Welcome to our microlearning on Customer Journey Mapping. Here, we’ll simplify the essentials, from the Persona Canvas to 'Jobs to Be Done’, helping you boost customer engagement and drive business growth, no matter your experience level. Let’s begin!
Hi, I’m Alain. Connect with me on Linkedin to share ideas and keep the conversation going!
Customer journey mapping is crucial for understanding customer behaviour and refining marketing strategies. To begin journey mapping, first make sure you know the Persona you’re focusing on and understand their needs and goals using the JTBD (Jobs to Be Done) framework:
Understanding the Persona Canvas
First, let's talk about the persona canvas. This tool is all about knowing who we are communicating with and what they aim to achieve, which forms the backbone of your strategies. Here are its critical components:
- Demographics: Know your audience’s age, location, and job role.
- Needs and Goals: Identify what your persona is aiming to achieve.
- Behaviours: Understand daily habits and shopping patterns.
- Online and Offline Places: Know where they spend time both digitally and physically.
- Personality Types: Assess whether they are introverted, extroverted, risk-averse, etc.
Leveraging the ‘Jobs to Be Done’ Framework
Moving forward, we utilise the ‘Jobs to Be Done’ framework. It’s about understanding the tasks our customers need to accomplish with our product or service. This includes identifying their struggles, the triggers that lead them to seek solutions, and the outcomes they desire. It involves:
- Identifying the Job: Understand the customer’s struggles and needs.
- Recognising the Trigger: The moment they decide they need a solution.
- Assessing the Outcome: How they feel after the job is done, using your product or service.
The Pirate Funnel (AAARRR) Approach
The Pirate Funnel is a comprehensive method to trace and enhance various stages of the customer journey. It’s essential to measure each stage accurately to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement. It consists of:
- Awareness: How customers discover your product.
- Acquisition: The point where they start engaging with your product.
- Activation: The initial experience that hooks them.
- Retention: Ensuring they return and stay engaged.
- Referral: When they start recommending your product.
- Revenue: The ultimate goal – converting engagement into sales.
In the dynamic world of customer journey mapping, understanding the distinct pathways in various industries is key to crafting strategies that resonate deeply with your audience. Let’s explore how different sectors approach customer journey mapping, drawing from practical examples. These insights can be a foundation for you to adapt and refine based on the unique needs and goals of your customer personas.
App Industry Journey:
Remember, real-life examples resonate best. Include:
Awareness: Users often find apps through targeted searches in app stores or through digital ads on platforms like Instagram.
Engagement: The journey continues as users interact with the app, often influenced by how well it addresses their pain points.
Conversion: This stage is about turning interest into action, whether it's a sign-up or a purchase within the app.
Retention and Referral: Here, the focus shifts to keeping the user engaged and encouraging them to share the app with others.
Revenue Generation: The ultimate goal, where engaged users contribute to the app’s financial success, either through purchases or subscription models.
B2B Lead Generation:
Outreach: Begins with content marketing, webinars, or direct outreach to potential clients.
Lead Nurturing: Involves educating potential clients about the service and its benefits.
Conversion: Focuses on tailoring proposals to the specific needs of the client, leading to a deal.
Post-Sale: Ongoing support and check-ins to maintain a strong client relationship.
E-commerce:
In one of my webinars, I highlighted how each industry requires a unique approach to customer journey mapping. By understanding these distinct pathways, you can tailor your strategies to effectively engage with your audience, ensuring a deeper connection and a more successful customer journey in your respective field. Below is a video run-through of the funnels and a direct link to the board for easy access and reference.
Sean Ellis would agree that understanding the customer’s journey is fundamental for learning about their preferences and pain points, which is essential for driving growth and innovation in marketing strategies.
“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
- Sean Ellis, “Hacking Growth,”
Incorporating AI tools, such as ChatGPT, brings a new dimension of intelligence and efficiency to customer journey mapping. These AI systems can analyse vast amounts of data, offering nuanced insights and suggestions to optimise each stage of the customer journey. To illustrate this, let’s consider a practical example of how creating ChatGPT playbooks can transform the mapping and improvement process:
Example: ChatGPT Playbooks for an E-Commerce Store:
Imagine an e-commerce store specialising in eco-friendly home products. The store wants to enhance its customer journey to improve user experience and increase sales. Here’s how a ChatGPT playbook could assist:
Data Analysis and Insight Generation:
- The ChatGPT playbook is first fed with customer interaction data across various touchpoints – website visits, social media engagement, customer service interactions, and purchase history.
