cultures, and pain points. - Enhancing customer engagement:
By optimising touchpoints and pre-emptively addressing pain points, brands create a seamless experience that builds trust and loyalty among consumers. Allow you to meet your customers' needs and turn paper personas into real brand advocates. - Driving revenue:
Strategic alignment with the customer journey ensures that marketing efforts are targeted and impactful. By delivering the right message at the right time through the right channels, brands maximise their return on investment and drive conversion rates.
How to implement customer journeys for effective brand communications
- Bespoke messaging:
Craft messaging that speaks directly to customers at each stage of their journey. Provide relevant information and solutions that address their specific needs and concerns. - Seamless omnichannel experience:
Embrace an omni-channel approach to ensure consistency across all touchpoints and channels. Whether consumers interact with your brand online or offline, maintain a cohesive brand identity and messaging strategy. - Personalised experiences:
Personalise communication and experiences at each touchpoint. Deliver relevant content, recommendations, and offers based on customer preferences, behaviours, geography and past interactions. - Predictive engagement:
Anticipate consumer needs and proactively address potential pain points along their journey. By offering relevant solutions and support before consumers even realise they need it, you demonstrate empathy and foster trust. - Performance evaluation:
Continuously monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) related to brand communication and customer engagement. Use data-driven insights to refine your strategies and optimise the customer experience over time. - Integrate feedback loops:
Continuously gather feedback from customers to evaluate the effectiveness of your communications and identify areas for improvement. - Collaborate across teams:
Foster collaboration between marketing, sales, customer service, and other relevant teams to ensure alignment and consistency in brand communication. Share insights from customer journey mapping and collaborate on initiatives to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint.
Ask yourself three questions…
What are your key customer moments of truth?
What can you do better at each stage?
How can you turn each stage into a sales opportunity?
We help you understand the entire journey, building the correct messaging and experience for the right impact at the right time.
Click here to continue the conversation or contact @Suzannah Meddeman (McGavin)
Resources:
https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/content-marketing/customer-journey-map-definition-benefits-examples#:~:text=The%20customer%20journey%20map%20is,how%20you%20think%20they%20do. Article from 2021
https://get.nice.com/2024-CX-Trends
https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map
https://www.hotjar.com/customer-journey-map/benefits/
https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/customer-journey-mapping/
https://www.sas.com/en_gb/insights/articles/marketing/why-is-customer-journey-mapping-important.html
From Adobe:
https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map#what-is-a-customer-journey-map