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Let’s break down two common Marketing terms, The Customer Journey and the Marketing Funnel and how they work together. So picture this….when you think of your target buyer personas, can you think of their pain points and motivations? What is their intent and how do they go from being an unaware person to a paying customer? The answers to these questions both fuel the Customer Journey and Marketing Funnel, let’s dive in… What is the Customer Journey? SurveyMonkey puts it best: “The customer journey is the complete sum of experiences that customers go through when interacting with your company or brand. Instead of looking at just a part of a transaction or experience, the customer journey documents the full experience of being a customer.” Today’s customer journeys are convoluted and messy. Customers can easily hop on-and-off their buying journey whenever and wherever they want - making selling and marketing in the digital and analog worlds no easy feat. Mapping the customer journey is about nurturing your target audience's experience to ensure that no lead falls through the cracks. By fully understanding the customer experience, you can create tailored solutions and experiences that help to answer questions and provide more value to your end consumer in each of their moments of intent. The customer experience is the single most determining factor of whether or not a potential customer will continue working with your business or not. So, having customized, tailored experiences will not only increase the likelihood of each consumer who will fulfill your desired action i.e convert; it will also help you gain a better understanding of your target audience and uncover any problematic areas that need improvement. The Marketing Funnel Of course, as we think through our Customer Journey, we will also want to take into consideration the Sales/Marketing Funnel. A marketing funnel — also known as the sales funnel — is a model of your marketing and sales process from your company’s point of view. Leads start at the top of the funnel and work their way down to the bottom of the funnel as they get closer to making a purchase. Usually, a sales funnel is broken down into the following stages: • Awareness, • Interest, • Consideration, • Intent, and • Purchase. We can further break down the funnel down into 3 main parts: • Top of Funnel (TOF), • Middle of Funnel (MOF), and • Bottom of Funnel (BOF). Understanding your sales/marketing funnel allows you to categorize your leads and customers based on the relationship they have with your business. Though these two concepts are closely related, they aren't the same. The Customer Journey details every step necessary for a new lead to transform into a paying customer, while the Marketing Funnel is more of a business model used to market appropriately to leads at various stages of the buying cycle. The longer your sales cycle is, the longer your average customer’s journey will most likely be. Customer journey maps and the marketing funnel are similar tools and can be used to complement each other. Your marketing funnel tells you how leads are interacting with your business - use this information to understand what kind of information or assistance a lead likely needs at any given time. Look for our next video where we break down the steps for Mapping out the Customer Journey.