Systemizing Your Customer Journey With Automation
Running a successful business is no joke.
You often have a flurry of emails, processes, and personnel to contend with, all while trying to stay on top of the actual services or products that you provide.
Luckily, the advancement of technology and automation can help any type of business streamline its customer service and the sales funnel, making at least one part of this process much simpler.
Automating the customer journey is even more important for those who might have a lot of potential customers or leads coming from a number of areas, but you can’t keep track of them.
Here’s how you can go about it:
Embracing Technology and Automation for Streamlined Processes
The day that robots help us run our business is actually not that far away.
While we think of robots as animated droids (like C3PO), robots in software can actually be useful technologies that remind us when to call a client, automatically input some data into forms, and move clients along sales funnels.
For many businesses, embracing this technology is often easier said than done. And for others, embracing technology is out of the question!
Embracing new tech and automation does not mean getting rid of the old ways. We still love pen and paper over here; instead, we recommend that you supplement some of your marketing and sales processes with automation.
The sales funnel can be easily automated if much of your marketing and sales interactions are happening online already. This will then allow you to scale your business much more easily.
What Does Your Customer Journey Look Like?
Before we can dive into some amazing examples of systemizing your customer journey, we should get on the same page about what your customer journey looks like.
Every customer journey will be different and it will be unique to your business model and marketing campaigns. However, in any business, the customer journey is how a customer gets to the final end-product and actually purchases your product or service.
Here’s an example of what a customer journey looks like:
A customer google searches for “office supplies in my area.” They then see a sponsored Google ad for your office supply products. They then click the ad and navigate to your website. The website should have:
A call-to-action that encourages them to sign up for a newsletter and get a discount code
A slew of product pages that they can browse
There would then be a few avenues for the client to purchase your office supplies or at least to become a sales-qualified lead.
Here’s another one:
A customer living in your area scrolls on Instagram and sees an ad for your roof repair services. The ad not only alerts the customer to your presence (and in that case, they then decide to follow you on Instagram) but it also encourages them to take advantage of a killer deal—a free roof assessment! The customer clicks on your ad, which takes them to your landing page. From there, all they need to do is provide their email address or fill out an assessment form.
While it is not guaranteed that every client will provide their information, buy your product, or buy your service, you can provide multiple avenues for them to do this. And then through effective marketing, you can begin to nurture clients, grow your fan base, and grow your customer base.
Customer journeys can come through:
Local Google searches
Social media
Paid advertising (PPC, Google Ads, Local ads)
Lead magnets (i.e., eBooks, blogs, technical guides, resources)
Referrals
Email marketing
By mapping out these processes, you can identify content gaps, or where things like an eBook would really help your customers. You can also identify unnecessary points of friction for your customers, such as parts of the journey that make it hard for them to convert (i.e., a slow loading page or faulty redirect).
It can also help you identify the time-consuming or manual processes that slow down the customer journey from the business’ point of view.
4 Ways to Automate Your Customer Journey
Marketing automation enables your company to look into your customer journey process and automate parts of it for happier customers and a scalable company.
You’ll experience better-informed customers, less friction in the buying process, and lots of efficiencies. While you may have to work to set up your marketing automation system, it is definitely worth it.
Here are 4 ways of systemizing your customer journey with marketing automation:
1. Come Up With a Marketing Automation Strategy
Marketing automation is really only daunting when you don’t understand it and try to do everything at once (or you do nothing at all and have decision paralysis). The first step is coming up with a marketing automation strategy. This strategy will inform your major decisions and help guide your process.
Start by collecting ideas of what you need:
Map your customer journey so you understand the types of entry points you’re experiencing and the gaps that are needing to be filled
Think about your goals and long-term vision; if you want your customer response to be better, then you can implement an auto-responder email for form submissions, auto-distribute blogs, regularly follow up with leads via auto emails, and accelerate onboarding
Connect with key stakeholders like your personnel in sales, marketing, or your contractors to identify common complaints that come up
2. Sequence Your Work
Sometimes it helps to visualize your work in new ways. You can come up with whiteboards online, jam boards/MindMeister maps, kanban project management boards, and project management software.
Within these software tools, you can assign images, connect ideas, assign tasks to different people, and set due dates. This will allow you and your team to stay focused even when implementing automation internally! You can then use it in other areas of your business operations. Be mindful of implementing one automation project at a time or being smart about how much energy is devoted to each task.
3. Research Marketing Automation Software
There are loads of marketing automation software available. But you want to do your research so you know that the software you choose will improve your customer’s journey. Here are some examples of marketing automation software:
Email marketing software
Lead capture and lead generation software
Sales funnel software (think of Pipedrive here)
Project management software for onboarding
Customer relationship management (CRM) software
Accounting, invoicing, and billing
Upon researching, you’ll want to see what integrations are compatible with each other. For example, you could have CRM software with accounting integrations. But if they don’t have integrations for the accounting software that you use, then you are losing out on this feature. Granted, you might have to take a hard look at any software you are using to ensure it will continue to benefit you.
4. Use Data To Measure Impact, Inform Future Decisions, and Avoid Issues
Once you implement your marketing automation software, you’ll need to test and check in on how it works. Sometimes these processes can become more bulky or burdensome and are actually not that great. You may have to rework and find new software. This process can be tedious, but once you have something you like, you’ll be able to stick with it for a while and use it to scale up when needed.
Use the data that you get from each of these pieces of software to inform decision-making, avoid issues or conflict, and measure impact like ROI.
Each software will have data, like top-performing automation tasks (like email clicks), under-performing areas of your customer journey, and opportunities for improvement.
Optimize Your Customer Journey With Marketing Automation
There are many benefits to systemizing your customer journey with automation.
To start, you may find that response times are speedier, your customers are happier and they are getting answers, and the customer journey is becoming more tailored to each customer’s needs.
Your business is constantly evolving, and the addition of marketing automation will support your company as it changes, grows, and scales.
Rationale
Automating the customer journey will help in the sales process. To start systemizing your customer journey, begin by mapping out common paths that they take to purchase your product.
Then:
Draw up a marketing automation strategy
Sequence your automation implementation
Research marketing automation software
Use data to inform future decision making and solve problems
There are many benefits to systemizing your customer journey with automation. You may find that response times are speedier, your customers are happier and they are getting answers, and the customer journey is becoming more tailored to each customer’s needs.
Your business is constantly evolving, and the addition of marketing automation will support your company as it changes, grows, and scales.
Kyber Digital
343 Harbor View
Forked River, NJ
08731
(215) 305-8769
