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The customer journey — definition, stages, and benefits

Businesses need to understand their customers to increase engagement, sales, and retention. But building an understanding with your customers isn’t easy.

The customer journey is the road a person takes to convert, but this journey isn’t always obvious to business owners. Understanding every step of that journey is key to business success. After reading this article, you’ll understand the customer journey better and how to use it to improve the customer experience while achieving your business goals.

This post will discuss:

• What a customer journey is

Customer journey stages

Benefits of knowing the customer journey.

• What a customer journey map is

How to create a customer journey map

Use the customer journey map to optimize the customer experience, what is a customer journey.

The customer journey is a series of steps — starting with brand awareness before a person is even a customer — that leads to a purchase and eventual customer loyalty. Businesses use the customer journey to better understand their customers’ experience, with the goal of optimizing that experience at every touchpoint.

Giving customers a positive customer experience is important for getting customers to trust a business, so optimizing the customer journey has never mattered more. By mastering the customer journey, you can design customer experiences that will lead to better customer relationships, loyalty, and long-term retention .

Customer journey vs. the buyer journey

The stages of the customer’s journey are different from the stages of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey follows the customer experience from initial awareness of a brand to buying a product. The customer journey extends beyond the purchase and follows how customers interact with your product and how they share it with others.

Every lead goes through several stages to become a loyal customer. The better this experience is for customers at each stage, the more likely your leads are to stick around.

Ensure that your marketing, sales, and customer service teams optimize for these five stages of the customer journey:

1. Awareness

In the awareness phase, your target audience is just becoming aware of your brand and products. They need information or a solution to a problem, so they search for that information via social media and search engines.

For example, if someone searches on Google for pens for left-handed people, their customer journey begins when they’re first aware of your brand’s left-handed pen.

At this stage, potential customers learn about your business via web content, social media, influencers, and even their friends and family. However, this isn’t the time for hard sells. Customers are simply gathering information at this stage, so you should focus first on answering their questions and building trust.

2. Consideration

In the consideration phase, customers begin to consider your brand as a solution to their problem. They’re comparing your products to other businesses and alternative solutions, so you need to give these shoppers a reason to stick around.

Consideration-stage customers want to see product features that lean heavily toward solving problems and content that doesn’t necessarily push a sale. At this stage, businesses need to position their solution as a better alternative. For example, a nutrition coaching app might create content explaining the differences between using the app and working with an in-person nutritionist — while subtly promoting the benefits of choosing the app.

3. Purchase

The purchase stage is also called the decision stage because at this stage customers are ready to make a buying decision. Keep in mind that their decision might be to go with a competing solution, so purchase-stage buyers won’t always convert to your brand.

As a business, it’s your job to persuade shoppers at this stage to buy from you. Provide information on pricing, share comparison guides to showcase why you’re the superior option, and set up abandoned cart email sequences.

4. Retention

The customer journey doesn’t end once a shopper makes their first purchase. Once you’ve converted a customer, you need to focus on keeping them around and driving repeat business. Sourcing new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing clients, so this strategy can help you cut down on marketing costs and increase profits.

The key to the retention stage is to maintain positive, engaging relationships between your brand and its customers. Try strategies like regular email outreach, coupons and sales, or exclusive communities to encourage customer loyalty.

5. Advocacy

In the advocacy stage, customers are so delighted with your products and services that they spread the word to their friends and family. This goes a step beyond retention because the customer is actively encouraging other people to make purchases.

Customer journeys don’t have a distinct end because brands should always aim to please even their most loyal customers. In the advocacy stage of the customer journey, you can offer referral bonuses, loyalty programs, and special deals for your most active customers to encourage further advocacy.

Being aware of the customer journey helps shed more light on your target audience’s expectations and needs. In fact, 80% of companies compete primarily on customer experience. This means optimizing the customer journey will not only encourage your current customers to remain loyal but will also make you more competitive in acquiring new business.

More specifically, acknowledging the customer journey can help you:

• Understand customer behavior. Classifying every action your customers take will help you figure out why they do what they do. When you understand a shopper’s “why,” you’re better positioned to support their needs.
• Identify touchpoints to reach the customer. Many businesses invest in multichannel marketing, but not all of these touchpoints are valuable. By focusing on the customer journey, you’ll learn which of these channels are the most effective for generating sales. This helps businesses save time and money by focusing on only the most effective channels.
• Analyze the stumbling blocks in products or services. If leads frequently bail before buying, that could be a sign that something is wrong with your product or buying experience. Being conscious of the customer journey can help you fix issues with your products or services before they become a more expensive problem.
• Support your marketing efforts. Marketing requires a deep familiarity with your target audience. Documenting the customer journey makes it easier for your marketing team to meet shoppers’ expectations and solve their pain points.
• Increase customer engagement. Seeing the customer journey helps your business target the most relevant audience for your product or service. Plus, it improves the customer experience and increases engagement. In fact, 29.6% of customers will refuse to embrace branded digital channels if they have a poor experience, so increasing positive customer touchpoints has never been more important.
• Achieve more conversions. Mapping your customers’ journey can help you increase conversions by tailoring and personalizing your approach and messages to give your audience exactly what they want.
• Generate more ROI. You need to see a tangible return on your marketing efforts. Fortunately, investing in the customer journey improves ROI across the board. For example, brands with a good customer experience can increase revenue by 2–7% .
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Today, 94% of customers say a positive experience motivates them to make future purchases. Optimizing the customer journey helps you meet shopper expectations, which increases satisfaction and loyalty.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every step your customer takes from being a lead to eventually becoming an advocate for your brand. The goal of customer journey mapping is to simplify the complex process of how customers interact with your brand at every stage of their journey.

Businesses shouldn’t use a rigid, one-size-fits-all customer journey map. Instead, they should plan flexible, individual types of customer journeys — whether they’re based on a certain demographic or on individual customer personas. To design the most effective customer journey map, your brand needs to understand a customer’s:

• Actions. Learn which actions your customer takes at every stage. Look for common patterns. For example, you might see that consideration-stage shoppers commonly look for reviews.
• Motivations. Customer intent matters. A person’s motivations change at every stage of the customer journey, and your map needs to account for that. Include visual representation of the shopper’s motivations at each stage. At the awareness stage, their motivation might be to gather information to solve their problem. At the purchase stage, it might be to get the lowest price possible.
• Questions. Brands can take customers’ common questions at every stage of the customer journey and reverse-engineer them into useful content. For example, shoppers at the consideration stage might ask, “What’s the difference between a DIY car wash and hiring a professional detailer?” You can offer content that answers their question while subtly promoting your car detailing business.
• Pain points. Everybody has a problem that they’re trying to solve, whether by just gathering intel or by purchasing products. Recognizing your leads’ pain points will help you craft proactive, helpful marketing campaigns that solve their biggest problems.

Customer journey touchpoints

Every stage of the customer journey should also include touchpoints. Customer touchpoints are the series of interactions with your brand — such as an ad on Facebook, an email, or a website chatbot — that occur at the various stages of the customer journey across multiple channels. A customer’s actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will differ at each stage and at each touchpoint.

For example, a customer searching for a fishing rod and reading posts about how they’re made will have very different motivations and questions from when later comparing specs and trying to stay within budget. Likewise, that same customer will have different pain points when calling customer service after buying a particular rod.

It might sound like more work, but mapping the entire customer journey helps businesses create a better customer experience throughout the entire lifecycle of a customer’s interaction with your brand.

Before jumping into the steps of how to create the customer journey map, first be clear that your customer journey map needs to illustrate the following:

• Customer journey stages. Ensure that your customer journey map includes every stage of the customer journey. Don’t just focus on the stages approaching the purchase — focus on the retention and advocacy stages as well.
• Touchpoints. Log the most common touchpoints customers have at every stage. For example, awareness-stage touchpoints might include your blog, social media, or search engines. Consideration-stage touchpoints could include reviews or demo videos on YouTube. You don’t need to list all potential touchpoints. Only list the most common or relevant touchpoints at each stage.
• The full customer experience. Customers’ actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will change at every stage — and every touchpoint — during the customer journey. Ensure your customer journey map touches on the full experience for each touchpoint.
• Your brand’s solutions. Finally, the customer journey map needs to include a branded solution for each stage and touchpoint. This doesn’t necessarily mean paid products. For example, awareness-stage buyers aren’t ready to make a purchase, so your brand’s solution at this stage might be a piece of gated content. With these necessary elements in mind, creating an effective customer journey map is a simple three-step process.

1. Create buyer personas

A buyer persona is a fictitious representation of your target audience. It’s a helpful internal tool that businesses use to better understand their audience’s background, assumptions, pain points, and needs. Each persona differs in terms of actions, motivations, questions, and pain points, which is why businesses need to create buyer personas before they map the customer journey.

To create a buyer persona, you will need to:

• Gather and analyze customer data. Collect information on your customers through analytics, surveys, and market research.
• Segment customers into specific buying groups. Categorize customers into buying groups based on shared characteristics — such as demographics or location. This will give you multiple customer segments to choose from.
• Build the personas. Select the segment you want to target and build a persona for that segment. At a minimum, the buyer persona needs to define the customers’ basic traits, such as their personal background, as well as their motivations and pain points.

For example, ClearVoice created a buyer persona called “John The Marketing Manager.” The in-depth persona details the target customer’s pain points, pet peeves, and potential reactions to help ClearVoice marketers create more customer-focused experiences.

2. List the touchpoints at each customer journey stage

Now that you’ve created your buyer personas, you need to sketch out each of the five stages of the customer journey and then list all of the potential touchpoints each buyer persona has with your brand at every one of these five stages. This includes listing the most common marketing channels where customers can interact with you. Remember, touchpoints differ by stage, so it’s critical to list which touchpoints happen at every stage so you can optimize your approach for every buyer persona.

Every customer’s experience is different, but these touchpoints most commonly line up with each stage of the customer journey:

• Awareness. Advertising, social media, company blog, referrals from friends and family, how-to videos, streaming ads, and brand activation events.
• Consideration. Email, sales calls, SMS, landing pages, and reviews.
• Purchase. Live chat, chatbots, cart abandonment emails, retargeting ads, and product print inserts.
• Retention. Thank you emails, product walkthroughs, sales follow-ups, and online communities.
• Advocacy. Surveys, loyalty programs, and in-person events.

Leave no stone unturned. Logging the most relevant touchpoints at each stage eliminates blind spots and ensures your brand is there for its customers, wherever they choose to connect with you.

3. Map the customer experience at each touchpoint

Now that you’ve defined each touchpoint at every stage of the customer journey, it’s time to detail the exact experience you need to create for each touchpoint. Every touchpoint needs to consider the customer’s:

• Actions. Describe how the customer got to this touchpoint and what they’re going to do now that they’re here.
• Motivations. Specify how the customer feels at this moment. Are they frustrated, confused, curious, or excited? Explain why they feel this way.
• Questions. Every customer has questions. Anticipate the questions someone at this stage and touchpoint would have — and how your brand can answer those questions.
• Pain points. Define the problem the customer has — and how you can solve that problem at this stage. For example, imagine you sell women’s dress shoes. You’re focusing on the buyer persona of a 36-year-old Canadian woman who works in human resources. Her touchpoints might include clicking on your Facebook ad, exploring your online shop, but then abandoning her cart. After receiving a coupon from you, she finally buys. Later, she decides to exchange the shoes for a different color. After the exchange, she leaves a review. Note how she acts at each of these touchpoints and detail her likely pain points, motivations, and questions, for each scenario. Note on the map where you intend to respond to the customer’s motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions. If you can create custom-tailored solutions for every stage of the funnel, that’s even better.

A positive customer experience is the direct result of offering customers personalized, relevant, or meaningful content and other brand interactions. By mapping your customers’ motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions, you’ll find opportunities to improve the customer experience. When you truly address their deepest needs, you’ll increase engagement and generate more positive reviews.

Follow these strategies to improve the customer experience with your customer journey map:

• Prioritize objectives. Identify the stages of the customer journey where your brand has the strongest presence and take advantage of those points. For example, if leads at the consideration stage frequently subscribe to your YouTube channel, that gives you more opportunities to connect with loyal followers.
• Use an omnichannel approach to engage customers. Omnichannel marketing allows businesses to gather information and create a more holistic view of the customer journey. This allows you to personalize the customer experience on another level entirely. Use an omnichannel analytics solution that allows you to capture and analyze the true cross-channel experience.
• Personalize interactions at every stage. The goal of mapping the customer journey is to create more personalized, helpful experiences for your audience at every stage and touchpoint. For example, with the right data you can personalize the retail shopping experience and customer’s website experience.
• Cultivate a mutually trusting relationship. When consumer trust is low, brands have to work even harder to earn their customers’ trust. Back up your marketing promises with good customer service, personalized incentives, and loyalty programs.

Getting started with customer journeys

Customer journeys are complicated in an omnichannel environment, but mapping these journeys can help businesses better understand their customers. Customer journey maps help you deliver the exact experience your customers expect from your business while increasing engagement and sales.

When you’re ready to get started, trace the interactions your customers have at each stage of their journey with your brand. Adobe Customer Journey Analytics — a service built on Adobe Experience Platform — can break down, filter, and query years’ worth of data and combine it from every channel into a single interface. Real-time, omnichannel analysis and visualization let companies make better decisions with a holistic view of their business and the context behind every customer action.

Learn more about Customer Journey Analytics by watching the overview video .

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/introducing-adobes-customer-journey-maturity-model

https://business.adobe.com/blog/how-to/create-customer-journey-maps

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map

Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

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Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

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The definitive 8-step customer journey mapping process

In business, as in life, it's the customer's journey that makes the company's destination worth all the trouble. No customer wants to jump through several different hoops to get to your product: they want it fast and they want it now.

Following certain customer journey mapping stages helps you improve your user's experience (UX) to create a product they love interacting with, ensures you stay ahead of key workflow tasks, and keeps stakeholders aligned. But a misaligned map can derail your plans—leading to dissatisfied users who don’t stick around long enough to convert or become loyal customers.

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This article walks you through the eight key stages of great customer journey mapping, and shows you how to adapt each to your unique business and product to optimize the customer experience from start to finish. 

Learn how customers interact with your product and website

Hotjar's Observe and Ask tools let you go ‘behind the scenes’ to understand your users’ product experiences and improve their customer journey.

An 8-step process for effective customer journey mapping

A customer journey map is a visualization of every point of interaction a user has with your company and product.

