9 Steps to Create The Ideal Customer Journey

By now you’ve probably learnt that every business should have a clear customer journey mapped out, no matter what type of business they have – including yours!

A customer journey is how to effectively take someone who’s never heard of your business to not just become a customer, but to retain them as customers and have them refer you to others to continually grow your revenue.

Customer journey is all about building strong relationships.

Maybe you’re at the stage where the customer journey in your business isn’t quite as clear cut as it should be, and could definitely be improved.

Even though I’m in marketing, this happened to me too (we are not immune), so I want to share the 9 steps you can take to fix this in your business.

Typically your current challenges will be along the lines of:

  • Not enough leads coming through
  • Not nurturing the leads to build the relationship.
  • Not tracking where the leads are coming from.
  • Not tracking your conversion rates.
  • For those who don’t buy, discovering why not.
  • Getting regular feedback from existing customers, in the form of reviews or video testimonials.
  • Getting existing customers to easily refer you.

There’s more likely more challenges, I’ve simply listed out the most common problems.

So how do you even start to fix this?

It’s going to take a bit of “thinking time” more than anything, but here’s where to start:

STEP 1:  Identify Your Target Market

To get the best results you’ve got to work this backwards.  In other words if you want to end up with your ideal customers working with you, ones that you absolutely love and are your best customers – then get to understand them on a deeper level, almost a granular level.

Look at these 3 areas based on if you’re selling Business-to-Business or Business-to-Consumer and answer as accurately as you can:

Now you understand the demographics, we need to next look at the psychographics. In other words, the emotions and problems they face.

Lastly we need to look at their behaviour, and understand how they behave?

The more time you spend working on understanding exactly who these people are, the better the results you will get.

It really is worth the effort.

STEP 2:  Solve their biggest problem.

So now you understand who you’re targeting, you should also have a pretty good idea of what their biggest problem is that you solve for them.

Next thing to do is to break down their problem into smaller steps, and think about – 

what’s the first thing they would do to try and fix that problem?

In other words, what are they doing right now to fix that problem? Where are they going, what are they reading and what action are they taking?

We made a list of all the problems that we solve for our clients and why they used us…

So for us, typical problems would be:

  • They want to get more customers online but have struggled so far
  • They’re paying for all this software but not using half of it
  • They have an idea to create an online course but don’t know where to start…

List out ALL the problems that you solve, because this is the beginning of their customer journey.

Then figure out what level of awareness they’re at?

Are they:

  • Product Aware 
    • They are aware of their problem, they know there’s a solution and they know about your product but they just haven’t made a decision to purchase yet.
  • Solution Aware
    • They are aware of their problem, they know there is a solution but they don’t know what that is yet.
  • Problem Aware
    • The know they have a problem, but they don’t yet know there’s a solution to their problem.
  • Unaware
    • They have a problem, but they’re not aware of it, nor are they looking for a solution. 

Once you’ve figured out their level of awareness you can write your copy to become more relevant to them.

STEP 3:  Create an Irresistible Lead Magnet

Now you’re armed with all this information, the next step is to make it easy to capture the leads.

Your lead magnet should be the logical first step you help your ideal client with. 

It might be delivered in the form of a PDF, Template, Swipe File, Video Workshop, Playbook, Mini-Course.

Consider something that delivers value above and beyond.

Setting it up should be straightforward.  Create a page on your website – or a standalone page if you plan to run any form of traffic to it – with compelling copy leaning into the problem that your prospect has, and giving away the first step of the solution.

Connect your website or landing page with your automated CRM (eg: Keap).

Having an automated CRM at this stage is crucial to help automate the ideal customer journey.  It allows you to capture the lead data and then you can start to segment your leads based on:

  • Engagement
  • Interests

STEP 4:  Automate your follow-up to educate and engage

Once you have captured the lead – this is the very start of the customer journey. 

Now you have the contact, you can pre-schedule pre-written emails to follow up with them. This is your opportunity to add even more value.

Let me repeat…

  • Pre-schedule
  • Pre-write

Once a lead had downloaded the lead magnet, I would typically send out an email at least every couple of days.

Two reasons: one, it keeps you top of mind and visible, and two, it gives you the opportunity to see how engaged they are and find out more about them.

Top tip:  Plan this all out in advance so that you don’t lose the lead, and also so that you know exactly what action you want the lead to take.

Now you’re continuing their journey with you. This is the start of building your relationship with them.

STEP 5:  Make an Offer – their logical next step!

So you’ve now fixed the first part of their pain, or problem.

Ask yourself – what’s the logical next step to solving this problem on an even deeper level?

Let me share my example…

Lead Magnet = Case Study of a client who has succeeded using our marketing strategy process.

Logical next step – a low ticket offer (£37) to buy a training course helping them do this exact same thing for themselves.

