SaaS Customer Journey Mapping: What is it and how to get started?

Most SaaS firms imagine that their product is the most effective available in the market. Whereas this can be true by way of performance, the success of SaaS merchandise relies upon largely on buyer expertise.

At present, most companies use round 200 totally different SaaS merchandise. So even when you’ve got an excellent product, however prospects are driving away, it implies that you want to establish the frequent buyer journey and transfer away out of your conventional methodology of delivering buyer expertise. With SaaS competitors turning into fierce, you must create a hook that retains prospects engaged together with your product.

And for this reason you want to create a consumer journey map.

Let’s discover the essential facets of buyer journey mapping for SaaS firms, its advantages, and how one can begin implementing it.

A fast dive into what SaaS buyer journey mapping is
The SaaS buyer journey map visualizes all of the occasions and actions a consumer takes when interacting together with your firm and utility. You map out all of the levels the client goes via, from the notice to the adoption stage, and embrace their feelings and ache factors throughout a number of channels. This map tells you a narrative of their experiences. Your objective is to assemble these insights, analyze them, and enhance their expertise by including worth at every touchpoint.

Why does buyer journey mapping matter for SaaS firms?
Buyer journey mapping gives a world of advantages to SaaS firms. Listed here are just a few essential ones:

Reduces churn charges:
If prospects don’t see worth in your product or have a nasty expertise, they’ll naturally lose curiosity in it. This may enhance churn charges. Journey mapping means that you can establish friction factors that prospects discover annoying and create methods to get rid of them.

Will increase retention:
Monitoring ongoing buyer interactions and relationships will help you establish who will keep and who will churn. As an illustration, if a selected buyer is dropping off on the fee web page, you may comply with up with them to know why they aren’t changing and whether or not they’re dealing with any points with the fee portal. This can scale back the prices of buying new prospects and enhance buyer retention.

Tracks model well being:
Buyer expectations are continually evolving. And for this reason it’s essential to trace model well being. Consumer journey mapping will aid you perceive how happy prospects are together with your product and whether or not or not your model is delivering its promise. They analyze knowledge from each channel and survey to assist SaaS firms strengthen their place available in the market. It solutions three important questions that can aid you observe model well being:

What do prospects take into consideration your model? (Their notion and feelings)
How do they work together together with your model? (Analyzing touchpoints and model attributes)
How memorable is your model? (Model recall)
Creates customized experiences:
Research present 71% of customers anticipate firms to ship customized interactions. And when this doesn’t occur, they really feel pissed off. At its coronary heart, SaaS buyer journey mapping is about placing consumer wants on the middle of every little thing you do. It’s going to aid you establish personalization alternatives throughout each touchpoint.

As an illustration, in case you are experiencing increased churn charges through the onboarding course of, you may ship customized emails with useful guides and video tutorials to assist customers navigate the product. Firms like Salesforce, Zoho, and Zendesk use personalization strategies to nudge customers gently to discover their merchandise.

Methods to get began?
Whereas there is no such thing as a sure-shot solution to get began with SaaS buyer journey mapping, most firms do an intensive evaluation of the six levels of the client lifecycle.

Stage 1: Consciousness and Analysis
That is the place prospects begin studying about your product, and your relationship begins. At this stage, they’re dealing with an issue and will probably be performing some analysis to seek out the most effective resolution. They might search the web or social media for info. So you need to put out attractive content material that’s related and captures consideration to make them all for exploring your product.

Essential digital touchpoints you want to take note of:

Web site content material
Social media posts and engagement (Feedback and likes)
Affiliate web sites
Paid advertising and marketing channels corresponding to Google adverts, Fb adverts, and extra
On-line opinions
Stage 2: Acquisition
Sometimes in SaaS, a consumer shouldn’t be buying a product however subscribing to it. Your objective at this stage is to persuade your audience to join a trial and convert them. And when a prospect decides to strive your product, their onboarding expertise would be the deciding issue on whether or not they’ll convert or not.

Making your onboarding course of participating and easygoing is significant. When purchasers end the onboarding course of, you must be capable of display how your product brings worth to their group. In case your onboarding course of is advanced or fails to convey vital info, potential purchasers will drop off. The contact factors at this stage will energy the consumer’s selections.

Essential digital touchpoints to concentrate on:

Demo requests
Onboarding emails
Free trial
Movies educating the customers
In-app messaging
Wish to study extra about tips on how to design a seamless onboarding expertise? Learn this information right here.

