Marketing ROI: Understanding and Optimizing Your Core Customer Journey

By Anthony Milia, Milia Marketing

As a fabricator or surfacing industry professional, measuring the return on your marketing investments is critical to the success and growth of your business. The key lies in understanding the core customer journey — the interactions that lead a prospect to become a loyal, raving fan.

What steps are involved in turning a prospect into a customer? Where do they find out about your business? What actions do they take when they learn about you? What made them choose you? How was their experience after working with you? Would they come back? Would they refer family and friends?

Understanding these different touchpoints is critical in understanding your target audience and maximizing your marketing investments.

Understanding the Customer Journey

A customer journey is the series of interactions and experiences a customer has with your business over time, from initial awareness to becoming a repeat customer. The key elements of a customer journey typically include:

Awareness: How the customer first becomes aware of your products or services through advertising, referrals or online searches.

Consideration: The research and evaluation phase, where the customer gathers information to decide if your company’s offerings meet their needs.

Conversion: The point where the customer takes action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, or requesting a consultation.

Retention: The customer’s ongoing relationship and interactions with your business after the initial conversion, including repeat purchases, support and brand loyalty.

Advocacy: When satisfied customers become brand advocates, recommending your company’s products or services to others.

Every customer who has purchased has gone through at least the first three stages of the customer journey. Many go through it in one day, and some might take a while, but if your business meets their needs, they’re likely to hit all those points on their journey.

A prospect might learn about your business through an advertisement, a social media post, or, most commonly, a recommendation. They might try to find out about your business by asking their friend, visiting your website or showroom, or requesting a quote. They’re trying to find out what services you provide, if your offerings are within their budget, what materials you sell and more.

If they’re satisfied with what they find, they’ll pay for the product or service and can either move on from there, return for more, or refer a friend.

It’s actually a simple process, so why isn’t every shop locking down customers and closing new deals? The answers are simple: competition and a poor understanding of customer behavior — the customer journey.

The Essence of Optimizing Your Customer Journey

At every stage of the customer journey — awareness, consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy — different businesses take different actions and achieve different results.

Let’s compare two countertop shops in the awareness stage of the customer journey.

Company A:

• Has a referral program that incentivizes previous customers whenever they bring a new customer.

• Employs data-driven, programmatic ad campaigns.

• Deploys engaging social media content that showcases their work and brand personality.

• Has strategic partnerships with local home design influencers and bloggers.

• Leverages search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to rank highly for relevant keyword searches.

• Has a presence at local home shows, trade events and community gatherings.

• Has attention-grabbing outdoor/billboard advertising in high-traffic areas.

• Optimizes their Google My Business listing and other local directory profiles.

Company B:

• Has a billboard advertisement about the business.

• Has an unoptimized website.

• Has an inactive social media account.

Considering the positions of these two businesses, potential customers are more likely to discover Company A than Company B because Company A is taking a more comprehensive and strategic approach to building awareness.

But does that solve the problem of maximizing your marketing dollars? Well, not quite. That’s because the awareness stage is only one out of five in the customer journey. What about the other stages? Are you making it easy for customers to find, reach and buy from you? What exactly is working and what isn’t?

Tracking Your Customer Journey: What it Means for Your Business

The comparison above shows that Company A has a more comprehensive approach to building awareness than Company B. However, not all of those methods would bring the desired results.

Tracking the customer journey begins with breaking down the customer journey into several touchpoints within each stage and analyzing the results each touchpoint delivers.

For example, Company A uses eight strategies to help prospective customers discover their business. However, they might realize after a thorough analysis that:

• Their website, through a robust SEO strategy, is where 30% of their leads originate.

• Their referral program helps them capture 25% of leads.

• Social media brings in 25% of new awareness.

• Their programmatic ad campaigns drive 20% of leads.