Mapping out the customer journey gives you insights into your buyers’ behavior to help you make changes that improve your website and the user flow between touchpoints. This helps you increase online sales and turn users into loyal customers and brand advocates.

Follow these eight proven steps to understand—and enhance—the customer experience.

Note: every business is distinct, so be sure to adapt these steps to your particular user and business needs. 

1. Define your purpose

The first step to creating a successful customer journey map is to define your product's vision or purpose. Without a clear purpose, your actions will be misguided and you won’t know what you want users to achieve during their journey on your website, product page, or web app. 

To define your purpose, consider your company’s mission statement and incorporate your specific user pain points as much as possible. 

Make your purpose specific to your company’s needs and goals—for example, the purpose of an ecommerce brand looking to help users navigate several different products and make multiple purchases will differ from that of a SaaS company selling subscriptions for one core product.

2. Make sure your team is aligned and roles are clear

Cross-functional collaboration is essential when mapping out your brand's or product’s user journey. Get insights from different teams within your organization to find out exactly how users engage with key touchpoints to derive a holistic sense of the user experience (UX), which will help you improve every aspect of the customer experience.

Lisa Schuck , marketing lead at Airship , emphasizes the importance of keeping “anybody that has a touchpoint with a customer” involved. She advises teams to “figure out how to align your external marketing and sales with your internal operations and service.”

Although sales, product, and marketing departments are often the key players in customer journey mapping, also involve your operations and design teams that are responsible for creating the user flow. 

If you have a SaaS company, for example, marketing creatives, sales teams, product owners and designers, and your customer experience department all need to participate in the process. Clearly define who’s responsible for different aspects of the map, and regularly check in to make sure your final map isn’t missing any important perspectives.

Pro tip: use Hotjar's Highlights feature to collect and organize key product experience (PX) insights and data on user behavior from teams across your organization to help you build your customer journey map. Then use Hotjar’s Slack integration to quickly share learnings with your relevant stakeholders to get buy-in and ensure everyone is aligned.

Hotjar’s Slack integration Slack lets teams discuss insights in the moment, so they’re up to date with critical issues 

3. Create user personas

Once you’ve defined your purpose and involved all relevant stakeholders, it’s time to design your user personas . Use resources like UXPressia and HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool to help you design various product personas . 

Create a range of user personas to understand what each type of buyer needs to curate a journey that’s easy and enjoyable for every customer. This is an important early step in the customer journey mapping process—because if you don’t understand your users, you won’t be able to fully comprehend how they interact with your brand to better it.

Create user personas for all your product’s possible buyers—for example, to map out a B2B customer journey for a company in the hospitality business means developing personas for a range of different customers, from large chain hotel managers to small vacation rental owners. 

4. Understand your user goals

Once you’ve designed your user personas, it’s time to define their jobs to be done . What do your users hope to accomplish when they search for your product or service? What do they want to do when they click on your website? Address and answer these questions to build a deep understanding of your users’ goals and pain points to inform your customer journey.

In a SaaS customer journey , perhaps users are looking for helpful comparisons of product features on your website, or want to easily sign up for a trial account in the hopes that your product will solve their problems. But you won’t know until you ask . 

Once you have users or test users, get direct insights from them with Hotjar's Feedback tools and Surveys to ask buyers exactly what their goals are as they browse different pages of your website or interact with product features.

Since user goals are at the center of your customer journey map, define them early on—but keep speaking to your users throughout the entire process to make sure you’re up to date with their needs.

5. Identify customer touchpoints

After you understand your users and what their goals are, it’s time to identify the ways they interact with your company and your product. 

"Touchpoints are the moments the customer interacts with your brand, be it through social media channels, your product, or customer support. The quality of these experiences affects the overall customer experience, which is why it’s important to be aware of them. Consider what happens before, during, and after a customer makes a purchase or uses your product."

Key customer journey touchpoints for a website or product include your homepage, landing pages, product pages, CTA buttons, sign-up forms, social media accounts, and paid ads. 

Collaboration is key to identifying touchpoints throughout the entire customer journey. Include insights from different teams and stakeholders —your marketing and sales teams will have a strong understanding of the touchpoints involved pre-purchase, while the customer experience department can shed light on post-purchase touchpoints. 

Post-purchase touchpoints can help turn users into loyal customers and even advocates for your brand. 

In the words of Lisa Schuck, "When you create a raving fan, or a brand advocate, who goes out and tells the world how wonderful you are, you get social credibility and validity. It’s becoming more and more important to have advocates."

Pro tip : speak with your users regularly to get direct voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights on what they love and what frustrates them on their journey. Place Hotjar Feedback widgets and Surveys at key website touchpoints like your homepage and landing pages to get valuable user insights on what you can improve. Use Hotjar’s survey templates to get inspiration for your survey questions. 

An example of an on-site Hotjar Survey

6. Map out the customer journey

Once your user and product research are complete and all roles are distributed, it’s time to map out the full customer journey.

First, map out an overarching customer journey by putting your key touchpoints in order and identifying how your various user personas interact with them. Then, home in on the details, looking at how customers engage with specific aspects of your website, product, or social media accounts. 

Breaking down the mapping process into smaller phases will ensure you don’t miss any key interactions. 

Here’s how an ecommerce brand could lay out general touchpoints, then narrow each down into more specific actions:

Pro tip : it’s helpful to think of the user journey in terms of different functions when mapping it out, like:

Connect: how are buyers connecting with your brand?

Attract: how are you convincing them to convert?

Serve: how are you serving customers when they want to purchase?

Retain: how are you promoting brand advocacy and customer retention ?

7. Test the customer journey

Once you’ve mapped out the customer journey, it’s time to take it for a spin. You can’t understand how your users move through customer touchpoints unless you test out the user flow yourself. 

Start with an informational Google search, then visit your website, check out your social media pages, and simulate the purchase process. This will help you get a better sense of how users interact with each touchpoint and how easy it is to move between them. 

Be sure to try out the journey from the standpoint of every relevant user persona. For an enterprise software company, this could mean looking at how decision-makers move through the user flow vs. the employees who’ll use your software day to day. 

By walking through the customer journey yourself, you can identify issues and difficulties that users may have to address them proactively. 

Try out the user flow with test users to get a realistic perspective of the user experience. Be sure to use focus groups that represent every one of your user personas. 

8. Use continuous research to refine your map 

Continuously map out, analyze, and evaluate the customer journey by observing users and getting their feedback. Hotjar Heatmaps and Recordings help you understand how your users are experiencing the customer journey on your website: create heatmaps to see whether users are clicking on CTAs or key buttons, and watch recordings to find out how they navigate once they reach your homepage.

Then, use Google Analytics to get an overview of your website traffic and understand how customers from different channels move through the user journey. 

Finally, once you have these combined user insights, use them to make changes on your website and create a user journey that is more intuitive and enjoyable.

Pitfalls to avoid during the customer journey mapping stages

Jamie Irwin , director & search marketing expert at Straight Up Search , says companies should avoid these three common mistakes when mapping out the customer journey:

Don't map out the entire customer journey at once

Don't forget about the ‘hidden journeys’

Don't make assumptions about customer behavior

To sidestep these common pitfalls: 

Start by mapping out the overall journey, and only drill down into more detail once you have a broader, higher-level overview of the customer journey

Factor in every way that customers interact with your brand, even the ones you don’t have as much visibility on, like ‘dark social’ communications about your brand shared in private channels. Talk to your users to find out what they’ve heard about your brand outside of public channels , and use sticky share buttons to keep track of when your content’s shared through email or social media messengers.

Take a data-informed approach: don’t assume you already know your users —test out your hypotheses with real users and qualitative and quantitative data. 

Follow proven steps to successfully map out the customer journey 

Take the time to understand your business goals and users, involve the right teams, and test frequently to consistently improve your customer journey and make the decisions that will help you map out an experience that will get you happy and loyal customers.

FAQs about customer journey mapping stages

What is the purpose of customer journey mapping.

Customer journey mapping helps you visualize how users interact with your business and product, from the moment they find it until long after they make their first purchase. 

The purpose of customer journey mapping is to gain insights into the buyer's journey to create a more enjoyable, streamlined, and intuitive experience for your customers.

What are the benefits of following a customer journey mapping process?

The main benefits of a customer journey mapping process are: : 

Building on tried-and-tested processes

Not missing any key steps

Considering all buyer personas

Keeping all relevant stakeholders involved

Creating a valuable customer journey map 

Improving user experience

What happens if you don’t follow key steps in customer journey mapping?

If you don’t follow key steps when mapping out the customer journey, your map likely won’t give you the insights you need to enhance the experience users have with your most important touchpoints —like your homepage, landing pages, CTAs, and product pages. 

This can result in high bounce rates, low conversion, and unsatisfied users who fail to become loyal customers.

CJM benefits

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How to Create a Customer Journey Map: A Step-By-Step Breakdown

There are often a lot of twists and turns in the customer journey, with each individual experience being unique.

That said, there is a predictable sequence of touchpoints throughout the sales funnel.

Mapping each customer touchpoint out effectively helps enhance the user experience and increases the chances of customer success.

What Is a Customer Journey Map?

Simply put, a customer journey map is a visualization of the process someone undertakes as they move through the various touchpoints of the customer journey.

It typically starts with the initial interaction they have, like visiting your website for the first time when gaining brand awareness, and then moves through the subsequent stages of consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy.

Here’s an example of what a typical customer journey map may look like.

Notice how it concisely outlines the touchpoints customers take as they move throughout the customer journey.

It starts in the awareness stage with touchpoints like search results or paid content, moves on to the consideration stage with social media or email, then to the purchase stage, and so on.

There are four main purposes of customer journey mapping.

• Flesh out the step-by-step process someone takes from being a potential customer to a lead to an actual customer and ideally, a loyal advocate
• Understand the customer’s perspective
• Identify friction points that are causing issues with customer engagement
• Discover opportunities to reduce pain points and improve the overall customer experience

By doing so, you set the stage for better product design, more effective customer journey marketing, increased customer satisfaction, better customer retention, and ultimately, greater customer success.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map

1. define business goals.

Before doing anything else, you’ll want to pinpoint exactly what you’re looking to accomplish with customer journey mapping.

Some common examples include:

• Optimizing each touchpoint in the customer experience
• Identifying areas with higher than average dropoff
• Resolving issues that are leading to excessive dropoff
• Improving the overall customer experience both during the buyer journey and post-purchase

Clearly articulating what you’re trying to achieve is essential because it will direct the path you take for subsequent steps of customer journey mapping.

Note that a big part of effectively defining business goals is getting input from multiple key stakeholders in your company who are responsible for different aspects of the customer experience.

For instance, you may want to get input from your marketing leaders when developing the awareness and consideration stages of your customer journey map, input from your sales leaders when ironing out the purchase stage, and input from your customer service leaders when constructing the retention and advocacy stages.

It’s also smart to perform extensive user research and incorporate customer feedback to ensure you address the right pain points and tackle the issues that are most pressing for creating a positive user experience and long-term customer loyalty.

This should make for cohesive CX journey mapping where touch points flow smoothly from one to the next.

2. Identify Key Stages in the Customer Journey

Next, you’ll want to pinpoint the exact sales funnel stages involved with the customer journey.

The sales funnel stages can vary slightly from company to company, but as we mentioned earlier, some common ones include:

• Consideration

Fleshing the key stages out like this will show you the path users take as they go from being a prospect to a lead to a customer to an advocate.

By visualizing the key stages like this, you’ll see how each stage flows into the next — something that’s vital for making the customer journey as seamless as possible, meeting customer needs, and improving overall customer experience quality.

This is also what the next step in constructing customer journey maps is built on, which brings us to our next point.

3. Define Customer Touchpoints

You can think of the key stages in the customer journey on the macro level and the next step in the process — defining customer touchpoints — on the micro level.

These are the smaller interactions that customers take as they move from stage to stage in the user journey.

This can include digital touchpoints like becoming aware of your brand through an online ad, a search engine, paid content, and so on.

It can also include physical touchpoints like word-of-mouth.

Customer touchpoints will account for the majority of your customer journey map and help you visualize how people interact with your brand.

The exact number of touchpoints can vary considerably, so defining them is highly individualistic.

When identifying them, you’ll want to carefully consider the typical customer journey and write down every step involved. Then, arrange each touchpoint sequentially so you can see the big picture.

4. Design a Visual Representation of the Customer Journey

After defining business goals, identifying key stages in the customer journey, and defining customer touchpoints, it’s time to actually create your customer journey map.

Here, you’ll create a visual representation of what your business’s specific customer journey looks like for a bird’s-eye view.

To do this effectively, it’s helpful to use strong visual elements like different colors, symbols, bullets, and emojis so you can easily see everything at a glance.

Here’s an example of what an online shopping customer journey map could look like.

When it comes to customer journey mapping tools, there are several options available.

If you’re looking for something bare-bones and simple, you can use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

If you want something a bit more advanced, you can use HubSpot’s Customer Journey Map Template , which includes seven free templates (more on this later).

Or, if you want software with extensive features that are specifically designed for creating customer journey maps, you can find a list of the top 10 products here .

Note that most companies have more than one customer persona. Therefore, you may need to create multiple customer journey maps while targeting each individual buyer persona.

Customer Journey Map Templates

When most people think of customer journey mapping, they think of the classic buyer’s journey.

And they wouldn’t be wrong.

Generally, that’s the most commonly used customer journey map and the type of mapping we used in the customer journey map examples above.

But it’s certainly not the only type of mapping you can use.

As we’ll learn in a moment, there are also customer journey maps that target specific segments of the buyer’s journey and customer journey maps that focus on what you want your ideal journey to be like.

For the rest of this post, we’ll cover four of the most popular customer journey map templates you can use for different situations.

That way you can cover all the angles and increase the chances of customer success every step of the way.

Buyer’s Journey

As we just mentioned, this is widely considered the most classic type of customer journey mapping.

When mapping the buyer’s journey, you follow the key stages in the customer journey (awareness, consideration, purchase, etc.) like we outlined above, along with customer touchpoints.

Here’s a simple template journey map example for the buyer’s journey from HubSpot, which you can find for free here .

The default starting point is extremely simple. It includes just three stages and a handful of questions to understand customer interaction.

However, you can easily add more stages, questions, and additional information to fully customize the buyer’s journey so that it’s specific to your business.

This template, admittedly, won’t provide the same depth as some of the more advanced tools for creating customer journey maps, but it should be adequate for many business owners.

