Customer Journey

Understanding the customer journey and using it for marketing

04 Nov 2022

The customer journey is a marketing concept. It describes the journey of a customer from the first contact with a company, a brand or a product to the conclusion of a purchase or a comparable, previously defined action. Here we explain how the customer journey is structured, what goals companies pursue with it, and what challenges can arise.

WHAT IS THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY ALL ABOUT?

The customer journey consists of multiple touchpoints (or touch points) with the company, brand, product, or service that the customer experiences until he or she performs a desired target action (for example, a purchase, registration, or inquiry). This journey can take minutes or hours, but also days, weeks or months.

Touchpoints include both measures taken by the company, such as traditional advertising and online marketing campaigns, and external factors that are largely beyond its direct influence. Examples include recommendations and opinions from friends and family or consumer reviews on rating portals. Every contact the potential customer has with one of these factors that can influence his decision represents a stop on his journey.

The customer journey is a powerful tool for companies to explore the behavior and needs of customers. A visualization and subsequent analysis of the customer journey helps to uncover optimization potential and serves as a basis for moving potential customers more quickly to the desired target action.

WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY?

The goal of companies is to serve the requirements and wishes of their customers at every stage of the journey. The analysis of the customer journey allows the necessary conclusions to be drawn about preferences and behavior. The task is to always deliver compelling content to the potential customer at the right time during their journey via the appropriate communication channel.

The process is always the same: The customer journey begins as soon as the potential customer becomes aware of an offer. They will now actively engage with the offer, research it themselves, and also obtain other opinions. The aim is to keep increasing their desire until they finally take action.

THE PHASES OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Approaches to dividing up the phases of the customer journey differ in detail, but they always follow the same pattern. This corresponds to the AIDA model for describing advertising impact - the term is an acronym derived from the names of the four phases:

Phase 1: Attention

Phase 2: Interest

Phase 3: Desire

Phase 4: Action

An offer first attracts the attention of the potential customer (phase 1). His interest is then aroused (phase 2). After taking a closer look at the offer and obtaining and evaluating information, a desire arises (phase 3), which finally leads to the final action (phase 4).

WHAT ARE THE TOUCHPOINTS?

The touchpoints between a potential customer and the offer can either be initiated by the company itself or be outside its reach. However, it is important to remember that personal recommendations, for example from family or friends, are also based on touchpoint experiences that originally came from the company - after all, a friend who recommends a particular product must also have obtained their knowledge about it from a corresponding source. By the way, direct experience with the product itself also constitutes a touchpoint.

Digital content in particular offers companies the opportunity for subsequent evaluation through analysis and tracking tools, which is more difficult with classic advertising formats such as TV or radio spots. Nevertheless, the touchpoints served by a company are always individually tailored to its own offering and target group. Typical formats and channels that act as touchpoints between companies and potential customers are:

Search engine optimization and advertising measures
Social media
Email marketing
Rating portals and forums
Celebrities as advertising media
Events
Classic advertising formats (TV, radio, print)
Personal recommendations (friends and acquaintances, family)

AN EXAMPLE OF THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Mr. Schmidt, a potential customer, becomes aware of a new streaming service via an ad on Facebook. The range of movies and series immediately sounds interesting and he types the provider's name into Google. Mr. Schmidt goes to the company website to find out more about the product details and various subscription models. He also notices that his favorite actress advertises for the company with a testimonial.

Because Mr. Schmidt wants to get some second opinions, he continues surfing to a rating portal during his research, where he reads about other users' experiences. The positive reviews reinforce his desire to try out the service.

At home, he talks to his family about his idea to subscribe to the streaming service. His children and especially his wife are skeptical at first - but that changes when they learn about the large selection of children's and youth films on one of the provider's landing pages. All family members are now convinced and have developed a desire to use the streaming service. The subscription is concluded.

Mr. Schmidt's customer journey included several touchpoints, including social media, the testimonial of his favorite actress, a rating portal, and search engine optimization (website and landing page). Finally, the family recommendation was added, as his wife and children, convinced by the landing page, actively encouraged him to buy.

CHALLENGES

Before the customer journey was used to optimize marketing measures and thus became popular, either the first (first click wins) or the last (last click wins) advertising medium was given full credit for success. The idea of a process where a potential customer goes through several stages before making a purchase decision was not established at the time. This led to serious missteps in the weighting and optimization of individual marketing channels.

The successful interaction of the advertising media in the example illustrates that an optimization of the marketing measures would have to fail according to both the first-click-wins and the last-click-wins principle. Thus, it would have been assumed that either the social media ad or the landing page was responsible for complete success. The key to success, however, is target group-oriented multichannel marketing that offers Mr. Schmidt the right content at every stage of his customer journey to encourage him all the way to the conclusion of the purchase.

If Mr. Schmidt had not seen the Facebook ad, he would not have become aware of the product. If he hadn't read the positive reviews of other users on the rating portal, his interest would probably have quickly waned. And if his family had not been convinced by the appealing landing page after initial skepticism, a purchase would ultimately have been prevented.

One of the biggest challenges for companies is therefore to draw the right conclusions from the customer journey analysis and to develop and implement appropriate multichannel marketing measures based on this information.

ASSISTANCE THROUGH ANALYSIS TOOLS

Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Matomo also provide support in evaluating complex relationships in customer journeys. With their help, touchpoints on the web can be identified that have already successfully led to purchases, orders or registrations in the past. The individual marketing measures and channels can then be optimally aligned with these.

CONCLUSION

The customer journey provides important clues for companies to give their customers the right marketing impulses at the right time. With the necessary know-how and the appropriate analysis tools, it is possible to influence the customer journey in a targeted manner.

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