Building a marketing roadmap that supports your customer's journey

The customer journey is the experience they go through from identifying a problem they want to solve, searching for your type of offer, choosing a company or product, and all the way through to after the purchase.

We can work to optimise for this journey, giving people what they are looking for and helping people figure out if this is the right fit for them. How your business shows up for the customer on the journey dictates that experience, and where that journey ends. A great journey means they’re more likely to continue going through the process. By optimising this journey as much as you can, you can expect your conversion rate, revenue, and advocacy to rise. Your marketing roadmap is how you will get from where you are now, to where you want your marketing to be.

Welcome to the Digital Hive Podcast where we talk all things digital marketing. I’m Emma, a marketing strategist and coach for business owners who aren’t short on ideas but want support with the strategy and tactics to get their message out into the world.

Before we get started, let’s set some expectations here. This episode isn’t a complete summary of how to do this process. It’s just too big. I pulled this episode together to help you to start laying this out in your mind. Every marketing plan needs some structure, and this is where a lot of it can originate.

We always start with the customer. Knowing them, their needs and your unique selling points is crucial to understanding their journey. Keeping them in the front of your mind though this process is what will guide you in the right direction.

Given that they need to decide if this offer is a good fit, the process needs to align too. If they say no to the next step for any reason, they might not come back. Getting to know them, their behaviour and what they might do is a science and will evolve over time.

Initially, it can help to write down every step that people might take while trying to research your type of offer, before and after they find you.

You can assess where people are dropping out of the journey, and investigate what small improvements you can make. That might look like understanding which pages people tend to land on, what your search engine rankings are, where people would discover you outside of search, what they do after they discover your business, the list goes on. What to investigate often lies in what you’re trying to achieve, and some testing might be in order, to confirm or define a hunch. Knowing what is already working can give you a great idea of the opportunities you have. Where people disconnect is a sign of the opportunities and threats to solve.

It can also help to reframe this in terms of emotions. How would people be likely to feel at each step and how do you want people to feel as they engage with you at that point? As an example, someone might be confused, or frustrated, they want to understand the options they have for their mattress, spring vs foam, are the ones that come compacted into small little boxes actually good for their back? It’s an investment in their health and sleep. You might want to make them feel at ease, understanding their options, explaining how they might make a decision. A quiz could be a quick way to help them break this decision down into parts, with a little information peppered in along the way so they can be sure they’re choosing the right one. They might still feel like there’s a little risk, so now might be a good time for them to see reviews or a guarantee. Rushing them with a discount code that expires in the next ten minutes might ruin that trust, especially if they have a partner who also has a say in what mattress they sleep on.

Does this change you’re thinking of make their experience easier, faster, or more enjoyable? Does it answer a common question or remove a barrier to purchase?

If they’re curious about something, to intersect their journey with your business, could they find  a blog post where you explain that exact thing for them, with a call to action to make a small next step? What might they be searching for?

What might be the next step they want to take, or that would pique their interest? What would guide them to the next step you might want them to take? Usually people aren’t going to go from one blog post, to booking a call or making a purchase right away. There’s got to be a few more steps in there, possibly even 20 interactions, so how can you stay in front of them as they go on this journey? Since they might still like to get something in the early stages, getting a free resource by signing up for your email list might make sense. Then you can host them through a few more steps in the journey through a welcome sequence and email campaigns.

Going to the other end of the process, what would make someone repurchase? What would truly aid their experience? In an eCommerce setting, this can look like adding subscriptions. Rather than just picking a well reviewed app, throwing it up on the website, sending one email, posting one social media post and moving right along, we can get better results by truly bringing this into the customer journey. First, are subscriptions actually helpful for your offer? Assuming they would re-buy, does everyone use it up at the same rate?

What would motivate someone to subscribe over just buying when they run out? Is it simply the ease of the process, or is a discount what gets it cranking? Is there a tool that people could do with, like one of those funky spoons that’s also a bag clip aid in their experience? Would getting one of those for free, or as an exclusive limited edition add on that only subscribers get, add to the experience? Would it make them feel like they’re part of a community?

Would a certain number of tokens a month suit, like an Audible subscription, where they can spend those as and when they want to. Do they simply want to automate the experience? Would it help to customise a bundle, or be able to adjust the flavour every so often? Would it help to make it easy to pause or cancel the subscription, and allow them to come back when it suits them? What features of an app or software would suit this customer, and work with your existing tech stack? Then when it is time to launch, you can build some buzz by teasing those features, or simply share each one after it launches? Would your customer enjoy the buzz stage, or will they just want the details and be able to sign up? As you go through this launch, is there something you could learn about which features they find most interesting? Those are the ones you could focus on for newer customers over time.

How can they test your expertise? This is generally known as being important in service offerings and courses. It’s also important in products, because people want to know it’s designed well and truly suits their desires. Would a webinar, Instagram Live, podcast, case study, or review help them recognise that knowledge? Where and when are those best placed? How would you position them on your website or other channels and point people to them?

Across each of the platforms you engage with people through, what emotions and touch points would help them make a decision and move forward?

I’ve shared a much deeper dive on this, through the lens of a funnel in a podcast series I will link in the show notes. This can assist in laying out how you want people to interact with the brand.

Now let’s move onto the planning part.

The phrase roadmap is very common in things like web development, because we think of it as an ever evolving thing, that happens in a linear fashion, but focus on the next 6 months. I find it also works for your full marketing plan.

Your roadmap is your roadmap. You get to build it. If you’re the only person in your business who does marketing and you can’t delegate, that better be a roadmap you want to drive, first and foremost. If you have a team, it needs to be somewhat symbiotic with their expertise, whether you hire for the roadmap or give them the training they need to get on track.