If you don’t need anything fancy and are testing out customer journey maps for the first time, HubSpot should be more than sufficient.

Whatever template you use, buyer’s journey mapping tends to be a good starting point as it helps you visualize the entire process from someone entering your sales funnel to converting to becoming a loyal customer.

This is integral for optimizing every aspect of the customer experience end-to-end, and from a product standpoint, is essential for achieving UX mastery.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you’re looking to improve your UX design skills, The Interaction Design Foundation is an excellent resource for doing so. They offer a wide variety of courses from the beginner to expert level and only charge a flat monthly fee for access to all courses.

Now that we’ve tackled buyer journey mapping, let’s look at three other popular types of customer journey map template options that are also available.

Future State

In most cases, the buyer’s journey is the current journey customers are taking.

While there will likely be several areas you’re satisfied with, your existing customer journey probably won’t be ideal and likely isn’t meeting customer expectations 100%.

For example, there may be friction points along the way where customers are attempting to accomplish a goal. Or, there may be higher than acceptable dropoff in a particular area like using core features or becoming a paid customer after using a free product version.

By the way, if you want to holistically understand the customer journey and generate objective customer data, you can use a customer journey analytics platform like Woopra . This enables you to analyze essential customer journey metrics so you can see what it looks like end-to-end.

With future state customer journey mapping, you design a new map with new touchpoints and engagements based on your ideal vision.

That way, you’ll know what needs to be done to create the optimal customer journey.

If you’ve already experimented with creating customer journey maps and are looking to take the next step to refine the customer experience, you’ll likely be interested in future state mapping.

HubSpot offers a free future state template as well, which allows you to outline the series of steps that need to be taken to make the customer journey as perfect as possible. And it’s completely customizable.

You simply list the steps you want to take to create an amazing customer experience and ask key questions regarding customer behavior.

It’s nothing over the top, but it should get the job done for many business owners.

Lead Nurturing

Although technically part of the buyer’s journey, some marketers choose to create a lead nurturing customer journey map because of the extreme importance of lead nurturing.

After all, any major holes in the lead nurturing process can disrupt sales as a whole. And no matter how good your marketing team is at generating leads, the impact will be negated if you can’t successfully nurture them.

To optimize this area of sales, you can create a lead nurturing map using a template like this one.

Here, the default starts with someone being a stranger, then moves on to them being a subscriber/lead, then a marketing qualified lead (MQL), a sales opportunity/demo, then a deal closed/handoff.

Again, everything is customizable, so you can adjust the lead nurturing customer journey to your exact specifications. And, it too, is available for free from HubSpot .

Customer Service and Support

Once again, a truly rewarding user experience goes beyond the purchase and ensures a customer is satisfied well after they’ve bought a product.

Like lead nurturing, customer service and support are also technically part of the buyer’s customer journey map.

However, it dives deeper into this area of the sales funnel with the intention of increasing customer retention and advocacy.

And I think we can all agree that this is incredibly important given that “Happy and satisfied customers are 87% more likely to purchase upgrades and new services.”

Here’s yet another free customer journey map template you can get from HubSpot that focuses specifically on customer service and support.

With it, you can follow how a customer goes from engaging in the normal use of a product to noticing an issue/having a complaint to asking for help/contacting customer support to speaking with support to conflict resolution.

Having a clear overview of the touchpoints involved with this process should help you fully understand the flow so you can 1) see things from a customer’s point of view and 2) identify issues that may be detrimental to customer support.

For inspiration from real-life major brands like Spotify, TurboTax, and Amazon, here’s a list of customer journey map examples you can learn from.

Crafting an Exceptional User Experience with Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping is a simple yet effective way to visualize each touchpoint in the user journey holistically for each buyer persona.

From the initial moment someone becomes aware of your brand to the time of purchase and beyond, customer journey maps allow you to see how users move throughout the entire lifecycle.

And as we’ve learned, this serves several important purposes, including seeing the buying process from a customer’s point of view, identifying customer pain points, and unearthing opportunities to improve the customer experience end-to-end.

It’s just a matter of following the correct customer journey mapping guidelines and using the appropriate template to outline the buying process.

Then, tracking key customer journey metrics like engagement, churn rate, and customer satisfaction with an analytics platform like Woopra or Google Analytics should help you refine your customer journey mapping to fully optimize the customer experience.

Full insight into the customer journey. No SQL required.

Get started with Woopra for free to see who your customers are, what they do and what keeps them coming back.

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The Complete Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (With Examples)

How to create a customer journey map

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 8 min

How to Make a Customer Journey Map

• Conduct persona research
• Define customer touchpoints
• Map current states
• Map future states

Steve Jobs, the genius behind Apple’s one-of-a-kind customer experience, said, “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

Nowadays, a clear vision and strategy for customer interactions is no longer an optional “nice-to-have”—it’s essential. As you refine your customer experience, a customer journey map is one of the most powerful ways to understand your current state and future state.

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the process your customers go through in interacting with your business, such as an experience on the website, a brick and mortar experience, a service, a product, or a mix of those things.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of a customer’s experience with your brand. These visuals tell a story about how a customer moves through each phase of interaction and experiences each phase. Your customer journey map should include touchpoints and moments of truth, but also potential customer feelings, such as frustration or confusion, and any actions you want the customer to take.

Customer journey maps are often based on a timeline of events, such as a customer’s first visit on your website and the way they progress towards their first in-product experience, then purchase, onboarding emails, cancellation, etc. 

Your customer journey maps may need to be tailored to your business or product, but the best way to identify and refine these phases is to actually talk to your customers. Research your target audiences to understand how they make decisions, decide to purchase, etc. Without an essential understanding of your customers and their needs, a customer map will not lead you to success. But, a well-constructed and researched customer journey map can give you the insights to drastically improve your business’s customer experience.

The benefits of customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool for uncovering insights into your customer experience, driving business goals, and building resilience in a changing market. In a 2022 report, Hanover Research found that 94% of businesses said their customer journey maps help them develop new products and services to match customer needs. Another 91% said their maps drove sales. 

But understanding a customer’s journey across your entire organization does so much more than increase your revenue. It enables you to discover how to be consistent when it comes to providing a positive customer experience and retaining customer loyalty. 

This was especially evident in recent years as top of improving marketing, customer journey maps emerged as a valuable way to understand evolving buyer behavior. In fact, 1 in 3 businesses used customer journey maps to help them navigate the changing landscape during the pandemic.

When done correctly, customer journey mapping helps to:

• Increase customer engagement through channel optimization.
• Identify and optimize moments of truth in the CX.
• Eliminate ineffective touchpoints.
• Shift from a company to a customer-focused perspective.
• Break down silos between departments and close interdepartmental gaps.
• Target specific customer personas with marketing campaigns relevant to their identity.
• Understand the circumstances that may have produced irregularities in existing quantitative data.
• Assign ownership of various customer touchpoints to increase employee accountability.
• Make it possible to assess the ROI of future UX/CX investments.

Following the process outlined above, customer mapping can put your organization on a new trajectory of success. Yet, according to Hanover Research, only 47% of companies currently have a process in place for mapping customer journeys. Making the investment to map your customer journey and solidify that process as part of your company’s DNA can result in significant advantages in your competitive landscape, making your solution the go-to option that customers love.

Customer journey maps can become complicated unless you keep them focused. Although you may target multiple personas, choose just one persona and one customer scenario to research and visualize at a time. If you aren’t sure what your personas or scenarios might be, gather some colleagues and try an  affinity diagram in Lucidchart to generate ideas.

1. Set goals

Without a goal, it will be difficult to determine whether your customer journey map will translate to a tangible impact on your customers and your business. You will likely need to identify existing—and future—buyers so you can set goals specifically for those audiences at each stage of their experience.

Consider gathering the key stakeholders within your company—many of whom likely touch different points of the customer experience. To set a logical and attainable goal, cross-functional teamwork is essential. Gather unique perspectives and insights about each part of the existing customer journey and where improvements are needed, and how those improvements will be measured.

Pro Tip : If you don’t already have them in place, create buyer personas to help you focus your customer journey map on the specific types of buyers you’re optimizing for.

2. Conduct persona research

Flesh out as much information as possible about the persona your customer journey map is based on. Depending on the maturity of your business, you may only have a handful of records, reports, or other pre-existing data about the target persona. You can compile your preliminary findings to draft what you think the customer journey may look like. However, the most insightful data you can collect is from real customers or prospective customers—those who have actually interacted with your brand. Gather meaningful customer data in any of the following ways:

• Conduct interviews.
• Talk to employees who regularly interact with customers.
• Email a survey to existing users.
• Scour customer support and complaint logs.
• Pull clips from recorded call center conversations.
• Monitor discussions about your company that occur on social media.
• Leverage web analytics.
• Gather Net Promoter Score (NPS) data.

Look for information that references:

• How customers initially found your brand
• When/if customers purchase or cancel
• How easy or difficult they found your website to use
• What problems your brand did or didn’t solve

Collecting both qualitative and quantitative information throughout your research process ensures your business makes data-driven decisions based on the voice of real customers. To assist when conducting persona research, use one of our user persona templates .

Discover more ways to understand the Voice of the Customer

3. Define customer touchpoints

Customer touchpoints make up the majority of your customer journey map. They are how and where customers interact with and experience your brand. As you research and plot your touchpoints, be sure to include information addressing elements of action, emotion, and potential challenges. 

The number and type of touchpoints on your customer journey map will depend on the type of business. For example, a customer’s journey with a SaaS company will be inherently different than that of a coffee shop experience. Simply choose the touchpoints which accurately reflect a customer’s journey with your brand.

After you define your touchpoints, you can then start arranging them on your customer journey map.

4. Map the current state

Create what you believe is your as-is state of the customer journey, the current customer experience. Use a visual workspace like Lucidchart, and start organizing your data and touchpoints. Prioritize the right content over aesthetics. Invite input from the stakeholders and build your customer journey map collaboratively to ensure accuracy. 

Again, there is no “correct” way to format your customer journey map, but for each phase along the journey timeline, include the touchpoints, actions, channels, and assigned ownership of a touchpoint (sales, customer service, marketing, etc.). Then, customize your diagram design with images, color, and shape variation to better visualize the different actions, emotions, transitions, etc. at a glance.

Mapping your current state will also help you start to identify gaps or red flags in the experience. Collaborators can comment directly on different parts of your diagram in Lucidchart, so it’s clear exactly where there’s room for improvement.

5. Map future states

Now that you’ve visualized the current state of the customer journey, your map will probably show some gaps in your CX, information overlap, poor transitions between stages, and significant pain points or obstacles for customers.

Use hotspots and layers in Lucidchart to easily map out potential solutions and quickly compare the current state of the customer journey with the ideal future state. Present your findings company-wide to bring everyone up to speed on the areas that need to be improved, with a clear roadmap for expected change and how their roles will play a part in improving the customer journey.

Customer journey map templates

You have all the right information for a customer journey map, but it can be difficult to know exactly how to start arranging the information in a digestible, visually appealing way. These customer journey mapping examples can help you get started and gain some inspiration about what—and how much—to include and where.

Don’t let the possibility of a bad customer journey keep you up at night. Know the current state of the customer journey with you business, and make the changes you need to attract and keep customers happy.

Customer journey mapping is easy with Lucidchart.

About Lucidchart

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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Stage 1 – Awareness 

At the awareness stage, your goal is to capture the attention of potential customers, making them aware of your brand and what you offer. 

Your focus should be on generating cold leads. The aim is to gather basic contact information, like email addresses, through sign-ups for newsletters, free e-books, or webinars. This allows for further nurturing through targeted communication, moving them to the next stage of the customer journey.

Some of the best strategies to use:

• Content marketing – Create interesting, engaging, and unique content that addresses your audience’s common pain points or interests. We’re talking infographics, videos, and of course, blogs.
• Social media marketing – Use social media platforms to reach a wider audience. Engaging posts, stories, and ads can increase brand visibility and intrigue potential leads.
• SEO and SEM – Increase your visibility in the search engine result pages with SEO and SEM strategies. When customers search for a solution like yours, you want to ensure you feature prominently. 
• Influencer collaborations – Partner with influencers who can give your brand more credibility and help you reach a wider audience. 

Stage 2 – Consideration

During the consideration stage, potential customers are evaluating your products or services as a possible solution to their needs. The aim here is to nurture their interest and guide them towards preferring your brand over competitors.

So, the focus shifts to converting cold leads into warm leads. You need to provide value and build trust through consistent and relevant communication. This involves nurturing them with more personalized content and solutions, demonstrating your understanding of their specific challenges and needs.

• Targeted email campaigns – Use the contact information gathered during the awareness stage to send personalized email content that speaks to the specific interests and needs of the prospects.
• Educational content and webinars – Provide deeper insights into how your products or services can solve specific problems. Detailed blog posts, case studies, and webinars can be very effective.
• Retargeting ads – Implement retargeting campaigns to stay top-of-mind with prospects who have visited your website but haven’t taken further action.
• Interactive tools – Offer tools like cost calculators, quizzes, or product recommendations to help prospects evaluate your offerings in a more engaging way.

Stage 3 – Decision

This is the pivotal stage where a lead decides whether to purchase your product or service. The focus here is on facilitating the decision-making process and providing the final nudge towards a purchase.

The leads in the decision stage are your hot leads. They’ve shown a strong interest and are considering making a purchase. The objective is to convert these hot leads into paying customers. 

• Personalized offers and discounts – Tailor special offers or discounts to the individual prospect’s interests and previous interactions with your brand. This can be a compelling incentive for them to make a decision.

• Product demonstrations and free trials – Offering a firsthand experience of your product or service can be a decisive factor. Free trials, demos, or samples can give leads the confidence they need to purchase.
• Testimonials and reviews – Share positive reviews and testimonials from other customers. Social proof can significantly influence the decision-making process.
• Direct sales outreach – At this stage, a more direct approach might be necessary. Personalized outreach from a sales representative can address any last-minute questions or concerns the lead might have.

Stage 4 – Retention

Post-purchase, the aim is to keep the customer engaged and satisfied, turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer and, ideally, into a brand advocate. Regular interaction and providing continuous value are key to achieving this.

