The User Journey Marketing Audit

Marketing material might not be as effective as you think it is. And the reason for that is because we, as the entrepreneur at the marketing department of our business, we have a different relationship with the content that we’re putting out there, with the website copy, with the way that we designed it, with the emails that we’re sending out. We have this holistic vision of the entire business and how it all comes together and we know the different terms and phrases and, and how we can add value to the customer. The problem is your audience is coming into your, your ecosystem without any of that context in a lot of cases. And so you need to do what is what I refer to as a user journey marketing audit. And I did one of these last week with one of my clients. And this is just kind of reinforced for me that most entrepreneurs have never even stopped to consider this. And so this is, there’s a ton of opportunity here to make some massive improvements to our marketing machine.

So here’s how it works. I want to walk you through the four steps and how to think through this. So the idea of the user journey marketing audit is that we want to put ourselves into the shoes of our perfect avatar customer, and we want to ask ourselves what questions are they asking themselves in this moment and how are they approaching the process of solving the problem that they have? Because our product or service is the solution to a problem that they have. They maybe are aware vaguely that they have a problem, maybe they think they have one problem, when in reality they actually have a different problem. Right? So the question we have to ask ourselves is, what are they going to do on their user journey to try to alleviate that problem? If we can put ourselves into their mind and use the words that are occurring inside their head space as they’re out there, then we can position our content to use the words that are already happening inside them and they go, this makes sense. That’s the answer, right? And maybe we get them in the door by using the words that they think they need to see, but then we slip, oh, this is actually the problem that you actually have, but we have to know what they think the problem is. Right? So this all starts with a search based audit. So this is the first part of the user journey marketing audit.

We go to Google, we go to the different social media platforms, we search for the problem that they’re searching for. What are the words that they’re likely to use? And so in the instance of one of my clients that I was working with recently, that question was recycling near me, or can I recycle such and such, right? Start with those words, and then we see what pops up when we say, okay, is our website popping up? Is one of our articles, one of our videos, one of our podcasts is our ebook, whatever is what’s popping up here. And then if it’s, oh, it’s quora or it’s Reddit, it’s like, okay, how can we go and be on those, those places, putting out content on those things so that our content is appearing there anyways, we go through that process of searching and then identifying what are those keywords that they’re likely to look for if they become aware of us as a customer or as a company. We go and we search for that company. Put in your company name, put in your personal name, see what pops up, and ask yourself, okay, with these search results, what am I likely to click on here for? This was a couple of weeks ago, but I was doing LinkedIn profile audits for this, this mastermind that I was teaching at down in Cancun. And I was going through and I was showing everybody, when you meet a prospective investor, the very first thing they’re going to do is they’re going to Google search your name. And the top result, the top, it’s either usually the top result or the top two results for most people is LinkedIn. And so you think about what’s the user journey? Okay, I just met you at this party.
You told me about what you do. I’m gonna go Google your name. The first thing that pops up is your LinkedIn. So what’s the next thing that they’re gonna see is your LinkedIn profile? And so we put ourselves in their shoes and we say, okay, if I know that the first thing they’re gonna click is my LinkedIn profile, that’s gonna be the next exposure that they have to me. Then I need to make this profile as streamlined and effective as possible for driving that user journey towards the next step. Right? So search, that’s the first thing. In a lot of cases, when we start putting ourselves in the shoes of the customer to go to Google and do the search, we realize that the way we’ve positioned our product or service is not how our avatar is actually trying to solve the problem. So that’s number one, search.
Second is our website. You go to your, because if you did your SEO correctly, when somebody googles your business or you, ideally your LinkedIn shows up and then your business, if they’re just googling your business, ideally your business shows up. But this is the next opportunity is, you ask yourself, is Google my business? Do we have a Google my business set up? Right. Like, a lot of times I work with a lot of brick and mortar businesses. I work with a lot of digital businesses. They have never taken the time to actually go and set up their Google my business page. That is the thing that shows up on the sidebar of Google. When somebody searches for, say, Invictus Capital or escape climbing, they see the details of this business, the location, how long it’s been, the phone number, the address, all of these things.
Customer reviews. This is easy, low hanging fruit for us to help control the user journey. Right now, once they click on the website, we have to ask ourselves, what words are we using? Is this actually entering the conversation that’s already occurring inside of our consumer’s mind, or are we using words that they’re not yet ready for? And are we having, are we pitching the product without actually answering any of the questions that they have? This was the next step of the user journey marketing audit that I did with my client where we went down. And I said, listen, this isn’t very clear to me. I’ve been here for, like, 15 minutes talking to you about this. And if I’m a prospect who’s just trying to answer the question, can I recycle this material in this area? I’m not seeing any answers to that question. I’m not. I’m not seeing, what’s the pricing? How does this work? Do I have to come drop it off? Do you come and pick it up? Like, none of that stuff, it can.
Will you come same day? Is this, like, I have to schedule this out for two weeks from now? Like, I don’t have any of these, any of this clarity, right? And when you start looking at it through that lens of realizing your customer doesn’t know anything yet, and you have to do a lot of educating, you go, oh, we need to recreate this, this funnel, this user journey to deliver what they need at the right moment. So we start with search, then we do the website. The third is our social. So we go to our LinkedIn, our Facebook, our Instagram, and we go to our Twitter, we go to our YouTube, and we get those profiles dialed in and as effective as possible or optimized, because if I click on your website and I’m not getting the answers that I need, I’m gonna go look at your Instagram, I’m gonna look at your Facebook, I’m gonna see if I can find answers there. I’m gonna see your content, and depending on the content that you’re putting out there, depending on the bio that you have set up, that’s gonna tell me a lot about whether or not you can help me. And a lot of times you go to different businesses, social media accounts, and you’re like, I have no clue what this is about. I have no clue if you’re, if you can help me or not. So the fourth thing that we’re gonna look then is our campaigns.

And campaigns are your paid advertisements. So, like, what are the ads that you’re running? And is that actually hitting your consumer at the exact right moment in their pain point? Are you hitting them too soon? Are you hitting them too late? But at each point of this user journey, you need to be very clear about what you want them to hear and to see at that moment that is going to help them move towards making a purchasing decision in your favor. Right. And a lot of times, like, just by just doing those first three, just doing search website social. If you’re not running paid advertising, you don’t have to worry about the fourth one, which is your campaigns, but just search website social. Get those dialed in and ask yourself at every point, is this speaking to my user where they are, like, what is their experience if they know nothing about this? And you can make this easier on yourself by bringing in an idiot off the street. Like, if you have a friend who has no idea what your business really does, and just ask them, hey, if you had this problem, what would you do? And then just sit back and watch them. Watch what they do.

Figure out what are they searching for, and then where do they click and then where do they stay on the website? How much time are they spending there? And then ask them, like, what’s clear? What’s not clear? Do this for your business and you will unlock a ton of growth, a lot of revenue. I promise you. You should be doing this every three to six months. So hope this brings you guys some value. I’ll catch you back here tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.