The Secret to More Sales: Mapping Your Customer Journey

The secret to more sales and leads is less about beautifully designed marketing materials and more about understanding your ideal customer. Specifically, you need to understand the journey they take on the road to working with you and your business. When you understand that, you can create marketing content that will help them at each step of their journey and, in turn, will build brand awareness, trust, and loyalty with every step they take.

One of the first steps we take when we work with clients is to map out their customer’s journey. We devote time to understanding what they are struggling with, what challenges they are facing, and what they need in terms of support to help them reach their goals or solve their problems.

And if you’re doing the marketing for your home staging or decorating business, then this is a step you should be taking as well. With that said, how do you begin doing that?

Before you start, you need to understand the different stages of awareness that your potential clients will be going through. Once you understand that, then you can create a marketing plan that incorporates creating content for each level of awareness or pitstop on their way to becoming your client. When you approach your marketing like this, you’re able to strategically create content that, by turns, educates, enlightens, nurtures, and converts your audience.

Not only that, but by mapping your customer’s journey, you will increase sales & revenue, increase customer satisfaction, optimize your marketing, and differentiate your company so you stand out in a crowded marketplace. Why? Because not only will you provide content that your client needs when they need it.

If you want more leads and sales from your social media marketing, mapping your customer’s journey is a critical part of your overall marketing foundation.

So, what is a customer journey?

Well, it’s the sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company and brand. People rarely go straight to hiring or buying from you but rather engage in a series of interactions or touchpoints that influence their decision to become clients. These interactions can be anything from social media posts, blog articles, ads, networking events, or ads – literally any touchpoint with you and your company. Every time they interact with you or your brand, they begin to form an opinion of you, and the overall experience will shape everything from an interest in your services or products to becoming a client and building brand loyalty.

Understanding how your ideal audience finds you and becomes aware of your services or products and how you can help them is critical to creating content for each stage of that journey.

So, how do you build a customer journey map?

Essentially, you must go back to the beginning and reverse engineer their path. Start with the end goal – working with you or buying your product – mapping out your customer’s journey from when they first realize they have a problem to the point where they decide to work with you will help you better understand when and where they need help. Obviously, working with you is the end goal, so with that in mind, it’s time to do some recon and research to create a rich customer persona. You can’t create a customer journey until you’ve researched who your customers actually are, what they want, what their buying habits are like, and – most importantly – what they need from you.

Then, build their buyer persona so you understand who they are, what they need, and what they’re struggling with so that you can create or tailor your services to solve those issues.

Once you’ve clearly defined (and I mean getting deeply detailed) your buyer persona, I want you to list out all the interactions that your company has with your ideal client that make them aware of who you are and what you offer. Itemize what actions are taken at these touchpoints. List the pain points they are experiencing at each of these stages and get specific. Define their level of awareness of how well they know and understand what you offer at each point.

When it comes to awareness, there are four distinct levels:

Stage 1: Not Aware

Potential clients have no idea they have a problem, and they have no clue who you are as a business and what you offer. For unaware audiences, the first thing to do is show them they have a problem or pain point.

For example, this might involve making homeowners aware that the reason their house isn’t selling is that it’s not appealing. And that if it were more appealing, it would sell much faster. Or alerting realtors to the fact that the reason they are struggling to sell their listings and get more clients is that their homes aren’t being staged. By mapping your customer’s journey, you can anticipate where they’re at and share content that gets them looking for solutions.

Stage 2: Problem Aware

Your prospect has woken up to the fact that they’ve got a problem. But this is only the beginning of their journey. These people will have LOTS of questions. Think about what you would do if your home weren’t selling – you would head to Google and ask questions. Why am I not getting more buyer visits? When can I expect an offer? Why do I keep getting negative feedback? What can I do to fix it? You’ve got them problem-aware at the most basic level.

Mapping your customer’s journey will help you anticipate what they’re looking up so that you can create content tailored to fixing the issues they are googling about.

Stage 3: Solution Aware

Your prospect now knows that they have a problem, and they’re starting to get answers and becoming aware of what they need to do to fix the problem. That said, they still know pretty much nothing about you or what you offer. At this point, they’re looking for ways to figure things out. In other words, they’re becoming aware of the solution and exploring potential fixes for their issues. Reading case studies, reviewing success stories and testimonials, and learning more about your process will be excellent forms of content for them at this stage.

Stage 4: Product Aware

Your prospect knows who you are; they know your product is ideal for them, but they just need that final nudge to pull out that credit card. In this instance, sharing specific content that reflects your unique selling proposition, highlights brand values, and emphasizes how easy it is to get started will be highly effective.

So, go back to that list you created and refine your ideal client’s interactions now that you know more about the different stages of awareness. Don’t overthink it. These touchpoints help map out how they reach the clear end goal you defined and help you directly align your content strategy to that customer journey.

Doing this will help you create content that matches those stages of awareness, speak directly to the prospect’s needs and problems at each stage, and help move them along the road to working with you.

It’s also important to understand that if you serve different types of clients, you’ll need to repeat this exercise for each of them. They’re going to be different with different personas and journeys.

Finally, it’s critical to remember that the key to a successful customer journey is to optimize and refine it continuously. As your business evolves and you learn more about your ideal clients, your customer journey will change. It’s essential to look at your data on a regular basis so that as things evolve in your business, you’re continually refining your ideal client’s journey as well.

This will help you continue to create intentional content and stop wasting your time on strategies that aren’t helping to attract your ideal audience.

Once this is mapped out, you can learn how to grow on social media and get home staging content ideas to help you grow your audience. Mapping your customer’s journey isn’t hard, but it is essential if you want to build the know, like, and trust factor with them over time and stand out as the #1 choice to help them reach their goals or solve their problems. The better you can anticipate what they need and when they need it, the more leads and sales you’ll get.