“So I guess I’ll start my business by creating an Instagram account cause that’s where everyone seemed to be starting out…”
“Oh I might need to be on TikTok too cause the trend is there and people had been saying there are abundance of reach on that platform.”
“Okay… I’m getting clients but it’s so hard to manage them on all platforms!”
If you can relate to any of the above dialogue, you might need to relook into your business’s customer journey.
Customer journey refers to the series of interactions a customer has with a business, from the moment they first hear about you to the point where they make a purchase and beyond.
This post is all about getting your customer journey right and let you understand why it’s so important to get this right from the start.
I promise you that this is not just another business “planning activity” that you need to do, but a strategy that will encompass your business moving forward.
First, let’s talk why customer journey is very important to small businesses.
The Importance of Customer Journey for Small Business
Did you know 73% of consumers say that customer experience is a deciding factor when making purchase decisions?
And that a business can increase its revenue by 10-15% by improving its customer experience?
Customer experience will first come from the customer journey that you had set up.
It isn’t really something you can control nor it is a linear process that all your customers will go through. However, when you understand their journey, it’s much easier for you to come up with a better and stronger digital strategy.
And, you also will get understand what kind of content to create and what platforms to focus on.
“So, if it’s not something I can control, why do I need to care about it?”
Because if you don’t try to even map out the customer journey that you wish your customers to go through, you won’t be able to identify opportunities to improve the experience and ultimately drive more sales.
You might be churning out content every week on Instagram, getting a lot of views but no high quality lead.
Perhaps Instagram isn’t the platform where your target audience search for your product or services.
If you’re a small business, it’s super important to get this right. If not, you’ll be stretching yourself too thin on all platforms instead of focusing specific platforms that will give higher impact to your business.
Let’s start with the first step you need to master.
Understand Your Target Audience and Their Behavior
To create an effective customer journey, it’s essential for small businesses to understand their target audience and their behavior.
This means doing research to understand who your customers are, what motivates them, and how they interact with your business.
You need to brainstorm on how you will be able to be visible to them. It’ll be their first touchpoint to getting to know your business. It might be through paid social, whereby you’re running ads to your target audience, highlighting their pain points.
Or, you might want to be there when they are searching for a solution that your company provides.
Let’s say you’re a wedding planner.
Your target audience in a broader sense will be those that are getting married. Where do they go or what do they do first when they want to plan their wedding?
It might be looking for a complete wedding checklist to make their planning easier. Where will they be looking? Maybe on Google or perhaps on Pinterest.
Can you then try to focus on those 2 platforms when it comes to acquiring new leads?
Something for you to ponder.
Map Out Your Customer Journey with Your End Goal in Mind
Once you have a good understanding of your audience, it’s time to map out the customer journey based on your business’s end goal.
This means identifying the touchpoints where your customers interact with your business, such as your website, social media pages, your email newsletter, and so on.
By understanding these touchpoints, you can design experiences that move customers through the journey towards your end goal – purchase.
Let’s continue with the wedding planner example.
Your business end goal will be to get more clients and ultimately more sales. If you reserve engineer your customer journey, it might look something like below:
A new lead from Pinterest > Opted into newsletter from lead magnet > Invite them to see your work on your social media pages > Get them to view your new promo packages on your website > Landing page with a calendar booking for a consultation call > Send customized package > Booking a wedding package with you
Their journey might not be as linear as this, but you understand that your every interaction with them will lead them to move to the next stage with your business.
Reduce friction for customers to convert
Reducing friction for customers is a key part of creating a successful customer journey.
Friction can be anything that makes it harder for a customer to complete a purchase, such as a confusing website, a long checkout process, or a lack of transparency around pricing.
By reducing these barriers, you can make it easier for customers to convert and improve the overall experience.
I’m not trying to shade any business that’s still managing their leads from WhatsApp, but if you want your business to be bigger, to perform better, to give better customer satisfaction, you need to move away from WhatsApp.
It doesn’t mean your customers can’t be in touch with you via WhatsApp. It’s more about you getting a better CRM system so you can manage your leads effortlessly!
What do I mean by this?
If your leads are coming in via WhatsApp, you might not be able to reply them on time. Get a tool that can help you with this. I recommend Privyr.
If your leads are taking forever to transfer the booking money to you, send them a link where they can instantly make a payment via bank transfer or credit card payment. I recommend Yezza for this.
A lot of these small steps that you are asking your customers to go through can be seen as a friction. Find a way to make it easier for your leads to become a paying customer.
Measure and continuously improve your customer journey
This means tracking metrics such as your traffic growth, number of subscribers, engagement rate, customer satisfaction, retention rates, and revenue growth to understand how well you’re serving your customers and where you can make improvements.
By collecting feedback and data from your customers, you can identify areas where you may be falling short and make changes to improve the overall experience.
I often get questioned by my leads on how can they improve their marketing or content or copywrite, etc.
But the truth is, as a business owner, you need to know where your leakage is. Only then you’ll get to improve the whole customer journey and make sure each lead will be able to move to your end goal.