By closely monitoring the performance of each awareness-building tactic, the company can understand which strategies are most effective at attracting new customers. This allows them to double down on the highest-performing channels, fine-tune underperforming tactics, and make more informed decisions about where to allocate their marketing resources

Similarly, the company would want to analyze the effectiveness of strategies at the consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy stages. Some key metrics they may track could include:

Consideration Stage:

• Website engagement and conversion rates.

• Lead generation from product visualization tools.

• Customer questions answered by the sales team.

Retention Stage:

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty program participation.

• Repeat purchase rates.

• Average customer lifetime value.

Conversion Stage:

• Online booking/ purchase completion rates.

• Revenue generated from sales calls.

• Upsell/cross-sell percentages.

Advocacy Stage:

• Online review sentiment and volume.

• Referral program conversion rates.

• Customer testimonials featured on the website.

By deeply understanding the customer journey and the unique impact of each strategy, you can continually optimize your approach to drive maximum awareness, consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy. This data-driven, customer-centric mindset gives you a significant competitive edge.

How Can You Track the Customer Journey?

Tracking your customer journey involves monitoring and analyzing the various stages a customer goes through, from initial awareness to post-purchase behavior. Here are some key steps to effectively track the customer journey:

• Identify Touchpoints: Map out all potential touchpoints where customers interact with your brand, including online ads, social media, website visits, email campaigns, customer service interactions and in-store visits.

• Set Up Analytics Tools: Use tools like Google Analytics, systems like ActionFlow, StoneApp, Measure Square, and specialized customer journey mapping tools like HubSpot to collect and analyze data at each touchpoint.

• Track Customer Interactions: Implement tracking codes or customized links in digital marketing efforts to see where customers are coming from and what actions they take on your website. Use heatmaps and session recordings to understand user behavior on your site.

• Analyze Purchase Paths: Examine the paths customers take from initial contact to purchase. Look for common patterns and drop-off points using funnel analysis. Tools like Google Analytics Behavior Flow or Conversion Paths can help visualize this data.

• Gather Feedback: Collect qualitative data through surveys, feedback forms and direct customer interviews. This helps to understand the motivations and pain points behind customer actions.

• Use A/B Testing: Conduct A/B tests on different touchpoints (like website landing pages, email subject lines or ad creatives) to determine which variations lead to better customer engagement and conversion rates.

• Monitor Social Media: Track social media interactions and mentions using tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social or Brandwatch to understand customer sentiments and engagement.

• Integrate Data Sources: Combine data from various sources (website analytics, CRM, social media, customer service) into a single platform for a holistic view of the customer journey. Data integration platforms like Segment or Zapier can facilitate this process.

• Segment Your Customers: Segment customers based on demographics, behavior and purchase history. This helps in understanding different customer journeys and tailoring marketing strategies accordingly.

• Visualize the Journey: Create visual maps of the customer journey using tools like Smaply, Lucidchart or Microsoft Visio. These maps can help identify key touchpoints, pain points and opportunities for improvement.

• Evaluate and Adjust: Regularly review the data and insights gathered to evaluate the effectiveness of your customer journey strategies. Adjust as needed to improve the customer experience and drive conversions.

Harnessing the insights of digital marketing barriers and create a more simplified tracking approach that lets you track your different touchpoints at the various stages of the customer journey. Here are some ways to track effectiveness from first brand engagement through project completion:

Brand Awareness and Engagement:

• Track website traffic sources, bounce rates and time on site.

• Monitor social media engagement (likes, shares, comments).

• Measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns (impressions, clicks).

• Survey customers on brand recall and perception.

Inquiry and Lead Generation:

• Analyze form submissions, live chat inquiries and phone call volume.

• Track lead sources (organic search, referrals, ads, etc.) and lead quality.

• Monitor lead response time and sales team productivity.

• Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential prospects.

Appointment Setting and Consultation:

• Record appointment scheduling rates and customer no-show percentages.

• Evaluate consultation close rates and average deal size.

• Gather customer feedback on the appointment and consultation experience.

