Mapping the Modern Customer Journey: Non-Linear, Self-Serve, Omnichannel

A Guide to Understanding and Optimizing Every Touchpoint

A customer journey is the total of all the touchpoints and experiences a customer has on the way to — and beyond — a purchase. If you imagine the steps you might take in purchasing a new washer and dryer, you can have a sense of what a journey might entail.

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You might research online, looking for insights into available features of the latest washers and dryers. You might visit an appliance retailer to look at options. You might look for online reviews, use a price comparison tool, ask your friends, ask your plumber, post a query on social media looking for recommendations ... all these experiences together guide you toward your ultimate purchase.

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There’s a different customer journey for every purchase, and every person. But a truly effective, integrated, multi-channel marketing and brand strategy should be based on a detailed understanding of the customer’s journey to purchase. And that understanding begins with a map.

What Is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map represents a visual plot of all the interactions a customer has with your brand, beginning with initial awareness, continuing through purchase and beyond, to include retention, repeat purchase, and even advocacy. Crucially, they don’t just document touchpoints such as store visits or website chatbot engagement, but also the emotional states, needs, and decision-making processes the customer experiences at every stage.

How Has the Customer Journey Changed in Recent Years?

1. Multiple Entry and Exit Points

Customers can join and leave the buying cycle at any stage and in any of numerous channels. They have access to on-demand research and peer reviews, and they’re constantly receiving ads, many of which are highly personalized.

2. Omnichannel Complexity

Today’s customer is navigating between physical stores, websites, apps, social media, AI tools, voice assistants, and more — often engaging in multiple channels in the same day.

3. Self-Education and Empowerment

A salesperson isn’t the keeper of product knowledge anymore. Customers expect instant access to detailed information, expert comparisons, and real user reviews before they engage directly with a brand.

4. Heightened Expectations for Personalization

Customers are increasingly used to personalized experiences that can streamline their brand engagements. Websites that remember their interests and preferences, automated multi-channel follow-ups, and other personalized experiences can help build meaningful engagement.

5. Ongoing Relationship Building

Where a customer journey once ended with a purchase, today’s journey maps include post-purchase engagement as well, such as repeat purchases, joining loyalty program, and even advocating for the brand to other users.

What are Best Practices for Creating a Customer Journey Map?

1. Start With Research

Research is essential to understanding your customers’ behaviors, pain points, and goals. Without it, you’re relying on anecdotes and guesswork, and those make a poor foundation for strategy.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Deep-Dive Research That Goes Beyond the Obvious

• We use interviews, focus groups, and customer surveys to gather qualitative data. Remember that this type of research is your chance to explore mindset and emotional state: the good and the not-so-good.
• Quantitative data from our analytics platforms identify online patterns: clicks, conversions, and abandonment.
• We segment customers by personas, needs, and motivations to help ensure your map reflects the different ways your customers move toward purchase.

Key Move: Combining data on what customers do (behavioral data) with attitudinal data (emotions) that can shed light on why they do it.

2. Identify Key Touchpoints Across the Journey

Touchpoints are the moments where your customer meets your brand. Every touchpoint is a chance to build trust and engagement — or damage them.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Comprehensive Touchpoint Mapping

• We can map out every channel where your prospects encounter your brand: ads, email marketing, social media, in-store, engagements with salespeople, phone support, chatbots, and more.
• Direct interactions, as well as indirect ones, such as reading an online review or a blog post, or watching content on social media, can be captured as well.

Key Move: Alerting and documenting “moments of truth” — the critical interactions that have an outsized effect on customer perception.

3. Chart Emotions, Not Just Actions

Customers don’t just remember what happened. They remember how it made them feel, and these emotions are highly influential in their buying decisions.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Emotion-Driven Strategy

• For each touchpoint, it’s important to note the customer’s likely emotional state. Are they frustrated? Excited? Intimidated?
• Visual cues like color codes or emojis in your journey maps can help illustrate the emotional highs and lows of the journey.

Key Move: We know that emotional pain points are your essential opportunities for improvement.

4. Take Non-Linear Paths Into Account

A truly linear purchasing journey is rare these days. Customers stop and start, skip steps, and purchase unexpectedly; your customer journey map should account for these paths.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Design for Non-Linear Realities

• We make sure your journey map includes different possible entry points, branding paths, feedback loops, and stop-and-start progress.
• We differentiate between “typical” journeys and outlier behaviors, and look in your data and research for clues to the emotions and triggers behind non-linear paths.

Key Move: Don’t get stuck in a rigid, sequential vision of the customer journey. Your map should reflect real-world complexity.

5. Involve Cross-Functional Teams

A customer journey is going to include touchpoints curated by marketing, sales, product, and support teams. A strong journey map should be informed by input from all these functions.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Cross-Functional Alignment

• We like including representatives from all customer-engaged functions in review cycles on the journey map.
• This often solicits meaningful perspectives on customer wants/needs and friction points.

Key Move: We utilize the journey map to help align strategies across different functions.

6. Identify Opportunities for Personalization

Customers increasingly expect and anticipate tailored experiences across channels that speak to their needs and preferences.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Smart Personalization Without Being Intrusive

• We identify customer journey touchpoints where personalization can have the greatest effect, such as dynamic web content, customized email campaigns, or targeted recommendations.
• Using CRM and marketing automation tools, we deliver relevant messages at the right time and through the right channels.

Key Move: It’s important to be transparent about the use of customer data to ensure it’s not intrusive or overly personalized.

7. Iterate and Update

Customer behavior, market conditions, and technology evolve rapidly. Your customer journey map should be equally dynamic.

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The Adcetera Advantage: Ongoing Optimization

• We always set a regular cadence of measurement reviews to update your map with new insights and data.
• We’ll evaluate changes (for instance, a new personalization component or a targeted email campaign) and incorporate their effect on the customer experience and buying journey.

Key Move: Don’t be afraid to have multiple versions of the journey in play, reflecting variables you control.

Let’s Map Your Customer Journey

The modern customer journey is more complicated than it used to be. But this reflects an essential opportunity: there are more moments, channels, and places where you can meaningfully engage with customers and prospects. A robust customer journey map is your guide, helping you understand your audience’s needs, wants, and mindset — and then engage in the ways that help move them toward your offering.

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As a full-service digital marketing agency, Adcetera has long experience in developing customer journey maps for B2B and B2C organizations. Contact us and discover how we can help you gather the insights you need to build an integrated, effective marketing strategy.

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