This document discusses the consumer journey and how understanding it through personas and journey mapping can improve marketing outcomes. It provides an overview of user-centered design principles and outlines the benefits of creating buyer personas to understand different customer types. The key aspects of building personas like gathering insights and utilizing sales teams are described. Examples of personas are also presented. Finally, the document discusses how to create journey maps by mapping the customer path and identifying touchpoints, emotions, and opportunities for improvement.

1. The Consumer Journey
Progress Digital Partner Summit | May 10, 2016

2. Your Presenters
2
Dan Galvin
VP Opportunity Development
dgalvin@leapagency.com
@DGalvin22
Michael Wunsch
VP Digital Performance
mwunsch@leapagency.com
@MichaelEWunsch

3. 16 Years in Business | 2 Locations | 70 Employees | $35 Million in Billings
About LEAP LEAPagency.com

4. Diverse Clientele
4

5. User-Centered Design
Process for LEAP
5
The 6 Principles of UCD
•The design is based upon an explicit understanding of
users, tasks & environments.
•Users are involved throughout design & development.
•The design is driven and refined by user-centered
evaluation.
•The process is iterative.
•The design addresses the whole user experience.
•The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and
perspectives.
Centered Around User Evaluation Based In:
•Personas and Scenarios
•Usability Testing
•Accessibility Testing
•Focus Groups
•User Observation
•User Surveys

6. Why does any of this matter?

7. Data-Driven Future
• Data-driven marketing cuts
through the noise
• Conversion optimization a part of
every project
• ROI increases that keep clients
with us and growing
• Consumers want personalization
• The tools are right here!
7

8. What will we learn today?

9. The Day at a Glance
Gone are the days of guessing about website behavior and content.
Consumers are demanding personalized content and websites must
have clear objective.
Define personas: We have to know who we are building experiences
for and what matters to them.
Define the journey: Once we know “who” we need to define the
path to the objective.
9

10. Buyer Personas

11. Customer & Buyer Personas
11
An effective buyer persona is based
on market research and insights into your
current customer base that
can be for example received through
surveys and interviews.
Retrieve data such as income, place of
residence, relationship status, occupation,
daily routine, lifestyle, hobbies, behavior on
the web etc. and determine the daily needs and
problems of your customers.
Depending on the industry, develop
different personas from this information
and have on-hand information to create
new profiles anytime you’d like.
=
Buyer Personas are fictional ideals of your customer types and act as content marketing
tools. They will help you to better understand your customers and make it easier to tailor
your content to their specific needs and behaviors.
An Introduction

12. Customer & Buyer Personas
12
Effectively Using Personas
How can your products or services solve the customer's problems and by what means can you
encourage them to buy? If you have analyzed the data collected about your customers and take into
account these questions, you can implement your advertising measures.
Long standing and
regular customers can
be variously contacted
and informed in
contrast with new
customers, where not
much can be
concluded due to
limited amount of
information.
Intentionally exclude
negative personas
from your promotions
and focus your energy
on customers who are
likely and ready to buy.
Develop specific digital
communications for
customers who really
could have interest in a
certain product, rather
than indiscriminately
sending it to all your
customers.

13. Customer & Buyer Personas
13
Why Are They So Important?
Buyer Persona Model Make better informed decisions
about marketing & sales strategies

14. Building Your Persona

15. Customer & Buyer Personas
15
Four Steps to Building Personas
GATHER &
ANALYZE
INSIGHTS
BUYER
INTERVIEWS
BUILD BUYER
PERSONAS &
SCENARIO
MODELS
MAP TO
BUYER
GOALS
21 3 4

16. Customer & Buyer Personas
16
Utilize Your Sales Team
USE DATA TO FLESH OUT
PERSONAS
Primary research
Wins and losses
Sales force and marketing
automation reports
Look-alikes
Case studies
Customer surveys
ASK REPS THE RIGHT
QUESTIONS
Who are you selling to?
Who is buying?
How do buyers communicate?
What questions are buyers asking?
What pain do buyers have?
What are the buyers´ journeys?
What companies do they work for?
GET INPUT FROM THE
FRONT LINES
Talk to top-performing sales reps
Get insight on buyer behaviour and
characteristics
Use info to create a range of
different personas
ALWAYS BE IMPROVING
Meet with sales regularly to review
and refine personas
Use sales force and marketing
automation tools to track success
21 3 4

