The Importance of Mapping the Customer Journey
Understanding your customers’ journey is key to designing and delivering effective marketing campaigns. For any business, knowing how potential clients move from initial awareness to hiring your services helps you to focus your marketing efforts, ensuring that every touchpoint becomes value-added.
Mapping the customer journey allows your marketing strategy to match your audience’s needs at each stage, turning prospects into clients.
What Do We Mean By a Customer Journey?
A customer journey is the process a potential client goes through before deciding to work with you. This journey can typically be broken into three main stages:
- Suspect to Prospect: Identifying individuals who fit your ideal customer profile.
- Prospect to Lead: Encouraging interested individuals to engage with your brand and provide their details.
- Lead to Client: Converting engaged prospects into paying clients through personalised communication and clear value propositions.
Each stage represents a unique opportunity to interact with your audience and guide them toward choosing your services.
Key Digital Marketing Touchpoints
Let’s take a look at how SEO, Paid Social (Meta Ads), and Google Ads can be used to support each stage of the customer journey. To keep things simple, we’ve used the example of how this might be applied to an architectural company that specialises in home extensions:
1. Suspect to Prospect: Building Awareness
At this stage, your goal is to attract individuals who may be considering a home extension but are not yet familiar with your services.
How digital marketing works here:
- SEO:
- Optimise your website for local search terms such as “home extension architects in [AREA]” or “kitchen extensions [AREA].”
- Publish blog posts like “5 Stunning Home Extension Ideas” or “What You Need to Know Before Extending Your Home.”
- Use internal linking to guide visitors to key pages, like service offerings or portfolios.
- Paid Social (Meta Ads):
- Create awareness campaigns targeting homeowners in your area who are interested in home improvement.
- Use carousel ads or videos showcasing finished projects, before-and-after transformations, or design inspiration.
- Google Ads:
- Launch Display Ads to appear on home improvement and lifestyle websites.
- Target general search terms like “home extension ideas” or “how to extend my house.”
2. Prospect to Lead: Nurturing Interest
Once someone has visited your website or clicked on your ad, they’ve become a prospect. The goal now is to encourage them to take the next step, such as signing up for a brochure, scheduling a consultation, or downloading a guide.
How digital marketing works here:
- SEO:
- Create landing pages optimised for conversions, with clear calls to action like “Request a Free Design Consultation” or “Download Our Home Extension Planning Guide.”
- Include testimonials, case studies, and images of completed projects to build credibility and trust.
- Paid Social (Meta Ads):
- Use retargeting ads to re-engage website visitors who didn’t convert on their first visit.
- Promote incentives like “Free Initial Consultations” or “Limited-Time Discounts on First Designs.”
- Google Ads:
- Run Search Ads targeting high-intent queries like “kitchen extension architects near me” or “planning permission for house extensions.”
- Use ad extensions to provide additional information, like links to portfolio pages or client reviews.
3. Lead to Client: Driving Conversions
Leads are those who have shown significant interest, such as filling out a contact form or requesting a consultation. Now, the focus is on converting these leads into paying clients.
How digital marketing works here:
- SEO / Website Content:
- Publish blogs or FAQs addressing common concerns, such as “How Long Does a Home Extension Take?” or “What to Expect from the Design Process.”
- Optimise your local SEO to appear as a trusted, nearby architect in search results.
- Paid Social (Meta Ads):
- Nurture leads with ads showcasing testimonials, time-lapse videos of projects, or personalised messages inviting them to take the next step.
- Use targeted offers, such as “Book Your Project by [Date] and Receive a Free Design Upgrade.”
- Google Ads:
- Employ remarketing campaigns to display ads like “Your Dream Home Extension Awaits – Let’s Get Started!”
- Focus on conversion-driven ads with a strong call to action, like “Schedule Your Consultation Today.”
Why Mapping the Customer Journey Matters
Understanding your customer journey ensures your marketing efforts resonate with potential clients at every stage. For architects, it’s not just about generating leads; it’s about building trust, showcasing expertise, and providing value throughout the process. And this same process can apply to interior designers, house builders, solar installers, etc.
If you need some help mapping your customer journey to a tailored digital marketing strategy, get in touch and we can discuss how we can help your business grow.
