This blog text is about mapping the customer journey and how to do it in a simple way. This text also explores the importance ofi social media in marketing. I think that these are important things to know, if you want your business to succeed. People are using their phones all the time and most of the time this includes social media. That is why it’s important to know how to use that channel for the good of your company. Okay, here we go.
Mapping the customer journey starts from the initial contact and continues through the process of engagement up until the formation of a realtionship that lasts. There can be two kinds of examinations. The study can be about the whole journey of a customer or it can focus one thing only. No matter what part we investigate, this tool gives information about customers feelings about a particular service or product. It also gives information of what motivates the customer and how they interact with the service or product. Simple customer journey map includes:
- Engage–the first contact from the customer through different channels (seeing a product in a shop, advertising, recommendation).
- Purchase–Customer buys product or service.
- Use–customer uses service or product.
- Share–customer shares his or hers experience (directly, via online forums, recommendation websites).
- Complete–a chance that the customer uses or buys service or product again or not.
This is the simple model that several companies can use for their own purposes. However planning the customer journey map is only the starting point when investigating the digital experience. There has to be understanding what customer is thinking. There can be different kinds of touching points in comany´s maps. Each touching point needs to be scruitinised so that can be understood what customers are thinking.
I think that many companies use this kind of journey map, altough of course every company has their own way of using touching points. This kind of marketing plan is useful, if you need to have new customers, but for example a restaurant in a small town has its regular customers and all advertising happens in Facebook. Even though there are many of pages that sell you visibility in Google or somewhere else, the company can be found without these services.
Key moments of truth happends when the customer is buying something. These keymoments are:
- Stimulus–happends when digital technologies can be applied to direct clients to a business
- Zero moment of truth–A client finds out that he or she has the need and goes for a search through different kinds of websites.
- First moment of truth– The client tries the product or service during the purchase. On this stage the seller can sell more actions, products, serves.
- Second moment of truth–This happens after the customer has already purchased service or product.
- Ultimate moment of truth–The experience is shared on social media.
Through social media companies can contact directly to possible clients. Social media pages must be engaging and they need to be maintained. Also advertising can happen in the social media pages. I must confess that I have thought that what’s going on here when there are shown things that I may have watched somewhere else. There is always a feeling that somebody is watching me like the 80’s song says and in some way that is very true nowadays.
For this blog I used the webinare “Tourism Business Portal. The Digital Customer Experience. If you want to learn more about this webinare, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/VACTTLqH9fI