Now you can start to segment your leads.  You can make this offer to them via email, and if they don’t buy, you can put them into a different longer term nurture email sequence (again – pre-written).  Remember you can also make this offer to them again in future emails.  Just because they don’t buy now doesn’t mean they won’t buy in the future.

They’re just not ready now.

A low-ticket offer is one of the best marketing assets you can create in your business as it will allow you to gain more customers more easily.

This is because potential customers worry and feel nervous about paying upfront for intangible services. 

This can be especially true when you’re offering tailor made services before you’ve had any personal contact with them.

Customers prefer packaged up offers, because they know exactly what they’re going to get before they buy.

  • They can see (read) at a glance what you’re selling
  • They can test it out at low risk for them
  • They can see if it suits them without committing to buying anything else.

STEP 6:  Acquire new customers by making it easy to buy from you.

It’s harder to acquire new customers than it is to sell to existing customers – fact!  And acquiring new customers can also be very costly too.

The good news is you’ve started to acquire new customers by placing a low cost/high value offer in front of them. 

The reason we start low at this stage is the lead is still getting to know you and when they buy a low-ticket offer it’s low risk to them.  It’s an opportunity for them to gain even more value from you.

  • It gives your client a reason to feel more affinity with you
  • It’s way easier to market your business
  • You can increase your value and demand
  • Your brand will become unmistakeable
  • You will stand out as the only option

This is now your opportunity to stand out as being the best service provider they’ve ever come across.

STEP 7:  Activate excellent customer service to retain them

Now you’re beginning to build up valuable customers and starting to strengthen your relationship with them.

The critical next step is to gather even more data on these leads.  Find out what they’re really interested in, and what they want from you.

Again, this is why having a valuable automated CRM is so important.

By now you can start to survey them, ask them questions.  Find out what they want, and deliver it to them.

  • Always be polite, 
  • always be as helpful as possible, 
  • always make it easy for them to get hold of you.
  • always respond in a timely manner.

A lot of this can be automated, but I recommend adding the human touch in here too. You could offer to get on a call with them to gather more data, or have a member of your staff do this? 

You could also have “check-in” calls set up.  There are multiple ways you can continue to provide even more value to them and deliver exceptional customer service.

Make more offers that are relevant to them, and give them every reason why they should stay with you for the long term.

STEP 8:  Make it easy for customers to refer you

By now your customer service is excellent, and you’re getting great feedback.

You’re also selling more products and services too.(However, be careful not to overpromise, it’s easily done).

Now the lead has converted into a customer, they’ve purchased from you already and you want to keep them as a customer.

They are now moving up the “value ladder” nicely.

That’s because you are continually in touch with them. You are continually on their radar and “touching” them at every opportunity.

The crucial thing now is twofold:

  • Continue to add value and put more offers in front of them.
  • Get them to refer you to their friends, colleagues and family.

84% of people trust recommendations from people they know, so personalise your communications at every opportunity you can.

Setting up a referral programme is an ideal way to increase your sales. This is a growth tactic that can be easily overlooked.

Consider the steps you can take to implement this:

  • Can you offer a gift voucher to anyone who refers you?
  • Could you set up a fixed fee payment for referrals?
  • Could you offer a discount on future services provided?

Word of mouth marketing is the most valuable way to market your business, and also the cheapest way to acquire new customers.

Plus people LOVE being appreciated. And appreciating your customers by rewarding them is one of the best ways to grow your business.

TIP: This can be automated inside your CRM!

STEP 9.  Guarantee repeat business to grow revenue

Now your customer journey is almost complete.  You have in place:

  • A lead magnet to capture new leads
  • A follow up process
  • An offer to put in front of your leads to convert them into customers
  • Another follow up process leading to more offers
  • A nurture process to nurture those who aren’t ready to buy right now.
  • A referral process to reward and recognise people who refer you.

When all this is in place, your business should be thriving!

However there’s one more thing to consider…

We all know that everyone is 

  • Reviewing
  • Comparing
  • Buying

On the internet these days… so online reviews are crucial for your business. This means getting reviews on your services from:

  • Google, Google reviews
  • Amazon reviews (if you sell on Amazon)
  • Trustpilot

Getting reviews is an excellent way to:

  • Listen and respond to your customers. Learn from their experiences to see what you can change and improve on.
  • Boost review ratings by automating your process for getting reviews. Create follow up campaigns where your customers can review you with one or two clicks.
  • Rank higher in searches. Google loves sites that have lots of reviews (good or bad), it shows they’re active and real and will reward this in the search results.

ACTION ITEM:  Before closing off this post, I’d like to ask you to do one small thing. Comment on my Facebook page here with one thing you’ve learned from this post, and one thing you’ll start to implement straight away in your business!

And if you want help implementing this whole ideal customer journey in your business, you can start here with my Foundation For Growth!  

It will give you the marketing strategy you need to help you on your way to setting this up in your business!