Why journey mapping is important for companies with multiple brands

Customer journey mapping is a key part of many marketing strategies, and it holds added value for companies that have multiple brands.

“There is keen interest on how a customer moves from one brand to another,” said Pat Maigler, Senior Manager of Marketing Strategy and operations at Williams-Sonoma, in a recent MarTech Live session. “It all starts with data and there is a lot of data to get from a lot of sources.” 

Tracking trends

Companies with multiple brands should look at trends, especially the particular order of brands a customer journey follows. Are they entering through lower priced brands? Does entrance come from brands with larger promotion and advertising budgets? Have customer journey trends changed since the COVID outbreak?

Traditional customer journey mapping often focused on major lifestyle milestone events like marriage, birth of a child and relocation. These indicators are still very important, but there are no countless more entry points to brand journeys, and an increase in non-linear lifestyles. Rather than limit your customer journey mapping by making predictable assumptions, look at where your customers actually are, and the needs they’re expressing.

Driven by data

All customer journey mapping should be driven by data, which includes: website and app engagement, offline data such as transaction data, social media conversations, email responses and service interactions.

Data trends should be compared to the ideal customer journey, to see where the gaps are and why they are occurring. 

“There are a lot of signals that can really be informing you of what is going on [in the journey],” said Maigler. “The challenge is to understand the individual versus the household, that is the next big shift.” 

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech Today. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Rodric Bradford

Rodric J. Bradford is the Editor of MarTech Today and has worked in the marketing technology industry as both a journalist and corporate project manager. Prior to joining MarTech Today Bradford served as Convention and Technology Beat Reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Business Press publication and worked as Technology Reporter for Global Gaming Business, the world’s largest casino publication. In the corporate world Bradford has served as Technology Project Manager for CNA, Cigna, General Dynamics and Philip Morris. Bradford is an alumnus of the University of Missouri-Columbia.