Introducing Google Expertise into Smart Customer Journey Mapping

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Many website owners we talk to feel there is a disconnect between what they are offering and what their prospective customers are looking for at different stages of the sales engagement process.

Successful websites rely on carefully planned user journeys that engage and convert more visitors. Being a fully integrated digital agency and Certified Google Partner means we combine Google research with best-practice usability to map out customer journeys that are primed for target user engagement & conversions.

This article explores how we fold real user data into online solutions for our clients.

Increasingly complex customer journeys

In an ideal world, the journey your prospects take to becoming loyal customers is a straightforward, linear process with no distractions – they become aware of your product or service, make the purchase commitment and become regular users of your product or service.


In reality, you are faced with a range of challenges in maintaining engagement with prospects throughout the journey – convincing more to choose you and follow-through with a purchase rather than opting for one of your competitors.


Staying on top of all of stages can appear overwhelming, but that is where mapping your customer journeys can help. This mapping allows us and you to grasp how your customers prefer to interact and engage with your brand, and how your products and services fit into their motivations and timeframes.

What are Customer Journeys and the sales funnel stages they support

The customer journey process maps the stages a prospect advances through when completing a purchase or conversion; including the early stages of the funnel (discovery and learning), the completion of a pre-determined conversion (be it a sale, subscription sign-up or enquiry) and the post-sales stage (aftercare, secondary purchases and brand advocacy).

It also highlights the friction and challenges faced by prospects at each stage, allowing us to fine tune our recommendations so that your journeys are best set up to succeed.

Here is a description of the five stages with examples of typical Google queries:

Awareness: a prospect has a need or problem and starts searching on Google. For example, they may think, “My child is coughing. How do I get rid of it?” and search for “How to stop my child coughing?”

Interest: your prospect looks for initial solutions to address their need. An example is “cough medicine for children aged 8”. At this stage, they will also seek alternatives (e.g. “hot sweet drink for children”).

Key Points

  • These two stages are important to pay attention to, in order to be seen as a topical authority by Google as well as helping your prospective consumer along their journey.
  • 70% of brand choices are made in the initial decision-making stages - McKinsey. So helping a user early in the process is key, making them remember you later on and presenting a great opportunity for extra traffic as this stage is typically overlooked by your competitors.
  • What would they search for when they aren’t sure what they’re looking for? Another important aspect is to educate the prospect so they won’t choose the wrong solution.
Desire: by becoming more informed, your prospect refines their search to find the right solution for them. They search for different attributes of the product such as segments (“infant cough medicine”) and types (“non drowsy cough medicine”) while sourcing specific brands / brand comparisons, as well as the best/cheapest/discount options given they have entered the buying mode (e.g. “best medicine for 8 year old with dry cough”).
Action: The prospects have made their choice and are ready to take action. A typical search would be “Covonia Dry & Tickly Cough near me”.
Loyalty: The prospects have turned into clients and could have questions about the newly purchased product. A typical example could be "Covonia Dry & Tickly Cough side effects for children".

The post-sale queries are very valuable, because these are from actual customers. This not only helps with their query but serves as a key touchpoint to warm them up for their next conversion.

Introducing Google insights to customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping typically centres on user experience (UX), using methods such as heatmaps, qualitative interviews, on-page behaviour analysis, client feedback – all feeding into the optimisation of the overall UX and key touchpoints.


By marrying Google insights with UX best practice expertise, we offer the best of both worlds by discovering a deeper level of insight around user search intent at each stage of the journey. User search intent is more valuable than specific keyword research given Google’s more powerful interpretation of searches by end users.

Through Google’s suite of tools, we dive deeper into invaluable and smart insights to boost our clients’ brand marketing and overall web performance.

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Focus areas include:

  • Gauging consumer search behaviour with real time search trends in target territories
  • Explore your audience’s interests, uncover search trends, and unlock new ways to reach them
  • Research intent-based audience insights and how can we align these with your USPs
  • Grasp the most important conversation touchpoints within Google, that can win or lose a customer conversion
  • Map out the timeline of search intent, so we can plan and prioritise content production

Combining the disciplines of UX & SEO insights relies on a transparent and collaborative approach to ensure no value is lost. Being a fully integrated agency means our Teams share findings and insights quickly and throughout the process to drive efficiency for our clients.

How we combine SEO and UX insights to map out customer journeys

1. Define your visitor personas, their goals and your goals

Working closely with you, this stage underpins the whole process – what are the profiles of your targets, what are their desired outcomes from a visit to your site and how do these align with your overall objectives?

2. Dive into the data to map out the intents


Combining Google Search Console with on-page data, interviews and competitor analysis, we identify the user intents that encourage users to move through your customer journey when addressed. After segmenting the intent terms by informational / commercial, we list all commercial intents on post-it notes along with search volume / average ranking to start building the picture of a successful journey map.


3. Map the post-its in a funnel


We then build up a sales funnel on a whiteboard, arranging and clustering the sticky notes logically at each stage. This stage is revisited and refined through continual data exploration to establish pathways and fill all gaps, and is typically a rapid, collaborative process. 


4. Content planning


We now have a deeper understanding of your prospects’ intent and interactions through our combined approach. This overview allows us to plan what content to repurpose, create and then optimise – often requiring the creation of new pages, articles and sections.
Given most organisations we deal with don’t have unlimited resources, this customer journey mapping is a great asset to understand how to prioritise efforts. Through the project management platform Asana that we share with our clients, we assign and describe tasks, set deadlines to maintain focus and momentum in getting your customer journeys launch-ready.

Takeaways

Define

Define your USPs and ensure they are aligned with relevant search intent so there is a clear match.

Align

Ensure your customer journeys are aligned with your desired outcomes from a visit and overall website goals. For multiple goals or distinct user types, fork these into dedicated customer journey maps.

Refine

Mapping is not a one-off - customer tastes, technology, brand evolution are all subject to shift – re-evaluate at least every 12 months to sense-check your mapping remains fit for purpose.

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