“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”
– Seth Godin
What is a Customer Journey
A customer journey is a process or journey, that a customer goes through while becoming accustomed to a product, service, brand, or company. Similar to deepening a friendship, the customer journey is a gradual build-up of trust.
Stages
- Awareness
- Engagement
- Subscribe
- Convert
- Excite
- Ascension
- Advocate
- Promote
Why It’s Important
The more you understand your customer, the better you can serve them. When you understand the questions, fears, frustrations, and feelings of resistance that commonly arise while interacting with your product and company, you can prepare.
The end goal is user satisfaction because if someone is satisfied, chances are they’ll come back.
Additionally, the more you understand the customer’s journey, the more you can find unique opportunities for innovation. If you recognize the need for an adjacent product or a new feature, you can jump on that opportunity quickly.
Clarifying Your Brand’s Customer Journey
I’m going to show you the common questions raised at each phase, and underneath, you’ll see some deeper questions which will help you clarify your product’s specific customer journey.
- What is your brand story?
- How are you building brand awareness?
- Within the first 30-seconds of interaction, what do you want to communicate to an individual?
- What are you known for?
- In what circles are you known — how did you come to be known in these circles?
- What tools and resources are you using to build awareness?
- What platforms do you currently utilize? Why did you choose these?
- Where do you receive the most engagement?
- What types of engagement are you participating in?
- Who are you engaging with consistently? Why these people?
- What platforms do you under-utilize? Why?
- Who do you want to engage with?
- What are you doing to target/reach the people you want to engage with?
- How often are you engaging across our different platforms?
- How many followers do you have on each platform? (what is your reach)
- What are your most viewed and liked posts vs least viewed and liked?
- What value do you bring, even to non-customers?
- Where do you offer consistent value?
- What do you offer in exchange for information?
- What do you promise to do with that information?
- How many people take up your different offers?
- Do you have a strategy for adding consistent value?
- What is the sequence that follows directly after they give their information?
- Have they made micro-commitments prior?
- What is the exchange (money for X)?
- How are you framing the value they will receive?
- What was the journey leading up until this point?
- How many steps do they have to take before they get here?
- How easy are you making the checkout/conversion process?
- How legitimate does everything look?
- What do they believe about what they will receive? (what will it do for them)
- What happens directly after they commit?
- What is the promise of value?
- How quickly do they receive that value?
- How do you build anticipation?
- What do you give them beyond what they expected?
- Do they value the extra value? if so, why, if not, why not?
- What do you communicate with this extra value?
- How do you keep them engaged?
- How do you communicate your attentiveness?
- Did you give them what you promised?
- What else did you give?
- Was it a great experience?
- Have you been consistent?
- How do you communicate your appreciation for advocates?
- Where are people advocating for you?
- What is the consistent thing that is being said about you?
- Are you a reliable source of value?
- What can others promise about you?
- How do you reward promotions?
- Where are you promoted most frequently?
- How do you build off of/utilize promotions?