17. Customer & Buyer Personas
17
Buyer Persona Building Blocks
MODALITY
Methodical, spontaneous, humanistic,
competitive
MOTIVATION
Needs, goals, pains, ideals, challenges
DEMOGRAPHICS
Gender, age, marital status, income
level, location, education
BIOGRAPHIC
Industry, senority, functional area, role,
responsibilities, knowledge, risk
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Personality, values, attitudes,
interests, lifestyles
RELATIONSHIPS
Individual, directed, collaborative,
competitive, contentious, subordinate,
superior, consensus

18. Examples

19. ALEX SCHMIDT
LIVES IN: Cincinnati, OH
AGE: 24 – 30
GENDER: Male
INTERESTS: Sports, Technology, Fashion, Fitness
EDUCATION LEVEL: College Graduate
JOB TITLE: Finance, Financial Advisor, Financial Analyst or Financial
Adviser
INCOME: 60k – 80k
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single
LANGUAGE SPOKEN: German, English
BUYING MOTIVATION:
Wants top quality at a fair price
BUYING CONCERNS:
Warranty and service

20. 20
Customer & Buyer Personas
Putting It All Together

21. Customer & Buyer Personas
Putting It All Together
Lucy
RATIONAL
11%
Jackson
TRADITIONALIST
14%
Robert
METICULOUS
32%
Anne
CAREFREE
13%
Thomas
UNINHIBITED
17%

22. 22
NeedStateMap

23. Journey Mapping

24. Journey / Experience Map
24
The composition of an Experience Map builds up knowledge and unity on all management
and working levels. Moreover, a satisfying customer interaction and a better product
experience is established.
The Experience Map is a strategic
tool to document and present
complex user interaction with a
product or service.
Definition

25. Journey / Experience Map
25
Key Terms
POINT OF INTERACTION
The point of interaction of a person and a representative or
product of the company.
The interaction takes place at a specific time, within a specific
context and with the intention to fulfill a specific need of the
customer.
CHANNEL
The communication channels with the user: web, print,
voice call, mobile device or a retail store.
The channel defines the possibilities and limitations of a
touch point.

26. Journey / Experience Map
26
Benefits of an Experience Map
Evaluation
Assess structural
knowledge of customer
experience / behavior of
all channels
Tool
Collective tool to
display product
experiences
Simplicity
Follow customer
insights in a simple
and usable form
Development
Develop toward
customer-oriented
thinking
Innovation
Identify areas of
ideas and innovation

27. Journey / Experience Map
27
Main Components
The Takeaway
The takeaway contains strategic
insight and proposals which
derive from the Experience Map
and summarizes detected
obstacles and opportunities.
The Lens
The lens is a filter which analyzes
the journey of the customer and
summarizes it to the core
experience; superior principles
and key values are listed.
Journey of the Customer
The journey of the customer
is always individual and case-related.
It should illustrate the most important
points such as phase transitions and
channel changes.

28. Journey / Experience Map
28
Four Steps of Implementation
Observation
Analyze customer behavior
and cross channel points
of interaction.
Target course
Exploit the journey of the
customer and its key points.
Visualization
Visualize gathered information
as moving stories.
Usage
Use the Experience Map
as an impetus for a better
customer experience.

29. Journey / Experience Map
29
Basic Framework
doing
Actions which are
executed by customers
to meet their needs?
What are the key actions?
thinking
How do customers design
and judge their product
experience?
What do they expect?
feeling
Which emotions do
customers have on
their journey?
What are the ups and downs?