- The AI analyses this data to identify patterns and trends. For example, it might uncover that a significant number of potential customers drop off at the product comparison stage.
Strategy Optimisation:
- Based on the insights, the ChatGPT playbook suggests specific improvements. In this case, it might recommend enhancing the product comparison feature on the website with more detailed information and user-friendly navigation.
- The playbook could also propose targeted content strategies for social media, focusing on educating customers about the environmental benefits of the products to strengthen brand loyalty.
Customer Persona Refinement:
Using AI, the playbook helps refine customer personas by analysing feedback, reviews, and interaction data. This could reveal, for example, that a major customer segment is highly environmentally conscious and values transparency about product sourcing.
Journey Mapping and Improvement:
- The ChatGPT playbook assists in mapping out the refined customer journey for each persona. For the identified segment, it suggests adding a section on the website detailing the sustainable sourcing of products and highlighting this aspect in email marketing.
- The playbook can simulate potential customer responses to these changes, providing an early indication of their effectiveness.
Iterative Testing and Learning:
- As changes are implemented, the ChatGPT playbook continues to monitor customer interactions, providing ongoing feedback and suggestions for refinement.
- It can help set up A/B tests on the website, tracking metrics like engagement, time spent on pages, and conversion rates to continually refine the customer journey.
Having delved into the Pirate Funnel framework, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and create your own playbook. Next, we’ll dive into a hands-on exercise, enabling you to develop a tailored Pirate Funnel playbook, aligning each stage with your business’s unique customer journey.
Use the following prompt as your guide to start crafting your custom Pirate Funnel playbook:
"Hello ChatGPT, I’m working on setting up a Pirate Funnel playbook for my business and need your assistance. To start, let me explain the Pirate Funnel framework, which consists of six stages:
Awareness: Where the user first learns about your product or service, typically landing on your website or encountering your brand.
Acquisition: The user takes an initial step, like signing up for a newsletter or visiting a product page.
Activation: The crucial 'WOW' moment when the user realises the value of what you’re offering.
Retention: Strategies to keep users engaged and repeatedly coming back.
Referrals: Encouraging users to share your product or service with others, either organically or through incentives.
Revenue: When the user transitions to a paying customer.
Each stage in the Pirate Funnel is important and can vary based on the industry and persona involved. For each stage, there should be one key metric that matters most.
Based on this framework, I need your help developing strategies for each stage of the funnel for my business, which is [insert brief business description and target customer]. Here’s what I need for each stage:
Awareness Stage: Suggest creative ways to increase brand awareness among our target audience, considering both online and offline channels.
Acquisition Stage: Recommend tactics for engaging potential customers and guiding them to take the next step, like signing up or exploring our products.
Activation Stage: Provide ideas for creating that 'WOW' moment for our users, ensuring they see the immediate value of our offering.
Retention Stage: Advise on effective methods for keeping our customers consistently engaged with our product or service.
Referral Stage: Suggest strategies to encourage our satisfied customers to refer others to us.
Revenue Stage: Offer insights on converting engaged users into paying customers, including pricing strategies and upselling techniques.
Please structure your response to include specific tactics for each stage and suggest potential metrics for measuring the success at each step of the Pirate Funnel.”
This prompt will guide ChatGPT to develop a comprehensive Pirate Funnel strategy for your business, tailored to each stage with clear objectives and measurement criteria.
As we reach the end of our exploration into customer journey mapping, it's crucial to recognise the transformative impact this process can have on your business. The essence of journey mapping lies in its ability to provide deep, actionable insights into how customers interact with your brand at every touchpoint. This understanding is vital for tailoring experiences that resonate with your audience, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
We’ll leave you with 3 actionable steps:
Regularly Update Your Customer Journey Maps: Continuously gather data and feedback to keep your maps current. This means routinely analysing customer interactions, market trends, and feedback to ensure your strategies stay relevant and effective.
Implement Feedback Loops: Actively seek and incorporate customer feedback into your journey mapping. Use surveys, reviews, and direct customer interactions as a source of valuable insights to refine and improve each touchpoint.
Test and Adapt Strategies: Employ A/B testing to trial different approaches in your customer journey. Monitor the results closely and be ready to adapt based on what the data tells you, ensuring your strategies are always aligned with customer preferences and behaviours.
Hi, I'm Alain. Connect with me on Linkedin to share ideas and keep the conversation going!