Create a Buyer Journey Map utilizing RACE

Uncover how you can use our buyer journey mapping template to create actionable insights to enhance your advertising

In at this time’s digitally linked world, prospects have a myriad of decisions in relation to connecting with manufacturers and companies. There are various advantages to this, equivalent to higher attain and extra touchpoints to attach with prospects, however there are additionally some drawbacks.  When buyer journeys, there may be hardly ever just one route obtainable, making understanding how your prospects discover and work together with you tougher. 

Think about the London tube map. Let’s say you wish to get to Oxford Circus. You already know you possibly can at all times get the Central (crimson) line, however you may additionally get the Bakerloo (brown) line or the Victoria (blue) line, relying on the place you might be coming from. Every journey is barely totally different, and offers you a selected sort of expertise.

We will apply this considering when analyzing digital buyer journeys. One buyer might discover you thru Google search, whereas one other may even see an advert on social media, or via an internet occasion. And the factor is, because the variety of channels that prospects can discover us on will increase, so too does the quantity of touchpoints wanted to make a sale.

In response to analysis by EmailToolTester, in 2025 there may very well be as much as 50 touchpoints in a purchaser journey earlier than a sale is made:

“Whereas it’s extensively accepted that it takes 8 touchpoints to make a sale, our analysis means that in 2025, the precise variety of touchpoints earlier than a sale varies between 1 and 50, relying on the prospect’s shopping for stage:

• Inactive prospects solely want 1–3 touches on common
• A heat inbound lead will want 5–12 touches
• A chilly prospect can require 20–50 touches”

This would possibly really feel fairly overwhelming. How are you going to presumably handle all these totally different touchpoints and complexities? That’s the place buyer journey maps come to save lots of the day.

What’s a buyer journey map?

A buyer journey map is a visible mannequin that exhibits you ways your prospects behave at every touchpoint with your corporation. This method, also called “touchpoint mapping”, is geared toward reviewing how digital experiences and content material help buyer decision-making throughout a multi-channel journey.

As prospects navigate touchpoints in several methods, enhancing your omnichannel expertise throughout totally different platforms is crucial for enhancing the success of your advertising. Omnichannel technique and buyer journey mapping go hand in hand. To be able to have cohesion in messaging and identification throughout your touchpoints, you want a robust understanding of your complete digital identification.

“A seamless buyer journey is essential for omnichannel success. By making a unified expertise throughout channels—on-line, in-store or on social media—manufacturers cut back friction and make it straightforward for patrons to interact. This clean journey fosters deeper interplay, will increase satisfaction, builds belief and drives conversions and loyalty.” [Annie Austin, Forbes]

Nevertheless, and not using a correct plan in place it is laborious to trace all of the totally different parts of your buyer journey. If you do not have a devoted plan in place, you should use our free digital advertising plan template to get began.

What are the advantages of making a buyer journey map?

Put merely, buyer journey maps assist you to perceive your patrons’ behaviour. You should use them to shortly establish any attainable snags in your digital journey, and any limitations to sale. They’ll additionally present you what areas of your advertising funnel are sturdy or want creating.

Buyer journey mapping helps you get into the thoughts of your prospects and contemplate their wants at every touchpoint, and in consequence higher predict future behaviour, needs and desires. You’ll be able to then use this info to unravel their ache factors along with your product/model by implementing strategic advertising techniques.

However how do you get began?

Realizing your personas

Earlier than you can begin buyer journey mapping, it’s useful to know your key prospects and the way they function throughout your digital touchpoints. The easiest way to do that is to make use of your key buyer personas as the idea to your buyer journey maps.

New to personas? Here’s a helpful definition from our co-founder Dr. Dave Chaffey:

“A persona is a fictional character that communicates the first traits of a bunch of customers, recognized and chosen as a key goal via use of segmentation knowledge, throughout the corporate in a usable and efficient method”.

In the event you need assistance figuring out the important thing personas for your corporation, obtain our helpful persona information and template. You’ll wish to use a spread of knowledge sources and actual buyer suggestions to create essentially the most correct personas for your corporation.

Upon getting your buyer personas recognized, you possibly can start creating your buyer journey maps.

High tip: We advocate creating one buyer journey map per persona, so that you may be clear in your totally different patrons’ behaviours.

Buyer journey mapping with RACE

As buyer behaviour differs at totally different levels of the client journey, we created a set of helpful buyer journey mapping templates that can assist you map out buyer interactions at every stage of Good Insights’ RACE funnel.

Utilizing our unique buyer journey mapping template and your corporation’ persona knowledge, share what actions, touchpoints, ideas and feelings are concerned at every stage of the client journey, and plot this throughout every RACE stage: Consciousness, Analysis, Choice, and Retention.

You’ll be able to entry and create your personal editable RACE buyer journey map by downloading our buyer journey mapping template bundle. Included is a helpful video which explains how you can full every stage of the map. 

High tip: When finishing your RACE desk, you’re looking at how your persona navigates throughout touchpoints at the moment, not how you’ll ideally like them to! This is a crucial distinction as we’re utilizing the map to search for areas we will optimize and enhance the client journey.

Probably the most actionable factor of this template is the underside two rows for every column. That is the place we establish the ache factors and resolutions for every stage of RACE.

B2C persona instance: ‘Wendy’

Let’s say our firm is an internet retailer specializing in feminine clothes and niknaks. Our persona is Wendy, and on this instance Wendy is in search of a brand new outfit to put on to a good friend’s wedding ceremony. Within the Attain part, she searches for ‘wedding ceremony visitor outfits’ on Google. The ache level for our instance B2C model right here may very well be that we’re not rating organically on Google for ‘wedding ceremony visitor outfits’, so it’s possible that Wendy will go to a competitor’s web site that’s increased up in her search outcomes. That’s dangerous information for us because it means we miss out on buying a brand new lead. 

Beneath the Ache Factors field we’ve got a Decision field, so you possibly can simply contemplate how you can resolve this drawback to enhance the client journey for Wendy (and your model!) For this drawback, our instance firm may assess and implement higher key phrase concentrating on in new content material/weblog articles to spotlight key wedding ceremony visitor outfit phrases to enhance rating over-time. Lengthy-term, this can assist increase the model’s place and visibility in Google for key search phrases that their persona makes use of.

You should use these bins to spotlight blockers that cease your persona transferring alongside the RACE funnel, and what actionable steps you possibly can take to resolve them. In flip you’ll additionally get a greater understanding of key choice factors to your buyer. 

To see the total, accomplished instance of ‘Wendy’s’ buyer journey map and how you can use the template, obtain our buyer journey mapping template bundle.

Turning insights into motion

It’s straightforward to eagerly full a buyer journey map with each intention to implement it, just for it to finish up within the ‘to-do’ pile that by no means surfaces once more. Buyer journey mapping offers you an opportunity to establish snags in your current buyer journeys and house to create resolutions to resolve them. Nevertheless if this info is just not built-in along with your advertising technique, it received’t find yourself getting actioned and your enhancements won’t ever totally come to fruition. Which might suck!

It will be significant that you just combine the resolutions you devise with the RACE template into your general digital advertising technique, so you possibly can work on enhancing your prospects’ journeys at every essential level of the funnel. Think about your persona’s objectives alongside your advertising targets – what are you trying to obtain? Then you possibly can flip these insights into motion by planning what advertising techniques you’ll use to enhance person expertise and elevate the omnichannel expertise to your prospects.