Have you considered your customer journey?
That is, how people enter your world and the steps they go through until they (hopefully) buy your course/service.
I recently spoke about the importance of laying important business foundations and why it’s important to have a business plan – and mapping out your customer journey is something that should be included in that plan.
I don’t know about you, but when I started my business, I knew nothing about starting a business.
Nothing!
But one thing I did understand is customer journey mapping, thanks to my UX design qualification (User Experience design).
Most first-time business owners don’t consider the journey their customers take.
And not having a clearly defined customer journey often means that your customers hit roadblocks, or dead ends on their journey to buy your course/service. The more friction they experience, the less likely they are to complete the journey and actually buy.
Picture a highway jam-packed with cars – and every one of those cars is a potential customer. The traffic is flowing and they’re all heading towards you and your offer.
Now, what if some of those cars get stuck behind a stationary vehicle and get so frustrated, they take the next off-ramp?
Or if your highway splits off in several different directions and there are no signposts, so no one knows where to go… so they just take the next offramp.
With every car that heads off that highway, you’re losing potential customers.
What you want is a jam-packed highway with traffic that flows smoothly in one direction towards you and your offer. And you want to make the process as seamless and intuitive as possible.
So, how do you map your customer’s journey?
Start by deciding what you are hoping to accomplish. What is your ultimate goal? Get new clients, get course sign-ups, get people to buy your thing?
Let’s say you want people to buy your course.
You need to figure out all the possible touchpoints or places where your customers are likely to interact with you. Like, visiting your website, attending your webinars, downloading your free content, or receiving emails from you.
You need to run through each of your customer’s journeys to figure out if your highway is blocked, or whether people are getting confused and abandoning their journey.
Your customer journey map could look something like this:
- People first come across you via an ad, social media post, search engine results, or recommendation from a friend. So that’s your first touchpoint.
- Then they may visit your website, look at your offers and read a couple of your blog posts.
- Next, they may sign up for your free live webinar – and get added to your email contact list.
- Then they attend your live webinar and hear about your course.
- Sign up for your course.
Now you need to take a look at each touchpoint individually.
Step 1 – your first touchpoint. You have very little influence over people who first come across you other than to make sure that their first interaction is a great one. For example, if they come across one of your blog posts via a Google search and your blog post doesn’t really match their search results – that doesn’t inspire trust and they’re likely to just bounce. But if your blog post is fantastic, they’re likely to stay on your site and move on to step 2.
Step 2 – they like what they read so they read a couple of other blog posts and then check out your offers and move on to step 3.
Step 3 – they sign up for your webinar. Now this is where you may lose people. Let’s say you don’t send out emails to remind them that they signed up to attend your webinar and they forget – that’s a roadblock that needs to be fixed. However, if you do remind people, they may move on to step 4.
Step 4 – they either attend your webinar and hear about your course or they miss it. For those who miss it, you move them on to step 5.
Step 5 – you send the replay to anyone who registered for your webinar but didn’t attend.
Step 6 – for anyone who hasn’t bought your course you can add them to an email nurture sequence and warm them up until you’re ready to promote your course again.
So, do you see how this works?
If at any point their journey is interrupted, then they’re likely to move on and become someone else’s customer.
By making sure that each touchpoint of your customer’s journey is efficient and seamless you’re ensuring that fewer prospective course buyers exit your highway – and reach their destination with a smile on their face.
So, if you haven’t considered your customer journey for your course – perhaps it’s time you took a walk in your customer’s shoes (or a trip in the passenger seat of their journey on the highway to your course).