For every business, that roadmap needs to be aligned with the offering, the target audience, their needs and the customer journey you want for them.

It becomes pretty hard to stand out when you’re following another business’ roadmap. You’ll only ever be behind them. It also isn’t likely to fully align with your business, customer, and the rest of what you’re doing. Piecing together things you’ve seen others do is like taking pieces from 10 different jigsaw puzzles and expecting them to line up. Plus, you’re only seeing part of what they’re working on, and filling in a lot of gaps with invisible information. This is the time to block out the outside influences.

Some steps must come before others, just like you need to drive through one city to get to the next. Usually that’s because of some kind of technical requirement or simple logic. Other times it just helps to know you’re going to do this other step sometime soon so you allow for it. Like knowing you’ll go to the beach at one part of your trip and packing your swimwear so you don’t have to but new swimwear.

Once you have your long long list of things you could do, it’s time to prioritise so you know what to do first, and what could wait.

So much of marketing priorities is based in the ROI you might get out of something. Otherwise why put time into something? Is the return temporary or permanent?

Is this for attracting new customers? Does it help them evaluate and decide? Will it encourage a purchase? Does it enhance the post-purchase experience? Does it turn customers into loyal advocates?

We need to evaluate time. Will this be a quick win, take a while or be a large undertaking? With your business’ needs which is more important? Sometimes you need to get a handle on your low hanging fruit, but ultimately, we sometimes need to get the ball rolling on some longer projects too. While it can help to focus, I often see the best long term results when working on a few things at a time. You’ll often come to a natural pause with many projects, like a hurry up and wait situation, or waiting to hear back from a third party, so having a balance of length of projects can keep your wins coming and spread them out.

What budget do you have at your disposal? Some projects will only take your time, or a small one-off cost. Others are a bit of a commitment, or a large spend.

I find it’s best to get estimates as part of your research, before putting a large project into the roadmap. If it’s a software, this will be quick, but if it’s a service, they might need a few details to provide that costing. This can help you to better define the step, since they’ll need details to provide an estimate. Sometimes those details will help get that ball rolling for you, and get you thinking about components you might not have otherwise.

Some projects are costly, but still on your radar, so you might need to save up, or basically create a budget. They might not strictly make it onto the roadmap, but they’re still in the bucket list.

Review the competitive landscape. What are they doing? What are non-competitors doing? Not to copy them, but to understand what is becoming expected and to check for any gaps. Maybe there’s something that is becoming expected and well understood that your competitors aren’t doing.

Now let’s prioritise.

What is most important? What can be done at the same time? What needs to be done first in a technical sense? What are the risks of taking on or delaying this project? Will delaying it cause missed opportunities? How confident are you that this work will be a success?

Is there a small version you can do to gauge interest first? Assuming you can spot people re-buying, and that’s whats leading you to a subscription, can you add a reorder button that adds their whole previous order to their cart. With your setup, is that quicker for you, something you would keep regardless, and give you a better understanding of what people are doing? Can you expand your product range slowly, and see what people buy? Can you customise a product with embroidery through a local shop before buying a whole machine? Can you see the impact of being a guest on podcasts before starting your own? Can you start with 10 evergreen episodes before committing to a year round show. Sometimes these tests can save you tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours.

Say your business hasn’t really broken into video but it’s a real opportunity for you. Start by mapping out the kind of content you want to be sharing, what you want it to say, and the format that might suit. Then your roadmap might look like making 10 videos with your phone to find what feels right, before possibly upgrading by getting a camera, knowing it needs to be suited for photos too and handle streaming, learning to use it, understanding lighting and audio, better setting up a recording space or multiple spaces that suit within your business, then capture B-Roll to make a bit of a bank to edit in. That might be your plan for making this more easeful, and something you can do regularly. Along the way, you can figure out whether you even need to upgrade your gear, the raw side might feel like it fits well. You can change this roadmap when needed. It’s up to you and what suits.

A great roadmap is detailed. Not only the order of things, but what, why, and how you’ll know something is done. When does that part of the roadmap get ticked off? It’s so easy to start and get to 90%, then move ahead, promising yourself you’ll come back to tighten something up, and never get to it.

This detail helps to reconnect with the purpose and intent you had when you first laid it out. It also helps you to reflect on the progress and whether something is effective once implemented. This helps you to evolve the roadmap as the business grows and the world outside of it shifts. You might have a plan to tweak your cart page, but in the meantime Shopify makes a change, either making it simpler or harder. That could impact when you do that project, just as much as a drop in an early part of your conversion funnel.

I’m a little hyper on the detail, so I’ll keep track of every thought so it can fully escape my brain. I like to note how things will be communicated, who needs to be involved, and the SOPs we’ll need. It also helps me take action when the time comes. That’s up to you too.

When we have lots of ideas, and plenty of options, sticking to the roadmap is what keeps you headed in your strategic direction. It can evolve over time, but it does help with the overwhelm and shiny object syndrome. It also keeps everyone on the same page. If you’re working as part of a team, or have an agency on board, the roadmap literally shows people where you’re going so they can climb aboard, know what will be expected of them next and to assist you along the trip.

Understanding how you’ll improve the customer’s experience and creating the roadmap helps you to propel the business forward. Following the roadmap helps you to make more impactful progress and cut out the distractions.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital Hive Podcast.

Again this episode certainly doesn’t summarise this whole process, but I hope this has helped you to connect a few extra dots in your head and get the wheels turning if you don’t already have a roadmap in place or it was time for a review of your customer’s journey.

If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd truly appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or on Instagram and tag me @honeypotdigital. To find out more about Honey Pot Digital and the marketing strategy and coaching work I do, or to find more marketing resources, head to honeypotdigital.com