We’ve made no secret of our love for customer journey mapping. This relatively simple workshop provides insights across audience sets and supports better decision making throughout the customer lifecycle. And because we’re also the skeptical sort who might say, “That sounds great in theory, now show me how it works,” we’ve rounded up a selection of customer journey-informed, content marketing strategy initiatives that redefined one client’s editorial approach over the course of a year.
The client owns and operates a portfolio of several hundred independent senior living facilities spread throughout the United States and needs to serve multiple target audiences with disparate points of view. The customer journey workshop conducted by CSG served as the foundation of editorial planning around healthcare content marketing designed to educate both seniors and their adult children. The session quickly identified areas of opportunity and content gaps against which CSG was able to write and execute a multichannel campaign.
They Need to See It: Video
Perhaps the most impactful takeaway from the customer journey mapping process was the need to offset flawed impressions of life in senior living establishments with compelling insights to the real thing. To manage this successfully, the content needed to ring authentic — and we found no surer way to achieve that than to show slices of life starring real residents from real communities. CSG storymined, pitched the narratives, dispatched a production team and edited a series of videos to spotlight residents living well. Ultimately, the videos demonstrated social proof and challenged misconceptions, directly addressing the need for education and validation in the customer journey.
It’s an Ongoing Conversation: Nurture Emails
Critically, the customer journey mapping session allowed the CSG team to address the client’s disparate audience needs and solve for inconsistent decision timelines. Often, seniors will move into a community based upon an event that triggers swift change, but those who do not may spend a considerable amount of time weighing their options with adult children before making a decision. CSG developed two unique email marketing streams designed to answer common pain points and doubts from all along the customer journey.
Help Me Help Them: Sales Enablement
With hundreds of communities, the client had a sizable sales team and even more considerable volume of potential leads. Even more challenging was the need to support sales representatives who may be multiple degrees removed from frequent communication with the corporate office, and each adapting to regional challenges. To that end, CSG surveyed sales leaders for content requests and developed sales collateral to meet those needs. These efforts solved for education and support needs reflected in the customer journey maps and provided resources to help sales leaders progress from lead generation to lead conversion.
Make it Relevant: Content Refresh
With the content gaps and resonant themes identified in the customer journey mapping session at top of mind, CSG breathed new life into existing content and built out a content calendar — including blog posts, infographic, white papers, calls to action, social media posts and more — to align new content development with prioritized customer needs. Critically, this client had a wealth of existing resources that could be modified to give new life to its long-term content marketing strategy. For adult children, guidance and reassurance arrived in the form of how-to collateral and employee spotlights. For seniors, honest and candid content peeled back the mystery of what life in the communities was really like, often from the perspectives of current residents who could speak to the transition.
Expand Our Horizon: Social Media Expansion
There is a temptation in the senior living space to neglect social media marketing altogether. But, with the customer journey insights in mind, CSG launched a new social channel — Instagram — for the client and created content that affirmed the positive experiences of real residents to create a path to confidence and validation for adult children feeling conflicted about the next steps in their parents’ journey.
Without the insights from the customer journey workshop, the client may have engaged with some elements of this content marketing strategy, but the end results would not have been purpose-built to meet the audiences where they were, making the marketing spend more of a gamble and less of a strategic pursuit.
What will you discover when you look through the lens of your customers? We can help you find out — request a customer journey workshop today.
