You already know who your target demographics are and what solutions your products or services solve. Even with targeted marketing, it will take an average of 8 marketing touchpoints before the average lead converts. By mapping out their journey to conversion, you can optimize and accelerate the path and time to purchase—and improve the customer experience along the way.
Let’s dive in and take a look at what mapping things out is, why it’s important, and the best customer journey mapping tools on the market.
What Is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer journey map is a visual representation of the overall experience a customer has with a company, product, or service. It helps to identify where the customer is in their path to purchase, what they’re looking for, and how you may be able to meet their needs.
By mapping things out, you can identify:
How to accelerate the path to purchase.
How customers interact with your brand.
Valuable insights into what resonates.
Where and why you are losing leads.
Where and why you are converting leads.
How to provide a better overall experience.
How to build better customer relationships.
Is Mapping the Same Thing as a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel focuses on the stages a lead takes to convert to a customer and a map focuses on the path leads take to conversion. A map is a detailed outline of every step. Kind of like a roadmap, there are many routes to the same destination. The route is rarely a straight line, and not every customer will choose the same route.
The journey varies depending on the type of product or service you sell. The best customer journey mapping tools on the market will curate and automate your precise map, but it looks something like this:
Awareness—a customer learns about you from social media, online marketing, a TV commercial, print marketing, an online article, or word-of-mouth referral.
Consideration—they conduct research to learn more about your brand by reviewing your website, social media, checking online reviews, and more.
Decision—they visit your website, mobile app, or brick-and-mortar location and decide whether to buy, or not to buy.
Loyalty and Retention—once they make a purchase you keep in touch via text, email, social media messaging, phone call, retargeting ads, or direct mail. If they haven’t made a purchase, you showcase your value through the same communication channels.
What Are the Best Customer Journey Mapping Tools?
The tools below will help you build, and depending on the tool, gather existing data to analyze and curate your current customer journey.
Your CRM—if you are already using a CRM, check to see what mapping tools it provides. The added benefit is that it will gather existing consumer data across all of your marketing, sales, and communication channels. At the very least, select a tool that integrates with your CRM.
Microsoft Visio—if you are a startup and don’t yet have sales data, this tool is excellent for creating your predicted map. Once you gather sales data, you can revise and refine your predictions. You could also use PowerPoint to create your initial map.
OmniGraffel—this is an easy drag-and-drop interface designed to create a variety of workflows. From journey mapping to your talent pipeline, innovation mapping, and even product prototyping. The only downside is that it is designed specifically for iOS devices, so it doesn’t support all Mac and Android devices.
Dreamdata—designed specifically to visualize touchpoints, this tool gathers data from Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, Capterra, and more. It delivers powerful insights to help you scale your lead channels.
These are some of the best customer journey mapping tools on the market today, but there are many other options to explore.
Check back to the TEK REMEDY blog soon for additional small business growth tips!
Keyword: best customer journey mapping tools