Key Steps to Build a Solid Customer Journey Map for Your School

Creating a compelling customer journey map helps you stand out and shows prospective parents that  you care about their experience in every step. In this article, we break down the essential steps you need to know in order to create a solid customer journey map. 

SET GOALS

First you need to have a clear goal in mind before starting to create your customer journey map. You should focus on what kind of families you target and also how this map should reflect your overall marketing goals such as driving admissions, attracting new demographics to your school or improving customer retention.

DEFINE YOUR PERSONAS

When it comes to creating a map, defining your “ideal” customer profile is very important to personalise your map and marketing strategy. If you currently don’t have well-developed personas, you can get the insights you need to create a persona through surveys, interviews and reviews. Some examples of buyer personas for schools are: local families, international families coming for a job, local families who have lived internationally and want to continue their child's international education, or specific international demographics who you are targeting. It is very important to be as specific and detailed as possible when creating your personas.

MAP THE CURRENT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Once you identify your ideal persona and goals, try mapping the steps that prospective parents follow on their way to enrol their kids at your school. While doing that focus on the 6 phases of customer journey which are awareness, consideration, purchase (admission), retention and advocacy. Identify what each step looks like for your school and make a map of it. 

MAP YOUR IDEAL JOURNEY

Now, it is time to think about what an “ideal” journey for prospective parents would look like. This might vary from their actual journey for now, but the goal is to optimise it and get it as close to the ideal journey as possible. Try to find what does not work in those 6 steps and try to find ways to improve them. You should have clear paths to the end-point and keep in mind that the customer journey does not end when new families enrol in your school, that’s actually when a new journey starts for them. Remember that you want them to have the most practical and positive experience once they decide to enrol their children at your school!

4 GREAT TOOLS YOU CAN USE

1- FlowMapp

Flowmap is a powerful sitemap tool for planning website development and creating customer journey maps.

2- Miro

Miro's customer journey map tool helps accelerate your team's processes by clearly visualising journeys, touchpoints, and personas.

3-Custellence

Custellence lets you build customer journey maps by collaborating in a cloud based system so that you can put your customer insights into action.

4- Smaply

Smaply is a  journey mapping software for you to centralize and coordinate customer experience insights

NEED HELP WITH OPTIMISING YOUR CUSTOMER JOURNEY?

If you don’t know where to start optimising your customer/admissions journey, our marketing experts with over 13+ years of experience are ready to help you. We can help you create a customer journey map and optimise every step of your marketing strategy. Our school marketing experts are always available, so you can contact us anytime using our website contact form, or calling us on +44 20 34 55 22 41.