Becky Simms

Having a mix of quantitative and qualitative data sources is really important. The trends and analysis you can do from a larger data set is great, but having some of the qualitative data is key to adding more of a human lens. The data sources need to be current and relevant. There is so much data available from an online perspective for mapping a digital marketing journey, for example, but you also need to be able to hone this down to an audience group. So although data such as search volume is great, it doesn't tell us if our specific target audience would search in that way. So getting granular and understanding the specific customer audience is key.

In my opinion post-it notes are the perfect way to start and are sometimes easier than jumping to an online session. Customer journey mapping should be collaborative and iterative. As one idea pops up it sometimes re-frames another. Or as one data point is realised again in sometimes changes another. Online tools can be great, but should never be a barrier.

We ensure that customer service teams & support staff are bought in from the beginning of creating personas. It is often undervalued the huge resource of information that these teams hold from their day-to-day contact with customers. If they are bought in from the start, then they'll be excited to see and make use of the output. One way to do this is to run an internal persona workshop with nominees from these teams. The idea of this workshop is to draw out all the anecdotal information to create persona hypotheses. From this, you can then start your research journey with the customers, be that through surveys or focus groups. But the team know they have been heard and have provided a vital step in the project.

In my opinion the goal of any marketing campaign needs to be derived from the activity's position within the customer journey. For example, if your SEO strategy is all focused on high search volume, top of the funnel phrases - then you can't expect to see direct sales on a last click basis. So you might want to measure engagement on the page with content, videos or my preference having some kind of data capture option e.g. download our guide. This then means you can start to think about how you move the user through the funnel, but also that you have measures fair to what the channel was aiming to achieve. I've seen brands get hung up on ROI for everything, but it isn't always a fair measure.

For me, once this is complete you have an amazing opportunity to consider how you can keep a customer within your content-sphere throughout the journey. So with their needs mapped, if you have the right content to service them at every step - you can think about how the channels can support moving the customer through seamlessly. I always use the analogy of a baton in a relay race. The customer is the baton and you want to keep them in your race lane as much as possible. So with the channels and touchpoints mapped you can start to spot where your brand lacks visibility and therefore start to create a plan to cover these blindspots. Customer journey mapping is such an awesome tool for ensuring your brand & strategy is customer-centric.

The data you gather needs to come from multiple sources & needs to span quantitative and qualitative data. Some of my favourite routes include behavioural science led customer surveys - to ensure your questions do not contain unintended bias. Followed by focus groups & customer facing staff interviews or workshops. Businesses can often forget the power of their customer facing team, they hold so much knowledge around customer pain points & pre-sales buying questions. Alongside the above, social listening is a great way to hear what is being said, unprompted, within your market. You can also look to analyse CRM data or to find existing data studies. There are so many methods, finding the right way for your business is critical to success