Close your eyes and imagine a customer journey map: if you are familiar with marketing books, websites and magazines, you must have seen plenty of them.
And in all likelihood, they were fairly linear paths that ended in the purchase. Structuring a customer journey in this way, or thinking of the customer as a 'buying machine' may be effective in the short term, but it doesn't really add value to your brand.
But let's start from the beginning: what is a customer journey?
It is the path your customers take in contact with the brand and it includes all the possible touchpoints they connect with. It would be reductive, therefore, to limit ourselves to those touchpoints aimed at mere purchase: the relationship between customer and brand is in fact made up of many small moments that are equally important to offer the customer a satisfying experience.
Five tricks to build an effective customer journey.
- All roads matter
The first thing to bear in mind is that there is no single possible customer journey.
The consumer experience must be built with an omnichannel logic, which enhances all possible touchpoints. Remember that in order to cultivate customer loyalty, it is important to build smart paths that take the customer out of social media and into proprietary platform.
- Always be recognisable
In the relationship with a brand it is important to recognise its personality: the customer experience must be consistent across all touchpoints.
- Traffic monitoring
Tracking roads not only is important in traffic monitoring, but also in loyalty marketing: knowing which routes are most frequented, analysing routes and conversions allows you to re-calibrate your strategy on the real needs of the consumer and also to respond in real time to their actions with marketing automation tools.
- Put your customer first
An effective customer experience involves engagement and gratification mechanisms: a customer who feels challenged and rewarded interacts more willingly with the brand, forging an even closer relationship with it.
- Be creative
Everyone likes a good surprise, including your customers.
In the different phases of the customer journey that you build, provide for some surprising and pleasant elements, perhaps customised on the basis of the profiling data collected.
The customer journey, in short, is not a single road, but a complex map, which the brand must be able to draw with accuracy and a touch of creativity.
In marketing, as in life, it is not just about getting there, but about enjoying the journey.