• Follow-up communication – Send thank you emails, ask for feedback, and provide tips on how to get the most out of the purchased product or service. This shows customers that you value their business and care about their experience.
• Loyalty programs – Implement loyalty programs that reward repeat purchases. This not only incentivizes further buying but also makes customers feel appreciated.
• Exclusive offers for returning customers – Provide special offers or early access to new products to returning customers. This exclusivity can enhance their sense of belonging to a special group.
• Regular updates and newsletters – Keep customers informed about new developments, products, or services through newsletters. This helps keep your brand at the forefront of their minds. 
• Efficient returns process – It’s also imperative to have an efficient returns process and create a clear, hassle-free returns policy . This builds trust and shows that you stand behind your products, making customers more likely to purchase again even if they had to return an item initially.

Stage 5 – Advocacy

In the advocacy stage, your goal is to transform satisfied customers into enthusiastic brand advocates. Advocacy is a potent form of organic lead generation, as it comes from genuine customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Encourage reviews and testimonials – Prompt happy customers to leave reviews or testimonials, which can be showcased on your website and social media channels.
• Referral programs – Implement referral programs that reward customers for bringing new leads to your business. This not only incentivizes them to share your brand but also expands your reach to potential new customers.
• User-generated content – Encourage customers to share their experiences or use your products in their content. This not only provides authentic marketing material but also enhances community engagement.
• Engagement on social media – Actively engage with customers who mention your brand on social media. Acknowledge their support, answer queries, and share their content where appropriate.

The Blueprint for Effective Lead Generation

By aligning your strategies with each stage of the customer journey, from the initial spark of awareness to the ultimate goal of advocacy, you create a number of experiences that resonate with your audience. 

Remember, the key to successful lead generation is not just in attracting leads but in understanding and nurturing them through every step of their journey with your brand.

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Top Customer Journey Lead Generation Tips and Tricks

The relationship between the customer journey and lead generation is central to driving business growth. Understanding your audience’s path to purchase can mean the difference between loyalty and lost opportunity. Let’s look at the ways businesses can turn leads into conversions that foster growth.

Customer Journey Lead Generation

There is no map written in stone for lead generation. But most marketers would agree that it begins with interest, progresses with engagement, and ends either in conversion or rejection. After a successful conversion, the next goal is to retain customer loyalty and prevent churn.

Within the context of individual businesses, this progression depends on the channels and touchpoints comprising their customer journeys. While e-commerce players may operate in a purely digital landscape, many brick-and-mortar businesses opt for a hybrid approach. With all the hundreds of touchpoints available today, it’s safe to say that no two brands can claim to have identical customer journeys.

This potential for infinite individualization underscores the need for a clear overview of your brand’s unique customer journey. A customer journey map reveals critical moments and interactions that ultimately contribute to the final outcome. Below are some of the top tips and tricks to help businesses orchestrate a lead’s customer journey toward conversion.

Attraction › Profile Unification

Also known as the awareness stage, the attraction phase is characterized by a lead’s heightened interest in a particular product or service. They may show interest by browsing a brand website, visiting a physical store, or sampling a product.

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Brands can seize this moment and take steps to learn more about leads as they begin their journey. A customer data platform (CDP) can help by collecting data during initial interactions like a web visit or social media engagement and help you navigate consent management . A CDP can then build a comprehensive profile of the lead using first-party and secondary information.

After establishing a robust customer profile, a CDP continues to enrich it with updates based on the customer’s actions. Profile unification during this initial phase sets the stage for more targeted actions further along the customer journey.

Engagement › Audience Segmentation

If a new lead likes what they see, they usually move on from the attraction phase to engage with the brand. This step can involve actions like signing up for a program, subscribing to a channel, or other forms of pre-purchase commitment. If a brand has a good understanding of their leads based on profile unification, they can begin to fine-tune marketing efforts.

A customer data platform improves engagement by dynamically segmenting leads into audiences with similar characteristics. This step focuses the marketing actions that target a particular group based on their interest and stage in the funnel. For example, a lead who has just signed up for an email newsletter may be more responsive to relevant product offers instead of targeted loyalty rewards. Using specific actions to engage specific audience groups makes successful conversions more likely.

Conversion › Customer Journey Orchestration

Sometimes leads don’t convert easily, even after committing to a brand. Price is usually a significant factor in determining how long a lead takes to convert—the higher the price of a product/service, the longer the conversion process. Here again, a CDP can play a critical role by providing customers what they need in order to convert.

For example, if a person has subscribed to a brand’s social media channel but still hasn’t made a purchase, they can redeem an in-store discount that appears on their mobile device once inside the physical store. Or a customer support agent might be prompted to reach out and address any lingering concerns before the customer commits to a purchase. A CDP orchestrates these actions across sales, marketing, and support teams powered by a continuously updated customer data foundation. Coupled with customer insights and intelligent recommendations, brands can use a CDP’s capabilities to encourage leads toward conversion at every step and touchpoint.

Retention › Personalization

Once a lead converts, businesses can leverage a CDP to build a lifetime relationship. Personalization makes people feel special and plays a big part in creating customer delight. Brands can reward loyal customers through customized outreach such as personalized email, birthday or anniversary greetings, exclusive offers, and personal follow-up/support. In the same way, brands can harness a CDP’s capabilities to catch early signs of churn and take preventive steps to increase lifetime value.

In summary, simply understanding customer journeys is no longer enough to sustain—and increase—lead generation. Shaping customer journeys via orchestration is a must for converting new leads into loyal customers. A customer data platform’s capabilities—like profile unification, audience segmentation, personalization, and journey orchestration—empower brands to convert more leads and drive growth.

Take Control of Customer Journeys and Lead Generation

Treasure Data gives you the power to orchestrate customer journeys and generate leads from the very first step. Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies use our capabilities to personalize individual customer journeys at scale across the world. Check out our capabilities:

• Predictive Profile and Scoring
• Dynamic Audience Segmentation
• Multi-Attribution Modeling
• Next-Best-Action (NBA) Recommendation System
• Customer Journey Orchestration
• Predictive Analytics
• Machine Learning

Download our report The State of Customer Journey Management today.

To learn how you can take control of customer journeys for lead generation, consult an expert today . Want to learn more? Request a demo , call 1.866.899.5386 , or contact us for more information.

• Report: ‘Chaotic’ Customer Journeys Reveal Data Management Challenges New research from Treasure Data reveals how companies are redefining what customer journey management means across their organizations to deliver more personalized omnichannel customer experiences.
• 7 Data-Driven Ways to Improve Customer Journey Orchestration Using data to simply understand the customer journey isn't enough. Now, companies must orchestrate both their people and their processes to deliver great customer experiences.
• Comparing Customer Data Platforms vs. Marketing Automation For Improving the Customer Experience Gain deeper customer insights with a customer data platform vs. marketing automation to create more personalized CX strategies for your business.

Customer Journey

The customer journey consists of actions your customers take before and after they make a purchase. It should be part of your overall marketing strategy to improve lead generation and enable more effective marketing. By understanding the different actions your customers take before and after a conversion, you can start brainstorming new marketing tactics to improve the customer experience and keep them coming back for more.

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Think of a customer journey as a detailed map that shows the full experience a customer has with your business. It lets you see every interaction they have with your company, even before and after they engage. By first understanding the customer journey , it will be easier to define your goals and use our automation tool to create the overall marketing experience you want to provide.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey outlines the different steps your customers take to become customers. Without the customer journey, your marketing funnel couldn’t exist. A marketing funnel helps you market your products and services to customers based on where they are in their customer journey. For example, someone researching products is at the top of the marketing funnel or at the very beginning stages of their journey.

Ultimately, a customer journey map tells a story about how customers interact with your brand, including how they first discovered your business to whether or not they’ll make a repeat purchase. The journey lays out different interactions someone could have with your brand, although not every customer needs to use all those touch points before converting.

While not all customer journeys are the same, you can use your website and marketing efforts to easily guide customers through the journey by taking them through different touchpoints.

What are the phases of a customer journey?

Knowing the customer journey definition is only the beginning; now you must learn the different stages involved. A customer journey is made up of phases , which are the distinct stages a customer passes through as they’re guided to take specific actions. The phases you include will depend on your business goals.

Do you want a user to adopt a new app you’ve released? Are you looking to get inactive newsletter subscribers to read your emails? Is your aim to turn occasional shoppers into regular, loyal customers? All these marketing paths require a strategy for getting your customers from point A to point B.

Most customer journeys will usually account for these phases:

This is how someone discovers your company, usually through a search engine or your paid advertising efforts. Let’s say your new future customer sees an ad for your latest line of ‘I Have the World’s Okayest Cat’ mugs, and they click through to your website to learn more about the brand and product. Now your business is stored in their memory.

Acquisition

Congrats! You can now call that new future customer an actual customer, because they loved the ‘I Have the World’s Okayest Cat’ mugs you released so much that they bought one. Not only that, they also signed up for your email list through a form on your site so they can be the first to learn about any new merchandise.

Now that you’ve acquired a new customer, you can send them a series of emails to make them feel welcome, showcase other stuff in your store they might be interested in, and help them understand when and how they might expect to hear from you in the future.

This refers to how you can get customers to regularly use your product or service, shop at your store, or read your content. Consider using email, social media, in-product messages, and personalization to make your customers’ experience more enjoyable.

Make your customers so happy that they’ll recommend your brand to others. This is probably one of the best ways to get new customers.

Once you’ve established the phases of a customer journey, you can plan the touchpoints you’ll use to connect with customers at the right moments.

Advantages of a customer journey map

Customer journey maps are useful marketing tools that can help you better understand your target audience and use that information to lead them down a path to conversion. All businesses can benefit from having a customer journey map, so whether you’re doing B2B marketing or building an e-commerce brand, it’s good to know how customers interact with your company.

A few other advantages of a customer journey map include:

• Understand consumer behavior . Understanding how users interact with your brand can help you comprehend their motivations.
• Identify touchpoints . Identifying the different interactions customers have with your brand before making a purchase can help you create more effective marketing campaigns.
• Support your marketing efforts . Learning as much as you can about your customers can improve marketing performance by allowing you to shorten the customer journey and increase conversions.
• Improve the customer experience . With customer data, you can improve customers' experiences with your brand, making them more likely to convert.
• Predict how customers will behave . Customer journey maps help you predict what customers will do next, allowing you to market to them no matter where they are in the funnel.
• Boost customer loyalty and engagement . By creating a path for your customers and providing great experiences, you can keep customers coming back for more. This makes customer journey mapping an essential customer retention strategy .

How to build a customer journey map

Building a customer journey map is easy, and it’s an effective way to learn more about your customers.

To build your own customer journey map, follow the steps below.

• Determine your business goals . You’ll need to determine your goals before establishing the touchpoints for your customer journey map. Goals can include converting more qualified leads into customers, increasing brand awareness, and so on.
• Understand your customers . Gather data on your customers to learn about their behavior and uncover new ways to market to them.
• List opportunities for communication . Consider all the different ways you can communicate with customers, including social media and email marketing.
• Test your customer journey . Pretend you’re the customer and test your journey to see how you can make it easy for customers to convert after their initial touchpoint with your business.
• Refine customer journey map if necessary . Refine your customer journey map when there are changes to your business. Breaking down the map into stages can help you meet your customers’ needs no matter where they are in their journeys.

How does marketing automation benefit the customer journey?

Marketing automation uses technologies that eliminate the need for you to send one-off emails or set up other marketing efforts every time you need to connect with customers. Basically, you set up an automation to execute your strategy the way you want, and it’ll do the marketing work for you.

Since automations are usually powered by if-then logic, they adapt to match the individual paths your customers take.

For example, before making a purchase people might read your website, consider what product they want, sleep on it, and eventually go back to buy. This wandering route is different for everyone. With automation, you can automatically send an email during the consideration stage of their journey, reminding them of the products they were interested in and encouraging them to finalize the purchase.

Here are a few ways automation can help you build lasting relationships by connecting with customers at each step of their journey with your business.

Connect with new fans

When someone expresses interest in what you have to offer and enters their email address in a subscriber pop-up form on your site, you can send them a welcome email to introduce yourself—and give them a reason to stick around. You can also provide information about how often they’ll receive marketing correspondence from your business.

Sell more stuff

When that contact starts to move toward a purchase, such as putting something in their cart without checking out, you can set it up so they receive an abandoned cart email from you.

Meanwhile, you can send occasional reminders to prospects that haven't interacted with you in a while. Retargeting ads and emails, for example, remind people about the great stuff they saw on your site. Chances are, at least some of them are still interested and will take action if you reach out.

Cultivates a trusting 2-way relationship

When you deliver relevant content to your customers , you show them that you care about them. The more you target your communications, the more they will trust you to keep providing high-quality products or services . You can even use automation to send coupons or other discounts to people that meet certain criteria for loyalty or spending.

Increase open and click rates

Build automated workflows to send relevant messages based on how your customers interact with your brand.

What is a Customer Journey in Mailchimp?

In Mailchimp, a Customer Journey is a marketing automation tool that lets you visually map dynamic, automated marketing paths for your customers. Depending on the phases you want customers to pass through—discovery, acquisition, retention, etc.—you can choose the starting points and other unique interactions to engage your customers every step of the way.

Any marketing or purchasing paths that you want to use your data to create can be mapped out with the Customer Journey Builder, which allows you to target specific users and focus on what will get them to move from one point to another.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at the welcome journey that people will enter when they sign up to receive your marketing. You’re probably familiar with welcome emails and have heard us talk about their value a bunch. The concept of a welcome journey is the same: greeting new contacts and introducing them to your brand.

A journey should include emails, but it also differs from an automated welcome email in 2 key ways:

• People don’t just trigger an email once they’ve met the criteria of your starting points. They’re added to and start a path that’s customized for them.
• You can plan what actions you want new customers to take throughout this journey and where you want them to end up.

Adding the right mix of rules and actions—including branching points and email—to a journey map can put new subscribers on the path to becoming loyal users and customers. Branching points help make the journeys you build for your customers more dynamic and adaptable, taking customers down If/Else paths based on specific behaviors.

You can also use a Customer Journey to tag new contacts based on insights that are important to your business. This will allow you to track customer interests and send more relevant marketing content later.

Ways to use automated Customer Journeys

Of course your needs for setting up automated Customer Journeys will vary based on how your business functions and scales, but there are a few key workflows that can help any small business build and maintain relationships with their customers.

Create Customer Journeys to:

Greet new customers & introduce your brand

First, you need to onboard new people who start following your brand. A great first impression is key to establishing a long-lasting relationship. Begin with an email that thanks people for signing up and provides the information they need to know. Show customers you care about getting to know them by sending a survey to discover what they’re interested in, so you can customize your marketing to fit their needs. You can also use this journey to measure how often your contacts want to hear from you and when they’re most likely to engage.

