How to Use Customer Journey Mapping in Your Marketing Strategy
- Sorametrics
- Sep 7
- 6 min read
Marketing is no longer about simply promoting products; it’s about understanding people. Modern customers expect personalized experiences, seamless interactions, and quick solutions. That’s where customer journey mapping (CJM) matters.
A customer journey map helps businesses visualize every step a customer takes—from discovering a brand to becoming a loyal advocate. This is pure gold for marketers and brands as it reveals pain points, opportunities, and the exact areas where you can better engage customers.
In 2025, where AI and automation dominate, journey mapping provides a human-centric foundation for strategies, ensuring your marketing speaks directly to customer needs.
Table of Contents
1. What is Customer Journey Mapping?
2. Key Stages of the Customer Journey
Awareness
Consideration
Decision
Retention
Advocacy
3. Benefits of Using Customer Journey Mapping in Marketing
4. Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Customer Journey Map
Step 1: Define Your Buyer Personas
Step 2: Identify Customer Touchpoints
Step 3: Collect Data (Quantitative & Qualitative)
Step 4: Map the Current Journey
Step 5: Identify Gaps and Pain Points
Step 6: Design the Ideal Customer Journey
Step 7: Test, Measure, and Optimize
5. Tools You Can Use for Customer Journey Mapping
6. Real-World Examples of Customer Journey Mapping in Action
7. How to Integrate Journey Mapping into Your Marketing Strategy
8. Common Mistakes to Avoid
9. Future Trends in Customer Journey Mapping
10. Conclusion
Customer journey mapping is the process of visualizing the entire experience a customer has with your brand, from the first touchpoint to post-purchase interactions.
Think of it like drawing a map of a traveler’s trip. Instead of roads and landmarks, you’re mapping ads, emails, landing pages, customer service chats, and reviews, all of which give you much deeper understanding of customer interactions with your brand.
The purpose is to understand how customers feel, what they think, and what they do at each stage. For example,
A customer might first see your Instagram ad (awareness).
Then they Google your reviews (consideration).
Next, they check pricing on your website (decision).
After purchase, they receive a thank-you email (retention).
Finally, they post about your brand on TikTok (advocacy).
Customer journey occurs in stages each of which reveals specific path customer takes to interact with your brand. The stages are explained below:
Awareness
This is the stage where potential customers first hear about your brand—through ads, word-of-mouth, or content. For instance, a TikTok video about a fitness app that sparks curiosity in viewers.
Consideration
At this stage the customer researches, compares, and evaluates. For example, reading blog reviews or checking YouTube tutorials of your app.
Decision
This is the purchase stage where the customer decides to buy your products or services. For instance, the consumer chooses your fitness app over competitors after seeing a free trial offer.
Retention
This is a significant stage where a brand or business Keeps customers happy after purchase. For example, after a customer has bought your products or subscribed to your service, you send personalized workout tips via email to app users.
Advocacy
At this point of the journey, satisfied customers become promoters for your brand. For example, when a user of your product shares their weight-loss story on Instagram and tags your brand.
Below are different ways customer journey mapping can benefit your brand:
Personalized marketing: With customer journey mapping, you can target messages to where the customer is in the journey.
Improved ROI: When you effectively keep track of your customer journey, you can focus only on relevant ads and spend on effective touchpoints. This helps to prevent wastage in ads spend and consequently increases your return on investment.
Stronger customer relationships: When you are able to identify pain points and address them quickly, it builds trust with your customer and improve their loyalty.
Better content strategy: Effectively mapping your customer journey enriches you with the knowledge of what kind of content works best at each stage of the journey. This enables you to provide relevant, targeted content to the right audience, at the right time in the right place.
How do you create a customer journey map that works for your brand? If you haven't done it before, it may look like a complex process. But if you employ capable hands and communicate with concerned teams, creating an effective customer journey map become a lot easier. Follow the steps below to create a customer journey map that will change the game: Step 1: Define Your Buyer Personas
A persona is a semi-fictional profile of your target customer. It includes data such as age, occupation, shopping behavior and incomed level. For example, Sarah, a 29-year-old working professional who wants a healthy lifestyle but has limited time.
Step 2: Identify Customer Touchpoints
List all the channels through which customers interact with your brand. These channels may include ads, emails, landing pages, social media, chatbot conversations, etc.
Step 3: Collect Data Collect enough data on your customer to better understand their journey. Data you collect can be quantitative or quantitative or both.
Quantitative data: This includes website analytics, click-through rates, and conversion data.
Qualitative data: This includes customer surveys, interviews, and focus groups. For example, Google Analytics might reveal that customers drop off on your checkout page.
Step 4: Map the Current Journey
In this step, make sure to draw out the journey as it exists. Use a simple flowchart or a tool like Miro to visualize. Visualizing customer journey gives you clarity and enable you to target them with the right message or content.
Step 5: Identify Gaps and Pain Points
Identify customer challenges through the journey. What stand in the way as they progress through each stage of their journey. This step is a crucial because it helps identify and address customer challenge. For example, customers abandon carts because your shipping costs are unclear.
Step 6: Design the Ideal Customer Journey
After you have pinpointed customer pain point, the next step is to create solutions. For example, adding transparent shipping details upfront to reduce drop-offs.
Step 7: Test, Measure, and Optimize
This is the stage where you have to continuously refine your customer journey mapping strategies. This will help you to figure out what works for your customer and better address their pain point. For example, use different A/B test for checkout designs to see which works better.
Check out the following tools to effortlessly map your customer journey and gain useful insight that you can use to maximize your brand success:
HubSpot Service Hub – helps you integrate customer feedback and journey analytics.
Miro – for easy visualization of journey maps.
Smaply – for specialized journey mapping software.
Lucidchart – this helps you with flowcharts for journey stages.
Google Analytics – helps you track behavioral data.
Spotify: Uses customer journey data to recommend personalized playlists, improving retention.
Airbnb: Maps journeys from search to booking, ensuring every stage is smooth.
Starbucks: Tracks mobile app journeys to boost loyalty with rewards programs.
Content marketing: Create content tailored to each stage (e.g., awareness = blog posts, decision = product demos).
Email marketing: Send targeted emails based on behavior (e.g., abandoned cart reminders, loyalty rewards).
Paid ads: Retarget customers who have earlier engaged with your brand or product.
Social media: use social media platforms to share testimonials to strengthen advocacy.
Creating maps without data (assumptions ≠ reality).
Overcomplicating the map with too much detail.
Ignoring post-purchase experiences.
Treating it as a one-time project instead of ongoing.
AI-driven personalization: AI tools like ChatGPT or Persado creating hyper-personalized ads.
Voice search integration: Optimizing for Alexa/Google voice queries.
Omnichannel mapping: Seamless journeys across online and offline touchpoints.
Predictive analytics: Anticipating what customers will do next using machine learning.
Customer journey mapping is no longer optional; it’s a strategic necessity. Brands that understand their customers’ paths can create personalized, frictionless experiences that drive loyalty and advocacy.
If you want your marketing strategy to truly resonate, invest time in mapping and optimizing your customer journey.
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