Turn your client journey from an extreme challenge into a pampering luxury experience.
When you think of mapping the client journey of your business, how do you feel?
Like a lady hopping aboard a luxury cruise where you’ll be sailing from one pampering experience to another…
… Or a sweat-inducing hike through a jungle with little visibility to where you’re going?
If analysing and optimising your own client journey feels like a challenge you’d rather not undertake, imagine how entering that journey with you might feel like for your potential clients.
Can they feel like they’re in the steady and capable hands of a seasoned travel guide, taking them through all the steps and decisions included in buying from you?
If not, they are, unfortunately, likely to hop off on the next station, and either leave their problem unsolved or purchase a solution from another entrepreneur or business.
When they feel like they’re being taken through a carefully calibrated experience, designed just for them, taking the final step and becoming a client feels natural, like the only possible outcome at the end of the process.
Create an itinerary
Mapping a seamless client journey that grows service businesses, it’s crucial to start by mapping the itinerary through the different intermediate stops on the journey. Think about it like designing a guided tour where the participants don’t need to worry about combing through train timetables, comparing luggage restrictions or figuring out time differences.
You want your client journey to feel more like a guided tour rather than a self-organised, adrenaline-filled journey with a knapsack as your bag, on a minimal budget.
In business context, the itinerary often includes stops like Awareness (your potential clients discover your brand’s existence), Interest (you pique their interest so they find out more about you) and Discovery (the first in-person contact through a 1:1 call, for example).
Ideally, the journey continues towards Purchase (they get ready to buy from you) and even Retention (them buying from you again) and Referrals (their friends buying from your business).
Choose the transportation method
When you’re done mapping the stations on your seamless client journey, it’s time to look at the modes of transportation to drive people from one stop to the next as comfortably as possible.
While a tour organiser might be looking at the trains or coaches, as a business owner, you’ll be looking at your channels. Are people taken from your website to your YouTube channel, or vice versa?
Is your email list the vehicle of choice to transport them from Awareness to Interest, or are they floating through your LinkedIn content feed towards the intermediary step of a Discovery Call?
Select the sights to see
How about sights then: What is going to keep your tour participants interested along the journey from Awareness to Interest to Purchase?
What could be the Eiffel Tower or Matterhorn of your client journey?
Your content, of course! Different content formats and topics are like the iconic sights each tour participant will crave to see. Are they going to indulge in a scenic walk through infographics or will they be taken on an educational journey through a series of blog articles?
Each station and vehicle can have its own mix, of course, tailored for the unique needs of the participants at that leg of the journey.
Request client feedback
There’s one way to make successful tours even more popular: observe what works and amplify that.
If the group seems worn out at the end of a long day and drops out of the included dinner, it’s a sign that the segment of the journey has been too long. And if no-one reads the last email of an automated nurture sequence, a similar conclusion can be drawn about that.
In addition to relying on analytics like reach, engagement, open and click rates, consider asking feedback every now and then to finetune your client journey, sorry, guided tour!
Plan a tour guide of your own
Planning the conducted all-inclusive tour for your clients to turn from interested followers into loyal returning customers can feel like you need to hike through the forest to create a smooth experience for others.
In a way, that is true: a seamless and profitable client journey is not an easy feat to design, especially when you’re doing it for the first time or updating an existing one after a long break or big shifts in your business.
That’s why I’ve created the Client Journey Clinic, an event in the Action Lab series.
On Tuesday, May 21st, we’ll gather online to work together through our client journeys!
- You’ll learn more about the different intermediary stops along the way and choose the ones that matter the most to your followers.
- You’ll uncover what speaks to your clients at every step so you can pick the most interesting content topics for them.
- You’ll prioritise the content projects so you can focus on the most profitable ones for quick results.
- You’ll set up the plan to evaluate your journey to keep it seamless even as your business and the technologies used for promotion evolve.
P.S. To get started on your own right away, download the Digital Presence Audit Guide below and focus especially on steps 1, 3, 8 and 9!
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