What Is A Customer Journey And Why Your Business Needs One
What is a customer journey and why your business needs one. It’s the path someone takes from first hearing about you to becoming a repeat client or customer. Most small businesses don’t have a good client/customer journey mapped out. As a result they rely on luck to turn interested people into paying customers, and then hope those paying customers become people who buy from you again. It rarely happens this way.
One of the biggest gaps I see in businesses when I work with ladies, is that their customer/client journeys are weak. That means they are leaving revenue on the table, and letting customers drop off the edge of a cliff.
Lordy! Lordy! This needs to change. 😁
You must remember (however uncomfortable it might be) that you are, at heart, a business owner who needs to sell, so that you make enough money to survive long term.
When you put in place great customer/client journeys – they can be the difference between being constantly broke at the end of each month, or quadrupling your income and celebrating with a big fat donut.
THE BRUTAL CONVERSATION
Something I ask the ladies inside my community The Jenny Lane Lounge, and inside 121 coaching is this:-
“What happens after someone finds you?”
Often the ladies will say – “well sometimes they’ll grab my freebie, or they’ll make a purchase”. That they can answer instantly.
But when I ask what happens after the customer has made a first purchase I’m usually met with a rabbit in headlights stare. 🐰
Often ladies don’t have customer/client journeys in place, because they’ve never really been told how important they are to the success of their business.
So they spend time over there fannying about with their website for the hundredth time (been there done that 🙄), but they’ve failed to put a great, money making customer/client journey in place to increase revenue in and sales per person.
You need your customers handing over money not just once, but over and over again – as many times as possible – of course all the while giving the customer as much value as you can.
That’s what a customer journey and why your business needs one actually comes down to – it’s not about more followers, it is about having in place a clear next step a customer can take once they have made a purchase from you.
When you have a good customer/client journey in place – it keeps everyone happy – including your bank manager. 🏦
WHY “I’LL SORT IT OUT LATER” DOESN’T WORK
Gah! I’ve seen and heard this too often!
Most business owners build their first offer, then tell themselves they’ll figure out what comes next once people start buying. Nooooo! The journey needs to be in place from the get go!
What often happens is if the business owner shelves creating the customer/client journey early on, they then get real busy with the day to day churn in their business, and that customer/client journey they need to build becomes something that gathers dust in the back of their brain. 🧠
Meanwhile the customer or client who just made a purchase moves on, because there’s no invitation to them to come back and buy something else of value.
This is like a customer walking in to your High Street store, they make one purchase, and then you permanently lock the door behind them on the way out. Just does not make sense!
And as The Business Fixer – I do not like things that don’t make sense. 🙋🏻♀️
So a great customer/client journey shouldn’t be something you add when you feel like it, or when your to do list is empty (which it never is), or when you’ve finished titting about with Canva.
Your customer/client journey build out is imperative – like top of the list important – as early on as you can – because It’s what can turn single sales into repeat income. Yahoo!
COME AND FIX YOUR BUSINESS LIVE WITH ME
Every month I run a free live Business Fix session on Zoom – it’s exclusively for female business owners. It’s an hour where we dive into the real problems that are stopping your business from working the way it should. There’s zero fluff, and no motivational speeches. You’ll get honest, practical input from me – someone who has been building successful businesses for over twenty years.
If you want to improve the results you’re getting in your business, come to the next live. Register here and you’ll be notified of the date for the next live session.
THE FOUR BEST STEPS OF A CUSTOMER JOURNEY
I’ve worked with hundreds of female business owners, helping them map out the best customer journeys for their businesses. There are four common steps that need to be taken care of.
1. Lead Magnet: you need something free that solves one specific, immediate problem for your ideal client or customer, in exchange for their name and email address.
This is how you start to build a mailing list, and get people away from socials and in to your space. When you do this you then have the power to be able to communicate with them directly inside their mailbox, as many times as you wish. This is 5x more powerful than any of your social spaces.
2. First Offer: when anyone has grabbed your free thing, the next stage of your customer/client journey should be to immediately put a low-cost or entry-level product or service in front of them, that turns an interested lead who has joined your list into a paying customer for the first time.
The power of doing this AT THE POINT they ask for your freebie cannot be understated – that’s a moment when they’re already starting to invest in you. Don’t leave it two weeks!
Present them with an upsell to a low ticket item that links to your freebie, but goes deeper. That can start to bring money in to the pot, and it can signal to you those people who are more invested in you because they’re willing to buy something low cost that’s not a high-risk purchase for them.
