Last Updated on January 25, 2025 by Elevate Digital

Creating a customer journey can be one of the most transformative exercises for your business. When done right, it improves marketing results, optimizes resources, and creates a repeatable system for converting prospects into loyal customers.

Unfortunately, many businesses waste time relying on guesswork and poorly implemented customer journey maps that fail to deliver actionable insights…

This guide will show you how to create a customer journey, provide examples, and share templates to help you craft a highly effective customer journey map for your business.

If you would like to watch the YouTube video version of this blog, click here.

What Is a Customer Journey?

A customer journey is the path potential customers take from first learning about your business to becoming loyal advocates. It includes all interactions and touchpoints, helping businesses understand customer needs at every stage.

Mapping this journey ensures that you engage your audience with the right message, at the right time, and through the right channel.

Customer journey blank template Elevate Digital solutions

Why Customer Journey Mapping Matters

Proper customer journey mapping helps you:

  1. Identify touchpoints and gaps in your sales funnel.
  2. Improve engagement and conversion rates.
  3. Enhance the customer experience.
  4. Allocate resources more effectively.

So let’s explore how to create a customer journey and apply it to real-world examples.

Step 1: Discovery – Attracting Your Audience

The discovery stage is where potential customers first encounter your brand. They may not even realize your product or service exists, so your job is to meet them where they are by creating valuable content tailored to their needs.

Example: Attracting a Dropshipping Audience

Take the example of Xero, an accounting software company. They target a persona we’ll call “Dropship Debby,” a small business owner seeking information about dropshipping suppliers. Xero creates content like “How to Find Dropshipping Suppliers in the UK,” which ranks on Google organically.

To speed up visibility, they could also use a paid Google Ads campaign for keywords like:

  • Dropshipping suppliers UK
  • Best dropshipping platforms
  • Free balance sheet templates

By targeting Debby’s pain points, Xero attracts her to their blog, beginning her buyer journey.

Some useful tips for the discovery stage include; leveraging channels like social media, Google organic search, forums, and paid ads. Also, tracking KPIs such as; Impressions, click-through rate (CTR), and engagement rates using tools like: Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Microsoft Clarity.

Discovery, connect and sign up phases of the customer journey map for B2B SaaS company Xero

Step 2: Connect – Building Trust and Authority

Once potential customers land on your site, the next step is building trust. Your content should establish credibility and keep visitors engaged, showing them that you are an authority in your space. Providing value is paramount at this stage. Use tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity to analyze visitor behavior. Track metrics like scroll depth, time on page, and engagement, to optimize content performance.

Step 3: Excite – Encouraging Action

At this stage, it’s time to nudge visitors towards taking action. Whether it’s signing up for a free trial or downloading a resource, your CTAs should align with the customer’s current needs and be relevant to the content.

At this stage Xero offer a free trial, which can work for leads who are more “solution aware”. But in the case of “Drop ship Debby,” instead of asking her to sign up for a trail immediately, a more effective CTA might be a webinar on “How to Set Up Your E-commerce Business.” By addressing her initial goal, Xero builds rapport before introducing its accounting solutions.

At this stage it is important to experiment with A/B testing on CTAs, such as offering webinars or free templates.

Re-Targeting and Nurturing

An important point to remember here, is that for complex buying decisions, most of your potential customers won´t be ready to take action immediately. For this reason, re-targeting campaigns are essential, to stay front of mind and nurture leads, in order to bridge them back into the journey at a point where they will take action.

An example of this, is when, after landing on your website, (which has a re-targeting pixel on it) you are then able to show re-targeting ads to your website visitors, on various platforms such as Google, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.

Lead nurturing email sequences will also be important when, for example, leads have downloaded a lead magnet and signed up to your subscriber list.

Making use of a North Star Metric

Establishing what specific action a customer needs to take in order to make them more likely to buy and ascend in the buyer journey (repeat purchase and/or upgrade to higher priced products) allows you to become more focused and effective with your marketing.

It also enables you to remove the friction from the whole process, to ensure that customers can unlock the value of your product easily and remain “excited”. For example in the early days of Facebook, users who connected with 5 or more friends immediately on signing up, were more likely to keep using the platform, so this became an action that Facebook highly encouraged new users to take.

Customer journey map final stages (excite, ascend, prmote) for SaaS B2B brand Xero

Step 4: Ascend – Nurturing Long-Term Relationships

The ascend stage focuses on guiding customers to unlock the full value of your product or service. For SaaS companies like Xero, this could mean upgrading to a higher price plan, for example, or becoming a paying customer after signing up for an inital free trial.

Once again, retargeting campaigns on platforms like Google, Meta, and TikTok will help you to stay front of mind and email nurturing campaigns can deliver valuable resources, such as free business continuity plans or buyer guides, to build trust over time and make customers more likely to repeat buy or upgrade their intial purchase.

KPI examples to track at this stage include things like; your upgrade rate from free to paid subscriptions and your ACV (average contract value).

Step 5: Promote (Encourage Advocacy and Referrals)

At this stage there are various activities that you could be undertaking to transform customers into advocates. This is done by providing them with personal and business benefits for their advocacy. For example, incentivizing customers to leave reviews or testimonials, or highlighting the mutual benefits of participation, such as free publicity for customer businesses.

