How to optimize your marketing funnel for customer journey?

9 in every 10 marketers would find it hard to confirm that every marketer leverages the same strategy. 

A marketing funnel isn’t a one-size-fit strategy but tailored to how your customer buys. Do you understand your customers well? If yes, then you can easily create experiences that help improve the customer experience.

A customer journey is all about “How can I help my customer achieve goals along with achieving mine?”

The blog is an effort to help you optimize your marketing funnel for gaining the most from your marketing.

Do you wish to revolutionize the way you market? READ THE BLOG.

Design a smooth journey for your customer

If you are new to the market, you need to know this. A customer/prospect just doesn’t buy a product like that. They don’t like jumping directly from A-Z but A-B-C-D...and so on. And customer journey is the pathway that aims at empowering, enlightening, and exciting the prospect at every step of conversion to a potential buyer.

This is why you need to be backed by a solid customer journey map and create unforgettable and engaging experiences for your prospects. It’s time to create a marketing funnel for your ideal customers.  How?

Let’s get started!

What is a marketing funnel?

A marketing funnel is a series of stages that a customer passes through before finally purchasing the product. The funnel helps the marketers in attracting the particular segment of the audience utilizing the right marketing strategy, for example, blogs, landing pages, ads, etc.

You might be thinking when a customer journey begins? The customer journey begins right from the point when a user lands on your website. Each action on your website is an interaction with your brand online.  

Does customer journey ever end? 

Yes, it can end if the company fails to walk on the promises and is no longer there to guide them. The fact here is best marketers manage customer journeys in a way that develops into a never-ending relationship. A customer or user journey map can streamline processes and provide customers with a consistent experience with a brand.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience a customer has with you. Under this, a customer is more likely to engage with your brand at different touchpoints like social media, blog posts, or through your website.

By creating a clear visualization of every possible way, a customer can interact with your brand, a customer journey map helps in keeping your audience engaged at every step.

How to create a customer Journey Map?

Your customer journey might be tailored to your business, but it gives results only if it is defined according to the customer preferences. For this, you need to talk to your customers. Know who your audience is.

Without having a complete blueprint of your customer, you can’t define your customer journey map. The primary step in creating a customer journey will help you understand it better. It begins from the point where a customer shows interest in your product to the final purchase.

How to optimize your marketing funnel for customer journey?

A step-by-step guideline to optimize marketing funnel

Step 1: Create a customer Avatar/ Profile

It is needless to say that the one looking forward to converting leads into customers must be having different goals and aspirations from the one who is finding it hard to retain customers.

Before you take your ideal customer from point A to B, it is important to design a customer avatar. Create your problem statement by undertaking the following

• Who- ideal customer
• What- what they want
• Where- where they are facing the problem
• Ideal solution for them
• Ideal solution for your brand

While framing a customer avatar for your customer ensure to consider a single problem your prospect is facing and a solution that would benefit him the most.

Key elements to undertake while designing a customer Avatar are: 

• Demographics – (Age, occupation, interests, gender, education, etc.)
• Fears and frustrations (challenges they face)
• Desires/wants (what is their ultimate desire)
• Key purchase drivers (reason for buying)
• Before and after stage (Transition from (before using your product to after using the product)
• Good Vs. Evil (Psychological status)

Create this customer Avatar considering a single segment of customers and bifurcate it into different wants, challenges, and fear they share. It will help you understand your customer better and personalize your campaigns.

(To gather information, you can use Google Analytics, survey, Facebook analytics, forums, etc.)

Step 2: Identify the problem (awareness stage) (Top of the funnel Stage)

Once you know who your customer is, trace the points and identify the right track to address the problem. For suppose, he is experiencing issues in converting leads, explore the reasons why it is happening so and design your customer journey funnel to address that problem.

Research what other issues they are facing because of failure in converting the leads. It will help you design your content strategy.

 For example: if your customer is facing lead conversion issues, then you can create a :

• Landing page addressing a problem
• Share your post on social media with USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
• Use paid ads relevant to your target audience

At the awareness stage, we do not promote the products instead create a belief by telling a brand story. –its’s the type of “If we can do, so you can”. At the awareness stage, the content is exclusively informational that provides value and sparks up the reader to engage.

At this stage, you can attract your customers with valuable blogs, podcasts, images, videos, and social updates.

The stage is all about familiarizing the reader with the solution and introducing yourself. The audience is not aware of your brand at this stage; thus, it is important to build a relationship with your audience first. Create curiosity among the audience to learn more about the brand.

Step 3: Tell them “why you” (engage stage) (Middle of the funnel stage)

In the engagement stage, now your audience is aware of the problem. Now, they are looking for the solution to the problem. The prospects are engaged in gaining more knowledge about the problem and possible solutions.

These might have visited your website and compare it with other providers in the realm. Here, you need to make a mark by telling why you are superior or unique from others. What is it that you offer and your competitors don’t?

In this stage, you can attract the customer by sending- e-books, how-to guides, FAQs, and case studies.

Engage at this stage by:

• Writing an article, blog, or whitepaper that solves a problem
• Invite the visitors to participate in a survey
• Create a landing page specific to the segment

The primary goal at the aware and engage stage is:

• Increased social shares
• Increased views/sessions
• Audience retention

Here you share the opportunity to prove why you are the best option. You need to show “You are the expert in the field.” It will help in generating curiosity among your audience and thus will provoke them to take the next step in the customer journey.

Step 4: (Ready to purchase) Decision Stage (bottom of the funnel)

Now, the customer is convinced to choose the solution that’s best for them. The audience has researched, compared, and share knowledge about every product.

At this stage, what works wonders are- case studies, customer reviews, or free trials.

Engage at this stage by

• Offering a trial or demo
• Sharing customer reviews/testimonials
• Price and feature comparison chart
• Segment your campaigns based on customer Avatar
• Re-engage with abandoned cart mails

Note: Every customer shares different behavior and psychographics. Some customers may directly jump to the middle of the funnel or bottom because they are already aware of the problem and the solution you provide.

You need to define the customer journey according to the stage they are in and design your customer avatar accordingly.

• Problem Aware - aware of the problem, not solution
• Solution Aware - know what he need not that you provide it
• Problem Solution Aware - aware of the solution and problem but not you
• Most Aware Unaware - Knows about the product and solution, don’t need currently, (waiting for the price-drop/offer)

You need to address each stage of awareness differently, by defining a customer avatar.

That’s why you need to create a funnel tailored to how your buyer wants to buy not how you want to sell.

Measure the success of your customer journey by these parameters:

• CPA- Cost Per Acquisition (how much you are spending to acquire a customer)
• LTV- Customer Lifetime Value (it is a measure of the value that a customer brings consistently)

How your customers interact with your brand is not a linear process. And it is important to move the audience from A TO B to A TO Z. Understand the right way to engage at every step and revolutionize your marketing funnel.

 Contact Click Nurture to know for further assistance.