Building and maintaining your customer journey maps is time-intensive, and there are countless ways that pros can lead their team astray with inaccurate customer journeys:
Assuming Journeys Are Linear: Customer journeys are messy, and most don’t follow a straight path from awareness to purchase. Nearly 71% of companies say that the time between first customer engagement and purchase takes a month or longer, and 61% of companies have at least three pre-purchase touchpoints, with 32% reporting six or more. Adopting a multi-touch attribution strategy is essential to capture and track the intricacies of how your customers are interacting with your brand.
Working with Siloed Data: Multi-touch attribution is a data-intensive strategy, and many companies simply don’t have the skills or foundation in place for a smooth process. One significant issue is that almost 47% of companies cite data silos as their biggest challenge. Address this by hiring data-driven talent and training your existing team to know how to access and analyze your company’s data. Assess your technology needs to find where you may need more integrations to make your data digestible.
Relying on the “Easy” Data: If you don’t address the two points above, it’s likely you are going to rely on the “easy” data—whatever it is easiest to track through first and last touch attribution. The problem, as was illustrated with the complex customer journeys, is that the first and the last touch are often just a minor piece of the puzzle. There is a lot of activity that happens between those two points. If you can’t track those points through your technology, you can still get at it the old-fashioned way—by asking. In your lead form, ask how your prospects heard about you to get more insight since your website probably wasn’t their first stop.