Some specific examples used by Xero include; Referral Programs to incentivize users to refer others with rewards (e.g., $50 per referral). Xero also uses Customer Spotlights, where they showcase customer businesses, providing them exposure while creating social proof for Xero. They interview customers and share these stories on social media platforms like Instagram, as well as using testimonials to motivate others in similar industries to join.

Customer Journey Mapping Tools and Templates

To streamline this whole process, download our customer journey template and KPI scorecard. Here’s a brief summary of how to use the KPI scorecard:

 

  1. Define KPIs for Each Stage: Examples could be Impressions or view rate for the discovery stage, engagement rate or scroll depth for the connect stage, and conversions for the excite stage.
  2. List Sources for each stage: Google Ads, Meta, Microsoft Clarity, email campaigns, etc. So you know where to look for data.
  3. Set Monthly Targets: Track progress to identify bottlenecks and opportunities. Use the color coded tabs to easily see which stages of the journey are performing well and which ones need improving.
  4. Monitor Metrics: Use tools like Google Analytics to measure performance.
  5. A/B Testing: Test different content, hooks, CTAs and images etc where different stages of the journey are underperforming.
KPI Scorecard - Elevate Digital Solutions

Example in the D2C space for an E-commerce brand

Now let´s look at this whole process again with the E-commerce brand Balmy World, who sell hand drums to parents of children with anxiety issues for their relaxing and calming effects. Here are the details of the process.

  • Target Persona: “Mommy Mandy” (Parent seeking ways to relax their children).
  • Channel: Meta (Facebook and Instagram).
  • Content: Paid ads promoting calming drums for children using educational and informational messaging.

Steps 1 and 2 - Discover and Connect

“Mommy Mandy” doesn´t want to be sold to whilst scrolling on social media, although she is aware that she has a problem (an anxious and hyperactive child). So soft educational content (advertorials – ads disguised as content), that share relatable stories and product benefits, e.g., “Healing frequencies reduce stress and anxiety in children” will be used to build trust without hard-selling. Also the use of case studies and testimonials will help to build credibility.

KPIs to track include: Testing different types of content, different videos, different hooks and analysing Click-through rates, video views and dwell times. Re-targeting will again be important here. Balmy World, for example offer introductory discounts (e.g., 60% off) to capture email addresses.

Step 3 - Excite and Convert

Once customers reach the checkout page excitement can nosedive as Pre-Buyer’s Remorse kicks in. So it will be important to use testimonials and customer reviews directly on checkout pages to reassure customers. Also include order bumps and upselling options to boost the average order value. KPIs to Monitor include: Abandoned cart rate and Average order value (AOV).

Step 4 - Retain and Ascend Customers

Once someone buys and becomes a customer, it is important to continue Nurturing to encourage Repeat Purchases and Advocacy. This is done using email campaigns offering additional resources (e.g. Balmy World offer free songbooks as well as other products that can be bought).

Also, incentivizing social sharing (e.g. entry into a competition to win a prize, for tagging the brand on social media). Convert customers into advocates who share user-generated content and promote the brand.

Once this process has been set up, it should be honed and modified through testing and analysing, until you achieve the máximum possible output in sales and profits. And then you can repeat the process for different customer personas. So let´s finish by looking at some common mistakes and closing insights for this process of creating a customer journey.

E-Com D2C example customer journey template - Elevate Digital Solutions

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Customer Journey Mapping

  1. Skipping Persona Development: Tailor your journey to specific personas like Dropship Debby and Mommy Mandy. Create multiple personas and corresponding journeys.
  2. Ignoring Retargeting: Retargeting campaigns capture lost opportunities so it´s important not to forget this. It should be done at various stages of the journey.
  3. Using Irrelevant CTAs: Match your offer to the visitor’s stage in the journey.
  4. Focusing Only on Sales: Provide value before asking for a sale.

Closing Insights on creating a customer journey

Creating a customer journey map ensures your marketing strategy is actionable, scalable, and aligned with your audience’s needs. By following this guide, you can create a seamless path for your customers, from discovery to loyalty. Here are some closing thoughts to consider.

    1. Adjusting Based on Buying Complexity:
      • Simple purchases (e.g., Balmy World drums) require quicker, more streamlined journeys.
      • Complex purchases (e.g., Xero software) need more nurturing, longer consideration phases, and additional touchpoints.
    2. Framework Scalability:
      • Create multiple entry points and customer personas.
      • Use different channels (e.g., organic search, YouTube) to capture and nurture new audiences.
    3. Final Tips:
      • Monitor KPIs at each stage to identify bottlenecks.
      • Continuously refine content, targeting, and user flows to enhance performance.
      • Leverage customer advocacy programs to create a self-sustaining marketing loop.

So if you´re ready to get started, download our customer journey template and your Customer journey KPI scorecard to start crafting a strategy that works for your business today. Whether you’re targeting B2B or D2C audiences, these insights will help you create a repeatable system for long-term success. And if you´d like help with this, book a discovery call here, completely free of charge.

Tom Peyton
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