Stage 3. Adoption
As soon as your potential consumer converts, you must keep in contact with them and introduce them to superior options and settings. Doing this builds a apply and helps them derive higher worth out of your product. You need the purchasers to combine your product into their workflow, so you want to preserve demonstrating worth and nudge them to maintain exploring.

Crucial digital touchpoints you need to be conscious of:

Blogs and useful articles concerning the addition of latest options
Video tutorials
In-app notifications
E mail sequences
Webinars and how-to movies
Case research
Self-serve sources like how-to-guides
Buyer assist discussion board
Weekly e-mail summaries of product utilization
Chat assistants
Stage 4: Renewal
Renewal is crucial by way of income technology. When a buyer decides to stick with you, it means they derive worth out of your product and will flip into loyal advocates in close to future. It’s a stage that helps you develop your enterprise, so it’s critical that you simply constantly comply with up with them and make sure that they aren’t dealing with any friction. You possibly can ship emails, reminders, gives, and surveys to gauge their expertise. Additionally, preserve reminding them about your product advantages to affect their determination.

Crucial digital touchpoints to concentrate to:

Promotional emails
Surveys
Academic movies and how-to guides
In-app notifications and reminders
Accounting and billing receipts (post-purchase)
Gross sales name
Stage 5: Enlargement
At this stage within the buyer lifecycle, your prospects could also be considerably happy together with your product. So it is sensible to increase your product choices and create up-selling alternatives.

A significant level to recollect right here is to not push or overdo it. You possibly can ship some triggers time-to-time about gives or upgrades, however that’s about it. As an illustration, if a consumer has a primary subscription, you may ship them emails about how the skilled bundle will help them higher or make issues extra streamlined. The content material right here should be customized and to the purpose.

Stage 6: Advocacy
Research present that 74% of customers imagine phrase of mouth to be a essential influencing issue of their buying determination. And for this reason you must flip loyal prospects into your model advocates. Purchasers at this stage could have tried your subscriptions and explored your options so they’ll painting their constructive experiences higher.

You possibly can merely ship social media sharing buttons. Many SaaS firms additionally design a model ambassador program that provides rewards to their loyal advocates.

A 5-Step guidelines to create a SaaS buyer journey map
Upon getting knowledge from the client lifecycle levels, you may create a SaaS buyer journey map in 5 simple steps.

Determine which map you wish to create:
There are 4 sorts of SaaS buyer journey maps. Let’s evaluate them shortly:

Present state maps: These middle across the consumer’s ideas, emotions, and behaviors they expertise throughout their journey as it’s at the moment structured.
Future state maps: Because the title suggests, these maps purpose to anticipate the ideas, emotions, and behaviors that prospects will ideally expertise when interacting together with your model.
Day within the life maps: They showcase the on a regular basis buyer experiences together with your model, offering you with deeper perception into buyer ache factors.
Service blueprint maps: They sometimes establish the underlying components that may affect buyer expertise.
Outline all buyer interplay touchpoints:
From weblog posts to emails, strengthen your understanding of all touchpoints. Visualize all of the touchpoints, together with the post-purchase ones, and discover methods to optimize them.

Collect knowledge from the client lifecycle:
You possibly can collect knowledge from the above six-step buyer lifecycle and break it down into sub-stages. With these insights, you may create buyer milestones, analyze whether or not there may be friction, and get a greater understanding of how your prospects really feel about your product.

Mark occasions that want motion:
We have now talked about how one can take motion throughout every lifecycle stage. Nevertheless, sure occasions could require deeper evaluation. Right here you may evaluate how an occasion ought to ideally appear like vs. what actually occurred and how one can enhance the method. For every concern, you may develop options and talk with the consumer.

Maintain optimizing the map:
After your SaaS buyer journey mapping is full, you want to make steady enhancements to it. You possibly can plan and optimize your advertising and marketing initiatives to assemble extra suggestions to make the map as related as potential.

Bridge the hole between buyer expectations and actuality immediately!
With 70% of firms utilizing SaaS-based functions, the competitors is getting fierce each day. Having an in depth SaaS buyer journey map is not a nice-to-have technique, it has grow to be a necessity. Seeing issues out of your prospects’ views provides a greater concept of tips on how to create highly effective merchandise.

And if you wish to construct a SaaS product that exceeds buyer expectations, ATC will help! We have now a crew of devoted builders, software program engineers, and designers to satisfy your advanced mission necessities. Simply shoot us a mail, and we are going to aid you take your product to the following degree.