If you do not understand your customers, such as how they make decisions and what kind of content they use to obtain information, you will not be able to determine what measures to take and how to improve them, and you will end up wasting money and resources.

In this article, I will introduce a customer journey, which is used to understand customers in various situations such as design, service design, and marketing strategy.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is a visualization of the changes in behavior and thinking that lead a customer (persona) to purchase a company's service or product.

There are various methods for mapping the customer journey, but in this article, I will use the 5A model to create a concrete example.

What is the 5A model?

It is a model explained by Philip Kotler in Marketing 4.0(*1), where the customer journey is considered from the time when it was considered as a one-way street to the situation where people are connected to the Internet and customers are also connected to the Internet through the spread of SNS.

(*1) : https://www.amazon.com/Marketing-4-0-Moving-Traditional-Digital/dp/1119341205

 

As mentioned above, creating a customer journey map can be used to understand customer behavior and thinking, which can then be used to consider necessary measures.

For example, if the unit price per customer for your service or product is small and the risk to sign a contract tends to be low, you can expect that customers will not devote that much resources to the “Ask and Advocate” phases.

Conversely, if the unit price is high and the contract requires long-term consideration, the client will devote resources to the “Appeal, Ask, and Advocate” phases, making it inefficient to strengthen the “Aware” phase, which is aimed at acquiring a wide range of leads.

Considering these considerations, it can be predicted that even though the number of target companies that can become customers is limited, it is highly likely that investments in SEO and broad targeting of web advertisements will end up in vain.

 

Benefits of the Customer Journey

As we have explained, mapping and organizing the customer journey can be used to understand user behavior and determine where costs and resources need to be allocated.

It should enable you to move away from measures that have been implemented somewhat aimlessly, without much strategy, to measures with clear objectives.

In addition, the customer journey map will serve as a material for all members of the team to have a common understanding of the measures to be taken for the customer. For example, it will help reduce communication costs when designing content with an external team.

 

I hope that creating a customer journey first will help you organize your company's marketing strategy and find the right measures for your products and services.