Recent research from Salesforce showcased that 80% of customers now consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products. Another survey conducted by Semrush found that over 91% of businesses now rely on content marketing to connect with their customers. These statistics indicate that a big part of your customer experience (CX) is being offered through your content. So isn’t it about time we started evaluating our customers’ content journeys?

But before we talk about the importance of measuring these content journeys in detail, let’s understand what a customer journey map means.

What’s a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey, also known as a buyer or user journey, is a way of reliving your customers’ experiences with your brand across all touchpoints (website, email, social media, chat, and other channels). In order to decode these experiences, a visual aid called a customer journey map is used. This map offers direct insights into the pain points of your customers while also showcasing the seamless parts of their journey.

Why Mapping Customer Journeys is Important

In order to optimize any process for productivity, you first need to find out which parts of the process are broken. Putting together a visual representation of your customers’ journeys will help you break down their interactions to understand the successes and failures of your touchpoints. Armed with this information, you can now remove all the obstacles and create an experience that is intuitive for your users. The more intuitive the experience, the more seamless your customer’s journeys. In essence, mapping their journey will help you:

  • View things from the customer’s perspective
  • Better meet their expectations by optimizing the CX
  • Customize and build experiences for each buyer persona
“Marketing technology makes it possible to map the customer journey in far more detail than ever before. And a more accurate customer journey map can guide your marketing to be more strategic, better optimized, and ultimately more effective.”
- MarketingProfs

Introducing: Content User Journeys

As per Content Marketing Institute, content deeply influences your customer’s purchasing process. For a long time now, brands have used user journeys to understand the behavior of their customers towards their products. But in a world where customers consume content before your product, it’s crucial to also understand how they’re responding to your content. A content user journey puts the customer in the driver’s seat and focuses solely on their experience.

The revelations of this journey can help you create a better user experience in several ways:

  • For content creators
    Content marketers and leaders can get clarity on content pieces and formats that performed the best, thus helping them create content which fulfills the needs of the customer
  • For content designers
    They will be better equipped to understand how your customers are interacting in their journey and if the actions they’re taking are as intended to achieve business goals
  • For user experience designers
    They will have first-hand knowledge about the navigation process of your customers, which can help them remove hindrances in the flow and hence, offer a seamless experience.

Good Content Enables Successful User Journeys

The goal of most brands is to create good content. But what does that mean? Effective content will accomplish two key objectives:

  • be the starting point a meaningful customer experience
  • drive users to take actions that contribute to business outcomes

But how can you ensure that your content is actually triggering these experiences and actions? By measuring your users’ interactions with your content i.e. tracking your users’ content journey. As you keep learning more about your customers’ behaviors and patterns, the more customized content you can deliver. And the more targeted your content is, the better the chances of putting your customer on the path of a fulfilling customer journey.

The Way Ahead

Ann Lewnes, EVP and CMO of Adobe, beautifully sums up the convergence of customer experience into all realms of an organization going forward.

"The term ‘customer experience’ won’t exist in the organization of the future. It will be so deeply entrenched in a company’s product, process, and culture that it will be synonymous with the brand and represent the only way to do business.”

‍While seeing this convergence at every level will take its time, you can surely take charge of ensuring your content is adding to the experience that your customers deserve. It’s important to remember that every inefficient experience is a customer lost to a competitor who has offered something better in exchange. Let’s use content user journeys to create experiences that help you retain your customers.

Curious to learn more about creating content that can help you stay ahead of the curve? Read our latest piece on '4 Ways Content Marketing Will Change Post-COVID'.