Reunite shoppers with their carts

Research shows that 69% of e-commerce shoppers abandon their carts before checking out. If you don’t have an abandoned cart automation setup, you’re missing out on a lot of easy sales. Shoppers who have left a cart have already expressed interest in your brand; they just need a nudge back to your store to finish buying. With a journey, not only can you set up an automated email to send when someone abandons a shopping cart, but you can use the flow to highlight other stuff you sell and keep customers coming back.

Re-engage customers who have lost interest

There are several ways you can win back inactive customers—it just depends on what type of engagement is most important for your business goals. You can set up a journey that customers will start when a specific amount of time has passed since they last bought something from your store, or you can target customers who haven’t opened any of your last 5 email campaigns. From there, you can decide what interactions will get these customers to fall in love with your brand again.

Ask for product reviews or feedback on your service

When someone buys a product, that’s the perfect time to reach out and make a connection. Get their thoughts on the order and shipping process. Check in on how they’re liking their purchase. And don’t forget to include a coupon for other stuff in your store they’re sure to love.

Organize your contacts based on their interests and levels of engagement

Use a Customer Journey to help manage your audience based on insights that are important to your business. Make behind-the-scenes changes—like adding and removing tags—that'll help you send relevant messages and create more meaningful interactions.

Find success with customer journeys

Customer journeys are an important marketing tool to communicate effectively with your customers and lead them down a path to conversion. The easier your customer journey is to follow, and the more touch points you take advantage of, the better experience you can provide. Even after your customers have converted, deliver ongoing support and communication to retain them and promote brand loyalty.

Visualizing your customer journey is simple with Mailchimp. Using our Customer Journey Builder , you can start to learn more about your customers’ behavior and write a sales email that converts no matter where they are in the buying process.

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How to Create a Customer Journey Map (& Convert MORE at Each Step)

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Deana Weinheimer

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Are you wanting to learn how to create a customer journey map while converting along the way?

A customer journey is a path your website visitors take from discovering your site to becoming a paying customer. Unfortunately, the journey isn’t always linear, so it’s important to personalize your customer journey to best suit your business and your target audience.

But before we get into how to create a customer journey map, let’s look at 3 different stages of the customer journey.

3 Stages of the Customer Journey Map

To understand how to tailor your lead generation campaigns to every prospect, you first need to know the 3 main stages of the customer journey.

These stages are often referred to as Awareness, Evaluation, and Conversion (or Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel).

The Awareness stage is when the prospect knows they have a problem, but doesn’t yet know that you exist or that you can help them solve that problem.

The Evaluation stage is when the prospect is aware that you exist and that you have a solution to their problem, but they are still evaluating other possible solutions.

The Conversion stage is when the prospect is almost ready to buy your solution, but they may still have a few questions or objections to overcome first.

OK, now that you know what the 3 stages of the customer journey are, let’s take a look at how to actually capture email leads during each stage…

1. The Awareness Stage

During this first stage, the prospect is just becoming aware of your brand and what you have to offer. They may know that they have a problem or a need, but they aren’t yet aware of what the specific solution is, or that you have that solution.

Your Goal: Aside from capturing their email address, your goal at the Awareness stage is to move the prospect from Awareness to Evaluation by introducing them to your brand, making them aware of the solution to their problem, and introducing them to your solution (your product).

2. The Evaluation Stage

At the Evaluation stage, your prospect understands the solution to their problem and is aware of your brand/offer. However, they are still evaluating their options (and likely looking at your competitors).

Your Goal: Aside from capturing their email, your goal is to move the prospect from Evaluation to Conversion by giving them a quick win which proves that you are the authority they need to pay attention to. You may also have the goal of acquiring initial customers during this stage.

3. The Conversion Stage

At the Conversion Stage, your prospect is aware that your product provides the solution they seek, but they haven’t quite made the decision to buy yet.

Your Goal: Aside from capturing any leads who haven’t yet opted in to your email list, your goal at this stage is to maximize immediate customer value. You’ll do this by helping them overcome any objections to the sale, and giving them the extra “nudge” they need to buy right now . You may also have the goal of retaining existing customers and increasing buyer frequency/boosting conversions on your cross-sells and upsells.

[Case Study] Creating a Customer Journey that Converts

Admit it! Each user is different. And you don’t know what each of your website visitor wanted and which stage of customer journey they’re in.

If only there’s a tool that identifies which customer stage each of your website visitors are in… and delivers a personalized experience to each one of them based on their customer stage.

Oh, wait there is such a tool! It’s called OptinMonster !

And by creating a personalized customer journey for each stage with OptinMonster, Human Food Bar , a niche website focused on energy and nutrition bars, has increased conversions at each step!

Here’s what they achieved by creating a customer journey.

• In the awareness stage, they increased email subscribers by 80%
• Average time on site up 18% and bounce rate down 7%
• In the conversion stage, they made $17,000 average profit per seasonal sale
• Website retention rate up 35%

Want to know EXACTLY how they achieved it? Let’s take a look…

When you visit the Human Food Bar site for the first time, you’re met with this welcome popup:

It only displays to new visitors and instantly offers a 75% discount on Gundry MD products.

But not everybody is interested in buying products right away. That means people may be in the awareness stage and they’ll need a little bit more convincing before they evaluate your product and convert into customers.

If the visitor isn’t interested in buying products just yet, the “Human Food Bar” website draws visitors attention to getting a free toolkit that’s packed with recipes, meals, and more.

This strategy helps cater to 2 separate audiences and intentions who are in the different stages (awareness and evaluation) in their customer journey.

And between the 2 campaigns, Human Food Bar gets 1,800+ new email signups every month .

Now, let’s take a look at how to create a customer journey map and convert users into subscribers and customers.

Step 1: Create a Lead Magnet for YOUR Target Audience

We’ve already explained that your goal at the Awareness stage is to move the prospect from Awareness to Evaluation by introducing them to your brand, making them aware of the solution to their problem, and introducing them to your solution (your product). And capturing their email address is the first step to do so.

Most people are generally not willing to part with their email address unless there is something in it for them.

So, how do you entice a potential lead? By offering up a lead magnet.

Lead magnets are free resources that attract your target audience to complete your call to action. This is usually in exchange for their email address or other contact information.

Remember: Awareness-stage prospects don’t know you very well yet. In fact, they didn’t even know you existed just a few moments ago. So you’ll want to use the most polite optin forms possible when asking them to join your email list.

For the messaging on your Awareness optin form, focus on the pain points that your prospects are currently experiencing.

• Solve a problem your customers have
• Be specific to that problem
• Quick to digest
• Be instantly accessible (capitalize on people’s need for instant gratification)
• Demonstrates your expertise (this will help convert them from a lead to a customer down the road)

Step 2: Offer Lead Magnets Targeting Awareness Stage

So you may be wondering, how do you actually target these different optin forms and lead magnets specifically to prospects in the Awareness stage?

To identify who your Awareness-stage prospects are, you need to understand where they are coming from.

Awareness-stage prospects usually find you through…

• Search engines – by typing in a question related to their problem
• Social media – they saw a post that someone shared about your content
• Referrals – other websites linking to you
• Paid ads – any ad campaign that you are targeting to cold traffic

Most of these people arriving at your website for the first time are landing on one of your blog posts. That means you need to have Awareness-stage offers on your blog.

Not having your offers in the right places can turn off visitors and can tank your conversion rates.

You may be wondering how you can make sure your lead magnets are getting in the right places on your website and in front of the right people. Well, that’s where a tool like OptinMonster comes in:

OptinMonster is the world’s #1 lead generation tool. It allows you to easily create optin campaigns to distribute your lead magnets in a highly targeted way in just a few minutes.

You’ve likely seen optin campaigns before. They are popups, floating bars, gamified wheels, and other parts of a website where visitors can enter their information, usually in exchange for a freebie.

OptinMonster takes this all a step further, letting you customize your campaigns to appear precisely when you want your visitors to see them. These rules help you create an even more personalized customer journey.

We recommend that you always include a scroll box, a sidebar form and an exit-intent popup on all of your blog posts (at the minimum). On your most popular blog posts, you can boost optins even more with a content upgrade .

In addition to targeting prospects on your blog posts, you can also target them based on where they came from using referrer detection or specific URL parameters (e.g. ?utm_campaign=my-campaign ).

So for example, if you have an ad campaign that is being targeted to cold traffic, you could detect those visitors with your specific campaign parameter, and then display your Awareness-stage optin form to those visitors.

Step 3: Identify and Convert Users in Evaluation Stage

While some prospects in the Evaluation phase have already opted in to your email list, you will also have some who are following you but have not yet opted in.

Evaluation-stage prospects also visit particular pages on your site besides just your blog, such as your…

• Opt-in Landing Pages
• Start Here Page ( here’s an example from our other site, WPBeginner)
• Resource Pages ( here’s another example from WPBeginner)

Visits to these pages indicate that the prospect is no longer a complete stranger to your brand. Rather, they want to get to know you better and learn more things from you.

What all of this means is that you can target Evaluation-stage prospects either by the traffic source (e.g. via a specific URL parameter) or by the specific pages that they are viewing.

And don’t forget– you can also target your most engaged Evaluation-stage prospects based on the number of pageviews and convert them into customers right away! For example, you could target visitors who have viewed at least 4 or more pages on your site…

..and then present them with a low-dollar offer or a coupon inside a timed lightbox popup.

(For more details, check out our tutorial on converting engaged visitors into buyers .)

Step 4. Identify and Convert Users in Conversion Stage

Don’t assume that someone has already opted in to your email list just because they are in the Conversion stage!

Especially if your brand has already established a lot of awareness in your market, you will have prospects who are already thinking about buying but haven’t given you their email address yet. Maybe they were referred to you by someone, or they’ve read reviews about you on another site.

You definitely do not want to lose these hot leads.

Good lead magnets at the Conversion stage include…

• Case studies
• Free catalog
• …more bottom of funnel lead magnet ideas here

Conversion Optin Types:

To capture leads at the Conversion stage of the customer journey, use…

• Highly noticeable floating bars
• Countdown timers
• Timed popups + eye-catching animations
• Exit-intent popups

You should be getting more aggressive here because you can, and should .

These prospects are actively looking to buy your product. If you don’t keep their attention and push for the sale, you may lose them forever, simply because they decided to just come back another day (and never actually got around to it). Or, they ended up going with your competitor because their messaging was stronger than yours.

For your opt-in messaging at the Conversion stage, focus on proof and urgency. For example, “ 300,000+ websites already use OptinMonster to get more email subscribers. Don’t get left behind!” or, “Get 10% Off OptinMonster (only 3 hours left!) “.

Conversion Targeting:

Prospects in the Conversion stage come to your website through…

• Search engines – by typing in conversion-intent queries such as “[your product] reviews”, “[your product] coupon”, or “buy [your product]”
• Social media – by clicking on a post regarding a sale, or other promotion
• Referrals – clicking through from another blog reviewing your product
• Paid ads – retargeting ads
• Direct traffic – people who clicked on a link inside a promotional email, or typed your URL into the browser directly

To target these prospects, you can either display optin forms to visitors based on where they came from (a specific email link, a specific ad campaign, referrer domain, etc.), or based on the page they are currently viewing.

In addition to targeting visitors from specific email marketing or retargeting ad campaigns, we highly recommend that you add urgency to all pages with conversion-intent using a floating bar + countdown timer . You can use this to optimize your pricing page , feature pages, and any other pages or blog posts where you have high sales conversions.

We have implemented this on several of our own web properties with astonishing results, which is why we rolled out the Countdown theme for our customers.

With OptinMonster’s Countdown theme, you can customize the timer to each visitor, so every visitor will see a different countdown that is tailored specifically to them.

All you have to do is set the Countdown Type to “Dynamic”, and set the length of your timer.

Converting at Each Stage With a Customer Journey Map

In this map, we showed you the 3 main stages of the customer journey (Awareness, Evaluation, and Conversion) and how to acquire leads at each stage.

We also showed you how to maximize the value of your prospects by moving them from one stage of your sales funnel to the next.

Once you’ve converted your website visitors into email subscribers, the next step is to nurture these leads with email marketing…

Here are few resources that would be helpful to you in the next step:

• What Is Email Automation? (+31 Tools to Transform Your Business)
• How to Create an Effective Email Autoresponder Series
• How To Create An Email Newsletter in 3 EASY Steps

Now it’s your turn. Follow the roadmap above and install OptinMonster to capture high-quality leads throughout the customer journey .

Disclosure : Our content is reader-supported. This means if you click on some of our links, then we may earn a commission. We only recommend products that we believe will add value to our readers.

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Lead Generation 101: Each Stage of the Customer Journey

Lead generation is a no-brainer for companies like you who are continuously scaling your reach. After all, you are a business; generating leads means more clients and customers. 

But what exactly is lead generation? And how do you generate qualified leads with a high lifetime value?  

By adopting a customer-centric approach and employing dynamic strategies that transform your ideal target audience into high-quality leads that convert repeatedly. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, a robust lead generation strategy is essential, and sometimes it’s best to go back to the basics.

If you need help understanding the customer journey cycle, look no further. After reading today’s blog post, you will understand each stage of the customer journey so you can spark interest, collect data, nurture leads , convert, engage, rinse, and repeat.

Each Phase of the Traditional Marketing Journey

The traditional sales funnel is a systematic approach to generating leads. It includes three phases and stops shortly after a lead converts. But before creating a customer journey, have an ICP (ideal customer profile) in place to ensure your funnel attracts and retains as many high-quality leads as possible. 

1. Top of the Funnel | TOFU | ATTRACT | exploration and education 

This is the awareness and attraction phase of the customer journey. You want to cast a wide net in this stage, but you also want to ensure that the fruits of your labor generate leads that enter and continue down the funnel. Demand generation sparks interest by introducing prospects to the top of the funnel through content like social media posts, landing pages, blogs, and videos. Lean into paid search and strengthen your SEO with broad match keywords to make your products, goods, or services easy to find.

2. Middle Funnel | MOFU | NURTURE | decision making

Not all leads who enter the funnel are ready to convert. In fact, most leads need a little TLC (tender love and care) before making a decision. Nurture your leads through personalized content that makes their decision-making easier. At this stage, you need to analyze which leads have higher scores and are more likely to convert. Consider automating your lead scoring with tech like Adlucent Index™ and tap into automation like Performance Max to process first-party data and seamlessly segment your content to each lead.