• Identify any friction points in the scheduling or consultation process.

Project Conversion and Completion:

• Track proposal acceptance rates and reasons for lost opportunities.

• Measure project timelines, on-time delivery and customer satisfaction.

• Monitor post-project referrals, online reviews and repeat business.

• Analyze project profitability and identify opportunities to improve margins.

Ongoing Customer Relationship:

• Evaluate customer retention rates and churn.

• Analyze customer lifetime value and upsell/cross-sell effectiveness.

• Gather feedback through surveys, reviews and customer interviews.

• Identify ways to strengthen loyalty and advocacy.

By closely monitoring these touchpoints across the customer journey, you can uncover valuable insights to optimize your marketing, sales and service strategies. This data-driven approach allows them to deliver a seamless, high-quality experience that maximizes customer acquisition, retention and advocacy.

Calculating Your Marketing ROI

You’ve spent thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars this year marketing your business, aiming to reach qualified leads, retarget warm leads and previous customers, and maintain your referral program. Now what?

To optimize your core customer journey, you must first understand which marketing efforts yield results and how much. This understanding will enable you to decide which strategies to keep (if it’s great), discard (if it’s not working), or improve upon (if it has potential).

This leads to the question: How do you calculate your marketing return on investment?

Let’s assume your business ran a one-month digital advertising campaign with the following costs and performance:

Campaign Costs:

• Ad Spend: $20,000

• Ad Management Fees: $3,000

• Total Campaign Costs (Ad Spend + Ad Management Fees): $23,000

Campaign Performance:

• Website Visits: 25,000

• Leads Generated: 52

• Consultations Booked (Qualified Leads): 38

• Projects Sold: 27

• Average Project Value: $5,000

Now, calculate the customer acquisition cost (CAC), or the total expense incurred to acquire a new customer, by dividing the total marketing and sales costs (total campaign cost) by the number of new customers.

$23,000 / 27 = $851.85.

This means that you spent $851.85 to make a $5,000 sale. Now, calculate the revenue generated from the campaign.

(Projects Sold × Average Project Value = Total Revenue)

27 × $5,000 = $135,000

Calculate the Marketing ROI

(Total Revenue / Total Campaign Costs = ROI)

$135,000 / $23,000 = 5.87

This means that for every dollar spent on the digital advertising campaign, the business generated $5.87 in revenue.

Calculate the ROI Percentage

(Total Revenue – Total Campaign Costs / Total Campaign Costs x 100)

$135,000 - $23,000 = $112,000

$112,000 / $23,000 x 100 = 487%

In this example, the return on investment using digital advertising was high, indicating a highly effective and profitable campaign.

Understanding this ROI is crucial for comprehending the customer journey, as it highlights the stages where marketing efforts are most effective. You can identify critical moments in the customer journey that drive engagement and sales by analyzing which touchpoints and interactions lead to high conversions and revenue. This insight allows for more strategic allocation of marketing resources, targeted improvements in customer experience, and refined messaging to enhance customer acquisition and retention.

The most successful businesses take a comprehensive, data-driven approach, diversifying their tactics to maximize visibility and lead generation while strengthening long-term customer relationships and advocacy. This holistic view of the customer journey is a critical competitive advantage in today’s crowded marketplace.

Ultimately, the ability to deeply understand and continually enhance the customer experience separates industry leaders from their competitors. Companies that prioritize this customer-centric mindset will be well-positioned to attract, delight and retain their ideal customers.

Anthony Milia owns Milia Marketing, an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in solutions for kitchen and bath dealers and fabrication companies. They help clients build brand awareness, improve lead generation, boost sales, increase audience engagement and enhance customer retention. Anthony’s approach has consistently raised the digital marketing standard, helping companies distinguish themselves in this competitive market. He is also the acclaimed bestselling author of Marketing Magnifier, an actionable guide to effective marketing strategies. Schedule a consultation by visiting www.miliamarketing.com/discovery.

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