30. Journey / Experience Map
30
Capturing Insights
Truth counts
Only real data create
a useable Experience
Map as its value
closely connected
with the insights it
conveys.
Quantitative
Based on qualitative
results, further data
sources, such as
statistical evaluations
or surveys, can help
to identify decisive
features.
Qualitative
Conversations with
customers the most
reliable source to gain
qualitative knowledge.
The interview should
take place in a natural
manner and
environment.
Iterative
Directed by the course
of the creation, an
iterative concept
arises. The process is
improved and
becomes more
elaborated at the
same time.
Many sources
One source is never
enough to get a
comprehensive
picture. One should
gather as much
information as
possible from
different sources.

31. Building Your Map

32. Journey / Experience Map
Step One
The first draft starts with the identification of interaction points and the drawing of a path.
To mirror thoughts and emotions, interaction points show positive and negative signs.
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33. TIP: Start in analytics
33

34. Journey / Experience Map
Step Two
Emotion, need, action
Emotion, need, action
Emotion, need, action
Emotion, need, action
Next, emotions, needs and thoughts are regarded more intensively with the aim to identify
the underlying need. The qualitative information of the results are added as comments to
the interaction points. Emotional conditions are depicted graphically. Also, quantitative
information, such as statistical details find their place around the path.
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+ /+-

35. Journey / Experience Map
Step Three
Now, the phases of interaction are identified by dividing interaction points into rational units.
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+ /+-
Attention Research Decision Purchase

36. Journey / Experience Map
36
Rising interest in a
specific product or
group of products
Attention
Research of
information on
focused products
Research
The customer decides
by means of specific
criteria.
Decision
The customer
purchases the product
via a specific channel.
Purchase
Initial operation of the
product and necessary
steps
First usage
Daily, regular use of
the product within
the respective context
Further usage
Due to specific criteria,
the product is defect or
not used any longer.
End of usage
Disposal of the product
and purchase of a
replacement product,
if required
Disposal
Phases – Structured Example

37. Journey / Experience Map
Types of Interaction
Direct
connection
One step leads directly
to the next one.
Bi-Directional
connection
One step leads to the next,
but the user can also go back.
Controlled
evaluation
Use ranges between several
possibilities within a closed
and controlled surrounding.
Open
Exploration
User ranges freely between
several dependent and
independent possibilities.
37

38. Journey / Experience Map
The last step is the evaluation of possibilities and obstacles for the customer:
Communicative:
• Does the user need a specific content or a specific essential information?
• Is it possible to improve the sorting of available information by means of their relevance for the
customer?
Interactional:
• What prevents the customer from interacting?
• How can the interaction be improved?
Step Five

39. Putting It All Together
39
Path
Customer journey with
interaction points and types
Thoughts
Annotations with the customer’s
thoughts at the interaction point
Lens
Overlapping summary of the
customer’s core experience
EMOTION Scale
Mental and emotional
conditions graphically compiled
Takeaway
Proposals for improvement and
obstacles of the particular
interaction phases
Surrounding
Upstream and downstream
interactions, outer conditions,
actual situation

40. How It Works Together

41. Examples - Personas
41

42. Examples – Home Hardware
42

43. Examples – Electrical Contractors
43

44. Now What?

45. Just Do It
• Grab your sales team, talk through your customer, just capture a few
insights
• Gather whatever data exists about your customer
• Find a headshot, give it a name, apply the characteristics (a few is fine)
Boom – you have a persona!
45

46. Now…
• Apply that person to your web project
• Where do they start (search, ad, direct, social)
• Where do they land (home, landing page, ecom)
• What do they need / want – does your content match
• Can they go different directions
• Are there barriers / have you considered mobile / tablet
• What is the primary objective
Boom, you just created a Journey Map!
46

47. Finally…
• Establish your KPIs
• How will you measure (analytics, Sitefinity)
• Map to objectives
• Evaluate, wash, rinse repeat
• Be prepared to fail fast but fail smart
47

48. 48
Dan Galvin
VP Opportunity Development
dgalvin@leapagency.com
@DGalvin22
Michael Wunsch
VP Digital Performance
mwunsch@leapagency.com
@MichaelEWunsch