3. Core Offer: if they’ve signalled interest in your freebie and/or your low ticket offer, you should have a mid ticket offer ready to present to them, that again keeps them on the same journey (meaning it’s linked to the freebie and low ticket offer) but goes one step deeper.
This can often be the offer that does the heavy lifting for your income. It can include things like monthly pay memberships and other subscriptions.
4. Exclusive Offer: This is where you let people know about the deepest way they can work with or purchase from you – and this is your highest ticket offer.
This can be presented once you know your customer/client has spent some time with the free/low/mid offers you’ve put before them, and gives them the opportunity to purchase something more exclusive.
Now you have a freebie plus three different opportunities to present your customer/client with options to buy over and above the freebie they asked for. That is a customer/client journey.
They can be more complicated than this, but that free – low – mid – high is the essence of the journeys you should be mapping out. And yes – you can have more than one of these journeys in place, as long as you are able to market all of them, so that none are sat silent gathering dust.
Do you know how many female business owners stop at just executing the freebie? They hope that the customer/client will then go and hunt down things to buy from the business owner.
I’d say a good 95% of ladies fail to have any journey in place after the freebie, or the low ticket offer. They’re leaving money on the table. Constantly. 😭
I have to be brutal (again!) here, and tell you that if you’re not prepared to become a better marketer of your business and create customer/clients journeys that sell more, the chances of you increasing revenue in any significant way will be slim.
Take action to create great customer/client journeys, or you’ll allow your customers/clients to ignore you and move on.
WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING WHEN THERE’S NO JOURNEY IN PLACE
One of the ladies I once coached sold knitting patterns through her own shop. She has beautiful patterns, a loyal following, but had no plan at all for what happened after someone bought a single pattern. People bought once, downloaded it, and never came back.
When we mapped her customer journey properly – adding a small free pattern as a lead magnet, a related pattern bundle as a follow-up offer, and a simple email sequence after every purchase to encourage the customer to buy more – her repeat purchase rate nearly doubled.
She didn’t need more customers. She just needed a journey for the customers she already had.
HOW TO MAP YOUR OWN CUSTOMER JOURNEY
Once you understand what a customer journey and why your business needs one really means, mapping your own is the easy part. It might take a little time to put in place. But once there it can work its magic over and over again.
Before you invest more and more time trying to attract new people to your business, sit down and answer these questions honestly.
1. What’s your lead magnet – the free, specific thing that starts the journey that gets people on your list?
2. What’s the first thing a new lead can actually buy from you that connects to the free thing they asked for? Is that thing being introduced to the lead immediately to give them opportunity to buy?
3. What happens in the moment right after someone does buy – is there then a follow-up in place, or does it go quiet, allowing them to drop off the edge of a cliff?
4. What’s the next thing you invite them to buy after they have made that first purchase?
5. Once they’ve made a second purchase from you – how do you ensure you keep presenting them with more opportunities to buy – whether at the same price, a lower or a higher price? Do you have email sequences and/or other systems in place to manage this?
If you can’t answer all of these questions clearly, you’re running a business with a broken customer/client journey.
HELP
If you’re not sure whether your customer journey exists at all, and you want real support mapping it out rather than guessing your way through it, come to my free Business Fix Live.
It runs once a month, and there’s no fluff and no slides – just an hour where I help female business owners work through what needs fixing in their businesses. You can save your seat here.
What Is A Customer Journey And Why Your Business Needs One
It’s the path someone takes from the point at which they first discover your business, right through to becoming a repeat client or customer. It includes every offer and touchpoint in between, from your lead magnet through to your core offer and beyond.
Why Does My Small Business Need A Customer Journey?
Without one, you’re relying on hope and chance to turn interested people into buyers, and buyers into repeat customers. A clear next step at every stage means you make more money from the people who’ve already found you, instead of constantly chasing new ones.
How Do I Map A Customer Journey For My Business?
Start with your free offer (your lead magnet), and then consider what they can buy first straight after getting the lead magnet. Then decide what happens right after someone buys, and what you’re going to invite them to buy from you next. Most small businesses are missing at least one of these steps, and losing money as a result
the bottom line
A customer/client journey isn’t a nice-to-have that you get to eventually.
It’s the difference between chasing new people every single month to try and makes sales, and building a business that keeps making money from the people who already trust you.
Map your five steps. Fix the gaps. Then watch what happens to your income once people actually have somewhere to go after they buy from you the first time.
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