3. Lower Funnel | LOFU | CONVERT | purchase

You’ve done the hard work of attracting prospects, creating leads, and nurturing them; now they are ready to convert. Make the buying journey as easy as possible for leads and analyze what worked and what didn’t so that you have a feedback loop that can continuously inform your lead-generation efforts.

What is the Bow Tie Funnel?

While there is no denying that companies have a bottom line, it’s vital to remember that leads are humans who don’t like being just another number. And while tempting to pat yourself on the back and call it done, dropping converted leads from your efforts is a big mistake.

That’s why the bow tie funnel, with its human-centered approach, might be worth your while. When you turn the traditional marketing funnel on its side and extend the customer journey, you form the bow-tie funnel. A funnel that is customer-centric, omnichannel, nonlinear, and extends beyond the first point of purchase – ensuring qualified leads with a high lifetime value.

But how do brands take advantage of new buyer relationships and continue to nurture them? Through constant iteration, automation, and segmentation.

How do I Extend the Life Time Value of Leads?

Retention is just as important as lead generation. If done correctly, leads can re-enter the funnel on an endless loop creating a happy symbiotic relationship between consumers and businesses. So make sure to lean into these three phases of the customer journey after conversion to extend the lifetime value of your leads:

After a customer makes a purchase, they enter the adopt stage. To solidify their decision, businesses can send a post-purchase survey to thank them for their purchase and gather insights on their decision-making process. A thank you email can also be sent to reaffirm their choice and provide additional value.

Customers who remain loyal to a brand enter the loyalty stage. Businesses can tailor offers that resonate with loyal customers and encourage them to “level up.” For instance, if a customer purchased an entry-level subscription service, put them in an email nurture campaign that encourages them to level up.

3. ADVOCATE

Advocates are highly valuable for businesses as they become word-of-mouth marketers for the brand. At this stage, businesses should continue providing value to their customers to maintain a positive relationship. Sharing client stories and testimonials can also help in building trust with potential leads. By nurturing advocates, businesses can ensure a steady stream of leads entering the funnel through referrals.

If you search the web for “marketing funnel,” “lead generation funnel,” “customer journey,” etc., you will find infinite iterations of the customer journey. If you are reading this blog, there is no doubt you see the value in testing, tweaking, and adjusting your funnel according to your brand’s KPIs and business goals. And, odds are, your lead generation journey might look slightly different from ours and others – which is exactly how it should be.

Your brand has unique customers with unique acquisition challenges. And who knows their audience better than you? At Adlucent, we get to know our clients’ needs to help create custom-tailored solutions so you can tap into complex data and generate leads with high lifetime value. A true combination of human ingenuity and machine learning. Interesting in partnering with us? Reach out today .

Eden Pierson

Eden is a content manager with a wide range of experience in the marketing space. From B2B advertising, branding, and retail marketing, she is passionate about curating content that resonates with target audiences.

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• Lead Generation

B2B Lead Generation: Customer Journey Map

Business to business lead generation is one of the most essential parts of the sales cycle. Utilizing all resources at your disposal will help generate and convert your leads into sales. A crucial part of successful lead generation is the customer journey map.

Not only will customer journey mapping help contribute to successful lead management, but it will also help to improve your overall customer experience. B2B companies rely on customer experience for conversion rates. These strategies will help increase these rates, as well as contribute to customer satisfaction.

Overall, the successful implementation of these strategies and maps will create strong relationships with customers. This will also improve your marketing focus and accomplish your business goals. This article will cover the best practices for B2B lead generation.

Read on or jump ahead to these topics:

• Distinguishing Between B2B and B2C

The Basics of a Customer Journey Map

What is lead management.

• Using Your Customer Journey Map

The Importance of the Customer Journey Map

Distinguishing between b2b and b2c customers.

There are two major types of business models, Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C). While both of these are centered around sales, each includes different customer journey stages.

In short, B2C companies sell directly to consumers, while B2B companies sell to other businesses. While it seems like B2C would involve more direct interaction with people, B2B sales often involve multiple people throughout the sales cycle. It is important to remember you are not selling to the company, but rather the people who work there.

Because of these differences, the customer journey maps for B2B and B2C businesses follow separate outlines. For B2B companies, the buying cycle can take 1-3 months and 80% of these cycles include up to six people.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer cycle from start to finish. This strategy takes into account the entirety of a customer, including pains, emotional needs, and actions. By mapping out all of these factors, B2B companies are able to better understand their target demographic and create meaningful relationships with their leads.

The ideal customer journey map looks at the complete lifecycle from the introduction to any post-sale support services, including the engagement that occurs in between. While each one will look different for unique leads, there are a few customer journey mapping tools all will include based on universal experiences.

Common Elements for Customer Journey Maps

• Persona: A profile of the brand and its client groups.
• Touchpoints: All possible client interactions with your brand. These may include advertising, social media, direct communication, and purchases.
• Moments of truth: Information regarding which touchpoints impact a customer.
• Performance Indicators: Anything that evaluates how customers are responding to touchpoints.
• Visuals: Typically, this is either a linear or cyclical illustration of the customer cycle.

Creating The Customer Journey Map

Once you understand the concept of the map, you can begin creating for each of your customers. Begin with the prep work and go through the process one step at a time. These maps won’t seem like a huge undertaking if you have a plan of attack.

Set your objective. Determine what you want to get out of the map to make sure you are including the correct information. Clear objectives will guarantee that the map is beneficial to your sales process.

Next, define the persona and determine the touchpoints. These parts will be crucial in generating your B2B leads. Finish mapping by identifying the performance indicators. Choose ways to best identify how the customer is interacting with your brand and learn about creating sales urgency .

Before you can start successfully using your customer journey maps, understanding lead management will ensure the conversion of leads to sales. Simply put, lead management is the process of managing throughout the buying journey.

The Lead Management Cycle

Lead management goes through five major steps to help create conversions.

• The Lead capture: determining leads and preparing them for the cycle
• Lead qualification: scoring the lead to find out how sales-ready it is
• The Lead nurturing: helping push leads from expressing interest to purchasing
• Lead routing: handing off the leads that are sales-ready
• Lead reporting: closing the gap between marketing and sales

Important Elements of B2B Lead Management

B2B sales involve a lot of moving parts. It is important to keep track of everything in the beginning stages to have a high conversion rate later on in the cycle.

Lead management involves identifying the people in the process, including your internal team and the contacts of your leads. Determine your internal processes as well. Make sure to decide upon a centralized lead qualification process, as well as have passive marketing content ready for the early stages.

Avoid the common mistakes where lead management can fall short. For example, don’t pass off qualified leads unless they meet all of the agreed-upon criteria. Use cross-marketing for all of your lead nurturing. Make sure to view your lead management through the customer lens.

Using Your Customer Journey Maps

Creating the map is the first step to making the most out of this sales strategy. Ideally, you will have a customer journey map for each lead. The main objective of this strategy is to properly nurture your leads to convert into sales, as well as improve the overall customer experience.

These should help with introductions, creating brand awareness, and successful education of your product to leads.

Introduction to Your Lead and Starting a Conversation

Using your gathered information, plan the introduction of your brand to the lead. This is the first part of your customer’s journey with your brand, and first impressions really matter. Determine the best first touch and be sure to document all of the following interactions.

From this point, the goal will be to build your relationship while allowing passive content (social media and paid advertising) to further educate the lead about your product.

This tactic successfully combines your customer journey map with your brand’s marketing strategy. It’s been found that laying out this plan can increase marketing to sales conversions by 25% .

Getting to Know Your Lead

Once the conversation has begun, the customer journey map plays a role in better understanding the target customer. The data collected by your map provides crucial insights into how your customer behaves and the motivations behind their actions.

To move from a lead to a qualified lead, multiple touches must happen. By being able to place these touchpoints into a specific section on the map, you can begin to see underlying needs and patterns within the customer.

This data is important for providing an excellent customer service experience. Imagine, you’re able to have an in-depth understanding of your lead’s actions. This allows you to predict their movements, choose the best times to reach out, and provide solutions to problems for them.

Customer satisfaction is key to having repeat purchases. Being able to identify the needs of a lead and provide solutions with your product will help create a meaningful relationship that benefits both sides.

Collecting Data and Measuring Conversions

Customer journey maps do more than just provide the framework for your actions. These plans allow you to collect data and analyze it to continually improve your sales process.

These maps allow you to track the channels incoming leads originate in. By having this information, your company is able to see which tactics are worth focusing on and which areas need improvement to create engagement.

Data also allows you to trace the path each lead took before converting to a qualified lead. You will be able to see if they responded to a LinkedIn message, interacted with an Instagram post, or visited your website through a search.

By including these paths as they occur in your map, you can begin to understand the customer and utilize this information to best generate new leads . Keeping track of this data allows you to keep an eye on changing trends, so you can shift your focus to channels that provide the most engagement.

Generating New Leads and Discovering Generation Channels

A completed customer journey map provides a clear view of all the possible generation channels. Usually, undiscovered generation channels may get passed over or lumped together with existing ones. By having this map, you won’t miss any opportunities to generate leads.

Along with discovering new channels, these maps may help you generate new leads by providing new touches. All of this can be measured through your data, so you can fully understand what is the best way to create conversions and grow your customer base.

Overall, this strategy should play a prominent role in B2B sales, account based selling , and marketing strategy. From the initial prep work and research of a lead to closing the deal, this map will be there to guide and collect data.

Start as soon as you capture a lead, and continue using the map throughout the customer journey stages. This will ensure that your leads are following the path to conversion.

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• How To Create A Customer Journey Analytics Dashboard (Tools Included!) 

B2B customer journeys are complex. The average sales cycle can last more than 4 months. They involve several stakeholders and touchpoints across campaigns, websites, sales initiatives, and more.  

It’s no wonder that 77% of B2B customers find the act of buying difficult. It’s hardly any easier for B2B sellers.  

With customer journey analytics dashboards, it doesn’t have to be this way. 

This article explores what customer journey analytics is and why it’s important. We also discuss a step-by-step process to create a customer journey analytics dashboard. And in conclusion, we highlight 7 customer journey analytics software for your consideration. 

What Is A Customer Journey Analytics Dashboard? 

A customer journey analytics dashboard is a tool that tracks and visualizes customer touchpoints. It improve sales and marketing performance, customer retention, and business growth.  

Customer journey analytics software track and improve conversions. They unify data across campaigns, websites, and products. This, in turn, refines the customer experience at every stage of the sales cycle . Building a customer journey analytics dashboard has a couple of other benefits. Let’s take a look at them.  

What Are The Benefits Of Customer Journey Analytics? 

There are several benefits of customer journey analytics, such as:  

1. Data-driven decision making

Customer journey analytics provides data-driven insights into customer behavior. Rather than relying on intuition or guesswork, journey analytics quantifies what influences conversions. 

2. Optimize resource allocation  

Measure the value of every customer touchpoint on conversions. This reallocates budgets and efforts towards initiatives that drive results. In turn, it optimizes resource allocation and reduces budget leakage.  

3. Align sales and marketing teams  

Achieve end-to-end visibility into how leads are progressing along the customer journey . This shared view of the buying process helps reduce siloed data and promotes go-to-market alignment. 

4. Boost customer experience  

Once you have visibility across the customer journey, you’ll be in a better place to identify points of friction that need refinement. Customer journey analytics help you track every point of contact, channel used, and buyer stage visually on a single dashboard.  

5. Higher customer retention  

The benefits of customer journey analytics extend beyond converting leads to customers. It also helps you understand product usage, engage with existing customers, and bolster customer loyalty. 

How Is Customer Journey Analytics Different From Customer Journey Mapping? 

Although they’re related, customer journey analytics and mapping are different concepts. 

Customer journey mapping refers to qualitative visualization of customer touchpoints while customer journey analytics relies on quantitative data for behavioral insight. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the differences between the two: 

It helps to use both customer journey mapping and customer journey analytics in tandem. This provides a better sense of customer interactions with your company.  

Step-By-Step Guide To Creating Customer Journey Analytics Dashboards 

So far, we’ve discussed what customer journey analytics is and why it’s important. But how does one go about putting together a customer journey analytics dashboard? Let’s find out: 

1. Understand your data sources 

Customer journey analytics relies on customer data. It’s key to connect the dots between marketing, sales, product, and customer support. 

Accordingly, the first step involves integrating campaigns, social media, website, and CRM data. This can be tedious and time-consuming to do manually. Luckily, several off-the-shelf tools, like LeadSquared , offer no-code solutions to integrate data together.

2. Decide your KPIs and set goals 

Once the relevant data is in place, teams must decide what metrics and KPIs matter the most.  

Customer journey analytics dashboards should be as intuitive as they are comprehensive. Loading up several irrelevant KPIs will result in convoluted dashboards. Here are a couple of common reports to consider including: 

• Marketing funnel

A marketing funnel provides a bird’s eye view of customers in the sales cycle. 

• Sales velocity

B2B sales cycles are lengthy and, on average, involve at least 6 decision makers . It helps to keep track of the speed at which leads are moving along the sales cycle. For one, this helps gauge expected sales pipeline . For another, it sheds light onto which stage of the sales cycle is taking longer than necessary.  

Your website is receiving voluminous traffic, but where are visitors coming from?  

And more importantly, where are ICPs coming from? Social posts, search ads, or events? Connecting the dots between campaigns, web, and CRM helps answer these questions. It allows teams to refocus efforts towards initiatives that work best. 

• Conversion rate  

Conversion rate measures the percentage of prospects moving through each stage of the sales funnel. It helps identify disproportionate points of drop offs that might indicate areas of improvement. 

• Attribution  

We’ve established that customer journeys involve several touchpoints. Attribution analysis helps understand the influence of each customer touchpoint on conversions. There are several types of attribution models such as linear, U-shaped, and time-decay. Each model assigns credit to touchpoints differently, based on their recency and relative impact on conversion.  

• Churn  

Customer churn measures the percentage of existing customers who stop paying for a product over a period of time. A high churn rate may indicate poor customer support, product shortcomings, or superior alternatives available in the market. It’s generally the product and customer success team’s responsibility to keep churn low. 

3. Leverage a dashboarding tool to integrate key data 

So far, we have all our data and we know what we want to measure. Now, it’s finally time to leverage dashboarding tools for customer journey analytics. A few years ago it might have made sense to build dashboarding software inhouse. But these days, a wide range of cost-effective plug and play solutions cater to most use-cases. We’ll review a few popular tools in the next section. 

