Updated January 12, 2023
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A New App to Map the Path
Working out what turns a person from a lead into a customer is the challenge that faces most businesses. You have to be a detective, looking for clues of where your lead left their fingerprints, what they interacted with, and what finally made them turn into a prospect or customer. Then, after you’ve done this several times using Google Analytics data, you should see a pattern emerge. This pattern eventually allows you to map the customer journey, showing you where to best funnel your marketing dollars to grow your business.
With many businesses, the problem comes not in finding out what makes a customer buy but finding the pattern that allows you to scale the information to grow your business. So we were excited when we saw that Google has developed a web app using all the data collected via their Analytics platform. The app enables benchmarks for the customer journey across different industries.
The Customer Journey by Industry, Location & Company Size
The app allows you to filter by company size, industry and location (although the location options are fairly limited) and then it shows you which marketing channel fits where on your customer journey.
Then, giving you the option to drill down even further, you can look at what stage each channel (e.g., brand paid search, display, organic search) is most effective. For example, you can determine if AdWords remarketing works best at the beginning of the funnel, near the end, or both. The tool allows you to see what’s working for other companies. Obviously, this data isn’t as detailed as it could be; yet it offers a great overview of what seems to work for several different industries. It is an especially useful tool from the agency side as it can give you a quick insight at a glance.
We suggest using the app as a guideline to investigating your own data. If your industry shows that Social should have a big role in the early stages, take the time to look at your social channels to see if that rings true. If it doesn’t, then you rethink and retool your social media strategy to capitalize on this missed opportunity.
Content Mapping
If you do decide to look into your customer journey and find the gaps, we also suggest content mapping. Resources, such as this HubSpot guide, can help you match the right content to the right platform at the right time. But don’t forget your own Analytics data to find those pieces of content that resonate with your visitors. Update your website content, even the evergreen pages, to keep pace with trends and your customer’s appetite for information.
What do you know about your customer’s journey? Are you in the dark about what’s around the corner?
Photo credit – Top: Patrick Barry
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