4. Visualize your data to understand points of friction 

Customer journey dashboards support powerful visualizations to pinpoint where leads are dropping off. By identifying where leads lose interest, teams can prioritize areas of improvement.  

5. Test and iterate using data from your dashboard 

The last step is to experiment with marketing, sales, and product initiatives. It’s important to monitor performance with the dashboard. Data-driven iterations will help make gradual improvements to conversions, retention , and customer experience.  

Now, let’s review a few analytics tools that help businesses track and improve the customer journey.  

The Top 7 Customer Journey Analytics Tools

There are several tools that help track, analyze, and optimize the customer journey. Let’s review 7 of them:

1. LeadSquared 

LeadSquared is a robust customer relationship management and marketing automation platform. It provides lead tracking, customer data platform, and revenue reporting features amongst others. 

CRMs like LeadSquared are essential for customer journey analytics. They act as the single source of truth for most customer data across marketing and sales efforts.  

Key Features  

• Lead Tracking 
• Lead Qualification 
• Lead Scoring 
• User Activity Tracking  
• Tracking Sales KPIs  
• Marketing Automation Reports (which include campaign ROI, channel-wise performance, and more) 

Pricing  

LeadSquared offers three packages that differ based on the features offered. The Lite plan $25 per user/month while Pro costs $50 per user/month and Super is proced at $100 per user/month. Businesses can also request for a custom pricing plan based on the features that they require.  

2. Factors.ai 

Factors is an AI-fueled account analytics and multi-touch attribution platform. It unifies customer data across campaigns, website, and CRM to report KPIs and insights. Factors offers a range of power customer journey analytics features including: 

• Visitor identification   
• Account and user timelines 
• AI-fueled CRO insights 
• Customizable dashboarding 
• Funnels and path analysis  

The package starts at $99/month for visitor identification. Journey analytics and attribution plans start at $399/month. The pricing depends on the number of monthly visitors.  

3. Hotjar 

Hotjar is a behavior analytics and feedback tool. It helps businesses monitor user behavior on websites and mobile applications. Hotjar is useful for product marketers and UX teams. It improves website performance and conversion rates. 

• Heatmaps 
• Session recordings 
• Surveys 
• Feedback polls 
• Interview tools 

Hotjar offers a free plan for up to 35 daily sessions as well as unlimited heatmaps. Its paid plans start at $35/month for 100 daily sessions and scales up based on the number of daily sessions.

4. MoEngage 

MoEngage is a customer engagement platform that helps businesses with personalized, multi-channel communication. It’s used by a wide range of industries including SaaS, e-commerce, and finance to drive user engagement and retention. Here are a few key features:      Key Features   

• Customer analytics   
• Customer journey orchestration 
• Website personalization 

Moengage does not reveal its pricing but offers two plans: Grow and Scale. Grow is better suited for smaller teams with limited budgets and use-cases. Scale is for enterprises with involved, multi-functional requirements. You can learn more by getting in touch with their team . 

5. Totango 

Customer journeys extend beyond the signing of the contract. Tracking post-purchase customer service can help you boost retention as well. Totango as a customer success platform, tracks and manages customer relationships with the following features: 

• Health scores  
• Customer segmentation  
• Activity tracking  
• Customer journey mapping. 

Pricing   

Totango offers a free community plan. Its paid plans start at $249/mo for 200 customer accounts. Pricing scales with number of customer accounts, number of seats, and extra features. 

6. Mixpanel 

Mixpanel is a leading product and event analytics platform. This tool delivers real-time customer journey insights to support data-driven decisions. Product teams, marketers, and data teams use Mixpanel to improve customer engagement. 

• User tracking 
• User segmentation 
• Funnel analysis 
• A/B testing 
• Dashboarding 

Mixpanel offers a generous free plan for up to 20 million monthly events. This includes core user journey analysis features. Its paid plans start at $20/mo and can extend to more than $1000/mo based on the number of monthly events. 

7. FullStory 

FullStory is a digital experience and product analytics platform. It helps users identify what’s working and what’s not across the customer journey. FullStory helps product teams, UX designers, and customer success teams improve customer experience 

Key Features:   

• Intent signals  
• Funnels  
• User journeys  
• Heat maps  

FullStory does not reveal pricing but offers three plans : Business, Advanced, and Enterprise. Now that you have a couple of options to choose from, here comes the tough bit.

How to Choose a Customer Journey Analytics Tool for your Business? 

Every business has different requirements. While all the customer journey analytics tools covered provide comprehensive solutions, some may be better suited to your company than others. Here’s how to go about choosing the right tool for you: 

1. Define needs: Start by identifying your business needs and objectives. What KPIs are you looking to track and optimize? What function needs to improve performance? It wouldn’t make too much sense to invest in a heat mapping  tool like Hotjar when the issue you’re trying to solve for is churn. Instead, a customer success management tool like Totango would be a better option.  

2. Assess integration capabilities: It’s important to avoid siloed data. Ensure that the tools you’re evaluating integrate seamlessly with your existing techstack. The ability to connect data from multiple sources provides a holistic picture of the customer journey and eliminates unnecessary developer dependencies. 

3. Consider pricing and customer support: There’s a wide range of pricing models when it comes to customer journey analytics tools based on volume of data, number of users, and functionality. For instance, enterprise tools are chock-full of advanced features that may be redundant or overly expensive for smaller teams. Also consider customer success management and technical support for each tool to ensure long term compatibility.  

4. UI and accessibility : A tool is only as useful as it is usable. Customer journey analytics is a relatively involved and technical concept. Prioritize tools with intuitive UI to ensure you receive actionable value. It should also be flexible enough to accommodate business-specific requirements like customer KPIs and dashboards. 

5. Security compliance: Given that customer journey analytics involves sensitive customer data, it’s important to take security compliance into account. Industry-standard privacy regulations like GDPR and SOC2 must be met to ensure safety.  

I hope this comprehensive guide helped you understand customer journey analytics and it’s benefits in detail. If you need any help choosing a tool to analyse customer journeys or would like to give LeadSquared a shot, you can schedule a demo today.  

The purpose is to track, analyze, and optimize the customer journey from first touch to last. Customer journey analytics is valuable to marketing, sales, product, and customer success. It refines the customer experience, drive conversions, and improve retention . 

There are several ways to visualize the customer journey. Here are a few common methods:    1. Path analysis: Path analysis tracks a sequence of events that lead to a conversion goal. They’re usually represented as a flow chart.  2. Heat-map: Heat-maps represent customer behavior and highlight points of high and low engagement. This helps UX teams see what parts of the website are intuitive or unintuitive   3. Account timeline: Account timelines are linear representation  of the customer journey. They  show account-level touchpoints that occur over a period of time. 

Ranga is a product marketer at Factors.ai with a keen passion for beautiful product design and intuitive UX. Connect with him on LinkedIn or reach out at [email protected]

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18 lead generation ideas that prioritize quality over quantity

• Introduction

What is lead generation? 

Lead generation and the customer journey , lead generation ideas to try in 2022, where to generate and capture leads , 18 lead generation ideas , the final word.

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Lifecycle marketing

• Marketing strategy

Sitting back and watching the leads roll in is nothing but a daydream. In 2022, when there are more businesses competing for consumers' limited attention than ever before, businesses need to be proactive about identifying and cultivating potential new customers. 

With so much competition out there, and cost per acquisition rising, getting ahead takes a bit of creativity, a willingness to test and learn, and some remarkable marketing automation strategies. 

In this piece, we’ll explore what lead generation is, why being familiar with your customer’s journey is crucial for lead generation, and — finally some actionable lead generation ideas that will get the creative juices flowing and help you generate quality leads. Ready, set, grow. 

Lead generation focuses on targeting prospects who are most likely to become customers through acquisition tactics like gated content, targeted ads, landing pages, events, social media, and promotions.

Lead generation is a strategy that helps you generate demand and interest within target markets and potential customers. By implementing a lead generation strategy, you can:

Increase brand awareness

Produce sales qualified leads

Instill trust

Build customer relationships

Every lead generation strategy involves having a deep understanding of your customers’ journey. From the moment a potential lead realizes they need your product or solution to the minute they hand over their money, the customer journey provides ample opportunities for you, as a marketer or small business owner, to make a lasting impression. 

Whether that impression ends up being good, bad or completely forgettable ultimately depends on one thing: whether you truly understand where your customer is in their decision-making process. In other words, you must familiarize yourself with their customer journey.

Customers have much more access to information during their decision-making process, they can search online, check out your social platforms, ask questions about your product on forums, and read reviews. Consequently, your potential customers can delay talking to your sales team until they have developed a sound knowledge of your product and, in many cases, they may never need to talk to your sales team at all. 

With the help of customer journey mapping, creating a solid lead generation strategy will help you form trust with these customers as early as possible, capturing their interest before they’re even ready to get in touch with you. And having a strong lead generation strategy can reduce inefficiencies in the lead nurturing process, whether that happens through marketing or sales, which means you’ll see more of your leads turning into paying customers faster.

There are 3 stages involved in turning a lead into a customer: awareness, consideration, and decision. Below, we’ve outlined each stage, along with some tips and tricks for converting more leads into customers. Consider this a launching pad to map out your own lead generation strategy for your business.

Stage one: Awareness

In the first stage of the customer journey, your leads have either become aware of your product or have, at the very least, become aware that they have a need that must be fulfilled. For example, let’s say your product is a marketing automation solution that’s easy to use. Your customer could be a real estate agent who has heard about how your software has saved other agents’ time chasing leads, or perhaps an overworked e-commerce business owner who wants to reduce the time he spends on menial tasks each day — but doesn’t know what he should do. Either way, this recognition has gotten to the point where these customers are open to considering alternative ways to improve their current situation or solve a problem.

In any case, your target audience is most likely on the fence about whether or not they even need help in the first place. These potential customers are still at the stage where they’re balancing the pros and cons of seeking external help, let alone your help. Therefore, they’re very likely to conduct extensive research to help them reach a decision.

At this stage, your lead generation strategy should consist of informational content pieces that serve as useful resources that your leads will find valuable rather than blatant sales pitches. Create helpful content such as blog posts and articles that not only show your business as an industry thought leader but helps your site rank on search engines. We recommend thinking about the type of pain points your potential clients may be experiencing and crafting content to assist them in solving their problems.

For example, you could be running your own personal training business and your website may have blogs comprising tips on how to train for a half-marathon, maintain a healthy weight, or meal prep for less than $30 a week. If someone signs up for one of your weekly weight loss newsletters, it tells us they’re an awareness stage lead — they’re interested in working on their fitness, but not quite ready to pay for your personal training sessions.

Although this user has yet to identify a need for your business, it doesn’t mean you can’t help them realize this need. Every touchpoint is a valuable opportunity for you to learn more about your customers — and create a more personalized experience to lead them to take action.

One of the best ways to kick off this new relationship on the right foot is to create more personalized content that speaks to the individual’s needs. To do that, you’ll need to enrich your data.

Using Ortto, you can create an audience segment (let’s say they’ve subscribed to your meal prep newsletters) who will be sent an email asking a question, followed by a list of multiple-choice responses. When they click on the response that most applies to them, they are sent down a personalized pathway where they are then sorted into their appropriate segments. Creating segments in this manner allows you to identify your core audience, discover common pain points, and refine your lead generation strategy for subsequent stages.

Stage two: Consideration 

Your lead generation strategy is moving along nicely if you see an increase in organic traffic to your website. At the consideration stage of the customer journey, you can afford to talk more about your product.

At this stage, you should be trying to impress your leads by telling them how they can benefit from using your products. You also want to keep your leads on your website longer, further engaging their interest. We recommend creating high-value content such as long-form content, white papers, eBooks, webinars, and videos; these types of content should support your business’s ability to solve your lead’s problem. 

Once you’re done producing your first piece of high-value content, you can package it up as gated content, where you give the content to the lead in exchange for their email address.

Sometimes called lead magnets, gated content forms a strong basis for growing your email database and developing a successful lead generation strategy. If you’re an Ortto customer, you can build a journey where every lead that submits a form to download one of your e-books is automatically and immediately sent an email with a download link. As soon as your lead downloads the e-book, they could be assigned to a salesperson for a follow-up or nurtured via a series of messages sent via email, text message, or on-site messages. 

Stage three: Decision

In this final stage, your role is to get your lead to the finish line. Here, your lead is ready to take the next step and is one click away from getting in touch with you to get the sales process rolling. In addition to continuing to provide high-value content, you should now consider the following conversion opportunities to turn this lead into a paying customer:

Ensure a chatbox, contact form, email address, or phone number is visible throughout your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for your leads to contact you.

Continue finding ways to engage with your leads, through email, chat, pop-ups, and retargeted social media or search campaigns, 

Create a form that allows your lead to ask further questions about your business. Make it simple and easy to find on your website and within your content.

You can use your customer data platform to score leads, assign quality leads at an enterprise level to sales team members, or continue to send relevant content to leads to nurture them further. With Ortto doing the busy work of scoring and assigning, your team can focus on hitting the home run. 

Even in this world of increasing competition and acquisition costs, there are plenty of ways to generate new leads through paid and organic campaigns. We’re going to break these ideas into two categories: The where and the how. 

Generate and capture leads through Facebook ads

Facebook Lead Ads allow you to run targeted campaigns to attract customer interest for a product or service. Lead Ads encourage Facebook users to fill out a form with their personal details, and those details can be downloaded, then uploaded to your CRM.  If you’re an Ortto customer with Facebook integrated, your leads will be captured into your CDP instantly and automatically, so you can segment them, and put them into the most relevant Welcome Playbook. Ortto’s lead capture feature saves you huge amounts of time while ensuring that you can start nurturing your new lead as quickly as possible, beating out the competition.  Facebook Lead Ads are highly targeted and give you the opportunity to find new audiences (custom and lookalike). This helps you place your ads in front of people who are more likely to show interest, which in turn, reduces your spend on paid advertising, PPC (pay per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition).

Generate and capture leads with Google

Google allows you to advertise on multiple platforms including YouTube, Google Display Network and the Google Search Network. When targeting people who are ready to make a purchase, Google can produce effective ad campaign results. According to WordLead, 65% of people click on Google Ads when they’re ready to buy. To acquire the right type of leads, it’s vital that you first optimize your landing pages, rank for the best keywords, create highly targeted ads and adjust your bids. Once you’ve optimized each element, Google Ads becomes a powerful platform to collect leads and drive traffic to your website.

Generate and capture leads with SMS

When used well, SMS can become the most powerful marketing strategy you have.  This is partly down to the fact that people are more likely to open a text message than they are any other marketing message — 86.1% of recipients will open an SMS within 30 minutes, and 83% of millennials open an SMS message within 90 seconds of receiving them. 

You never want to spam your contacts with text messages that really could have been delivered via the less-intrusive email, so it’s crucial to consider context as you’re building out your strategy. For example, SMS marketing is a fantastic way to generate and capture leads from billboards, bus ads, physical stores or even at an event by putting a phone number on a slide. It's simple to set up and an incredibly effective lead generation tool.

Generate and capture leads at events (virtual or IRL)

Speaking of events… whether you’re sponsoring, hosting or participating in an event, you’re presented with an ideal lead-generating opportunity.  An event humanizes your company and gives you a rare opportunity to capture your potential leads full attention, especially if the event is held in person. It’s important to remember that, even at an event, most of the potential leads you encounter won’t be 100% ready to buy.   To target people who are not ready to buy, you can create a multi-channel journey that targets leads who express interest. A multi-channel strategy requires you to capture a lead’s contact information during an event and follow up with a series of automated and personalized messages across email, SMS, and dedicated sign-up landing pages.

Generate and capture leads on your website

Whether your lead comes to you via organic search, a blog post shared on social media, a feature page, or a recommendation from a colleague or friend, you can capture them using pop-ups, widgets, and banners.  The great thing about capturing leads that are generated through organic means is that they’re already interested in your brand and what you have to offer, making your job on the capture and nurture side a little easier.  Remember to offer your leads something in return, whether it’s content, discount, advice, or an exclusive invitation. Check out the lead generation ideas below to get those creative juices flowing. 

So we’ve got the where covered. What about the rest? These 18 lead generation ideas will help you create omnichannel lead generation campaigns that prioritize quality without sacrificing quantity.

Let’s get into it.

Produce gated content

There are many journeys a lead may take before they become a customer  — but no matter what kind of journey you’re looking at, it’s likely your leads are best nurtured with a variety of content, some of it free and some restricted.  Restricted content is called gated, and it’s used to generate leads. First, create high-value content which can only be accessed when an individual hands over their details. Then create, distribute and promote a landing page to drive those leads.  Generally, gated content takes the form of a one-sheet, white paper, eBook, checklist, how-to guide, or template. The higher the value, the more details you can reasonably ask your lead for. For example, an email and name may be all you ask for your one-sheet landing pages, but for an eBook it is reasonable to ask for more information like company, company type, department or job title, and phone number.  Check out the eBook landing page examples from Webflow and Thrive Market below to get a sense of how this is done in B2B and B2C businesses.

Invite users to a webinar based on pages visited 

Hosting a webinar? You could keep it simple and invite your entire list. Or, if it’s content that may not apply to all or you’re trying to generate a specific type of lead, you could target those who land on particular pages. Try sending a tailored message to those who visit your customer page, events page and perhaps any high-intent pages (such as pricing, product-specific blog posts, or a contact request form). If you’re an Ortto customer, this is easy to set up using a Playbook. With your customer data unified, you can easily create a branded webinar invitation to be shared via a pop-up when a visitor hits a certain page. You can then track which of your visitors received the pop-up and retarget them with an email down the track.

Offer special discounts to targeted visitors 

Ortto allows for targeting based on specific URLs, so you can offer unique discount codes that appear via pop-ups, bars, or takeover units on your site. You can enhance these with features like Spin the Wheel which gamifies the discount or offer, or a countdown timer to create urgency. In any case, the visitor will need to hand over a few personal details before they’re awarded the offer, turning them into a lead that can be nurtured through automated marketing or sales engagements.  This can be especially helpful if you’re an e-commerce company offering 10% off individual products, a SaaS startup trying to woo new subscribers with a free month of service, or a pro blogger waiving the fee to join your membership site. TAXIBOX, an Ortto customer, offers a huge $50 discount for anyone who books with 7 days' notice and hands over their email address. 

Create and promote a newsletter 

A newsletter is a great way to generate leads, and nurture them with content that is valuable and related to your industry or product. You’ll want to ensure that your newsletter subscribers are segmented to receive your newsletter and the odd promotional email, rather than every email you ever send.  To grow this audience segment, use a message that appears in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen of a blog when the reader is roughly halfway to two-thirds through a content piece. This is a far better user experience than an intrusive pop-up that appears the second you hit a blog.

Use a feedback box

Get real, valuable feedback along with leads by using Ortto’s Feedback capture form. This appears in the bottom right-hand corner of relevant pages — like pricing pages or FAQ pages — and allows the visitor to share feedback, ask questions, or answer a question (e.g. How can we help you grow your business?). The visitor will hand over their email address to get a response, and you’ll have a hot new lead, with some extra context.

Use case studies and testimonials

Whether through ads on social media platforms or widgets on site, sharing third-party love for your brand or product can go a long way to driving leads. Get creative with these — for example, try user-generated content from social media, film on iPhone to give your customer’s testimonials an organic feeling, or get creative with the treatment of quotes and star reviews.

Be present on LinkedIn

A huge 55% of decision-makers use LinkedIn to vet organizations. If you’re a B2B (and even if you’re not — remember, professionals are people and potential customers too), LinkedIn is an essential platform. Share helpful information, thought leadership, product updates, and behind-the-scenes updates. People like to buy from businesses they can connect with, so don’t be afraid to show your personality or get your team involved. 

Optimize everything

Images, blog posts, press releases, feature pages, videos, infographics, product description pages, FAQs, about us, careers pages, templates, community pages — every single thing on your website should be optimized for search. It’s a huge, on-going job, but that organic lead generation is definitely worth it! 

Build a community 

Community-led growth is a tactic that prioritizes fostering a strong, engaged, and enthusiastic community with your business at the center. Often these communities exist on social platforms, but other formats like Slack channels, forums, and creative communities like Figma Community are increasing in popularity. Whatever shape your community takes, it’s a great way to generate qualified leads.

Perform market research or studies

Offering market research reports can help establish your brand as a thought leader and will provide endless content opportunities. Any statistics and infographics generated off the back of this research aid in link-building for years to come. If you’re a beauty or health brand, you can also consider funding and conducting clinical trials to study the efficacy of specific ingredients used in your products. Yes, this is an investment of time and money, but it can go a long way to setting your brand apart from competitors. In the example from HUM Nutrition below, you can see how a clinical study landing page could drive leads from organic and paid search, or social campaigns.

Appear on blogs or podcasts

Whether it’s a company founder, CEO, VP, or even Head Of, there will be at least one person in your business who is open to being a public figure (and has a great communication style). Have them participate in professional profiles, contributed blog posts, or podcast interviews to reach your target audience and generate some new leads.

Host webinars

Webinars are a great way to generate more leads and can be repurposed for blogs, social content, and email content. Set yourself up for success with a webinar confirmation and follow-up journey that is optimized to maximize attendees and follow up with relevant content.

Create a quiz

The quiz has become an ecommerce mainstay, and for good reason. Ask your website visitors some questions about their needs and direct them to the most relevant content or products. They’ll be grateful to find what they need quickly, and you’ll generate a lead while capturing context that will help you personalize your marketing messages.

Create a referral program

Referral programs can feel intimidating, but with Ortto’s unique discount code creator, they’re actually incredibly simple. Create an audience segment with your most engaged customers and target them with emails and pop-up messages that encourage them to share your business or products with their friends in exchange for a discount. It’s a simple way to generate leads that look like your best customers.

Build LAL audiences

With your customers segmented and a wealth of customer data at your fingertips, Ortto will give you everything you need to build a lookalike audience that can be set up and targeted through Facebook or Google. Target this audience with videos, case studies, testimonials, and other content, and run some tests to see which content types result in the most efficient CPA and the most high-quality leads.

Create a free tool

Let’s say you're a B2B brand that works with a lot of media agencies. You could set up a simple tool that automatically calculates individual line item CPMs or eCPMs across your whole plan. These tools are a great way to generate new leads and offer your existing customers something valuable. 

Try audio content 

We already mentioned appearing on podcasts, but what about creating one? Or creating other audio content like audio versions of your eBooks and articles, branded playlists of songs inspired by your products, voice search optimizations, meditations on popular apps like Insight Timer, or clever podcast ads that can be dynamically inserted and targeted to a specific market, or sponsored directly. 

Partner with influencers

Influencers are still an incredibly effective marketing channel and one that can be used by businesses of every size. If you only have a limited budget, try tools like Tribe or Vamp to work with micro-influencers to get the word out about your brand and generate new leads. If you’re a larger brand, opt for bigger, more meaningful long-term partnerships with influencers that really make sense for your brand and offering. And don’t forget — B2B influencers are out there, and can be incredibly effective. 

This may seem like a lot, but we’re really just scratching the surface. There are a million and one ways to generate a lead, a successful lead generation strategy is all about identifying the channels and campaigns that work for your brand, then refining and testing as you learn.

To ensure that every dollar and minute spent is used well, use a CDP like Ortto to automate messages across the customer journey and keep track of performance. 

Build a better journey.

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What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a methodology to attract loyal customers to your business by aligning with your target audience's needs. Creating tailored marketing experiences through valuable content is the core of an inbound marketing strategy that helps you drive customer engagement and growth.

Inbound Marketing Overview

The inbound methodology is the strategic method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers as opposed to interrupting them with traditional advertising methods. It’s about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you.

Why? Because when your customers succeed, you succeed.

The inbound methodology can be applied in three ways:

• Attract : drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that set you up as a trusted advisor.
• Engage : presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you. 
• Delight : offering help and support to empower your customers to find success with your product. 

Why is inbound marketing important?

When customers find success and share that success with others, it attracts new prospects to your organization, creating a self-sustaining loop. This is how your organization builds momentum, and this is why the inbound methodology serves as a strong foundation for your flywheel .

To reach and engage with that target audience effectively, you need to shift your business focus toward inbound marketing strategies. From HubSpot Co-Founder Brian Halligan’s perspective, "[If] you create all this content, and it's rich content — it's informative, it [will] pull people in…so people fall in love with your brand." By using social media, email marketing, blogging, and a truly exceptional website, you can create valuable, informative, and engaging content that pulls people in and cultivates a genuine connection with your brand. Embracing the inbound methodology serves as a strong foundation for building momentum to attract new prospects and ultimately drive business growth.

How does inbound marketing work?

Inbound marketing strategies will help you effectively market to your target audience the inbound way. Keep your flywheel spinning and help your business grow better .

Attracting Strategies

Inbound marketing strategies that attract your target audience and customer personas are tied to content creation and development.

To reach your audience, start by creating and publishing content — such as blog articles, content offers, and social media — that offers value. Examples include guides on how to use your products, information about how your solution can solve their challenges, customer testimonials, and details about promotions or discounts.

To attract your audience members on a deeper level through inbound marketing, optimize all this content with an SEO strategy . Target specific keywords and phrases related to your products or services, the challenges you solve for customers, and the ways you help customers.

This SEO strategy will allow your content and information to organically appear on the search engine results page (SERP) when people search for this information. These folks are your target audience, and likely the right customers for your business.

Engaging Strategies

When using inbound strategies to engage your audience, make sure you’re communicating and dealing with leads and customers in a way that makes them want to build long-term relationships with you. When using these engagement strategies, inject information about the value your business will give them.

Specific engagement strategies may include how you handle and manage your inbound sales calls . Focus on how customer service representatives handle calls from interested people and prospects. Additionally, be sure you’re always solution selling rather than product selling. This will make sure all deals end in mutually beneficial agreements for customers and your business — meaning, you offer value for your right-fit customers.

Delighting Strategies

Inbound strategies that delight make sure customers are happy, satisfied, and supported long after they buy. These strategies involve your team members becoming advisors and experts who can assist customers at any time.

Incorporating thoughtful, well-timed chatbots and surveys to help, support, and request feedback is a great way to delight your customers. Bots and surveys should be shared at specific points throughout the customer’s journey to make sure they are relevant and valuable.

For example, chatbots may help current customers set up a new technique or tactic you've started offering that they’d like to take advantage of. Additionally, a satisfaction survey may be sent out six months after customers buy your product or service to get their feedback and review ideas for improvement.

Social media listening is another important strategy when it comes to delighting customers. Social media followers may use one of your profiles to give feedback, ask questions, or share their experience with your products or services. Show that you hear and care by responding to these interactions with information that helps, supports, and encourages followers.

Lastly, the mark of an inbound strategy focused on delighting customers is one that helps and supports customers in any situation, whether your business gets any value out of it or not. Remember, a delighted customer becomes a brand advocate and promoter, so handle all interactions, both big and small, with care.

Get Started With Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

As an inbound marketer, your goal is to attract new prospects to your company, engage with them at scale, and delight them individually.

You also partner with your sales and services teams to keep the flywheel spinning effectively and help the business grow. It's a big job, but the inbound methodology and Marketing Hub have you covered.

You don’t want just anyone coming to your website. You want people who are most likely to become leads and, ultimately, happy customers. How do you get them there? You attract more of the right customers with relevant content at the right time.

Use the content strategy tool to build your authority in search and rank for the topics that matter the most to your prospects. Publish your blog post or video content across social networks using social media tools. Create ads to increase awareness of your brand with your target audience. Throughout each stage, reporting and analytics will help you know what’s working and where you need to improve.

Use HubSpot Conversations to create lasting relationships with prospects on the channels they prefer — through email, bots, live chat, or messaging apps. Use conversion tools like — CTAs, forms, and lead flows — to capture the information of prospects visiting your site. 

Use all the prospect and customer information in the CRM to personalize the website experience using smart content, and the entire buyer’s journey using email and workflows. Create brand loyalty by targeting specific audiences with your social content or ads. Connect your favorite tools to HubSpot to fit the unique needs of your business.

Use email and marketing automation in conjunction with HubSpot Conversations to deliver the right information to the right person at the right time, every time. Use the Conversations inbox to align with your sales and service team members to create contextual conversations with the people you do business with. Create memorable content your prospects can share with their friends and family by using a variety of content formats that your prospects prefer, like video, .  

By combining the inbound methodology with   HubSpot software , you’ll grow your business and get customers to buy more, stay with you longer, refer their friends, and tell the world they love you.

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Sign up for a free HubSpot Academy course to learn inbound marketing, access free tools to try inbound yourself, and get certified. Grow your business and your career with the inbound methodology.

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The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

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