CMNS2700 Chap.6 Marketing and Customer Journeys
Marketing and Customer Journeys
Marketing connects customer needs to the whole venture offer; advertising is only one tool. This chapter moves through segmentation, targeting and positioning, then follows customers from awareness to consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy. Owned, paid and earned channels have different roles across that journey.
Performance evidence should diagnose the failing stage before a tactic is chosen, so more reach is not prescribed for a broken experience.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Segmentation and targeting
- 02
Positioning
- 03
Customer journey stages
- 04
Owned paid and earned channels
- 05
Touchpoint consistency
- 06
Feedback and performance
Worked example · free
Repair a broken cafe journey
- +1Awareness and conversion are working because people discover and visit.
- +1Experience and retention fail because the service contradicts the position.
- +2Repair workspace touchpoints and measure repeat behaviour before buying more reach.
Key terms
- Segmentation
- Dividing a market into meaningful groups with relevant shared characteristics, needs or behaviours.
- Targeting
- Selecting the customer segment or segments the venture will design and communicate for.
- Positioning
- Creating a distinctive place for the offer in the target customer's mind relative to alternatives.
- Customer journey
- The connected experience across awareness, consideration, conversion, retention and advocacy.
- Earned channel
- Visibility gained through reviews, referrals, media coverage or user-created sharing rather than direct ownership or payment.
Marketing and Customer Journeys FAQ
Why is marketing more than advertising?
Marketing begins with customer need and includes the offer, price, access, experience, relationships and feedback. Advertising is a promotional tool. If a campaign attracts customers to a poor product or inconsistent experience, advertising can succeed while the wider marketing system fails.
How do I choose a digital channel?
Ask where the target audience actually spends attention, which journey objective you need to serve, what format supports that objective and whether the venture can sustain the required time, skill and budget. Avoid choosing a platform because it is fashionable or familiar.
Which marketing metric should I report?
Use a metric tied to the objective and journey stage. Reach and impressions indicate visibility, engagement indicates interaction, conversion reflects a chosen action, and repeat behaviour tests retention. Combine platform data with reviews, surveys and operational evidence before recommending a change.
How do I diagnose a weak customer journey without adding more promotion?
Locate the stage where behaviour breaks and compare the promise made before that point with the experience delivered after it. Strong awareness with weak first purchase suggests a relevance, trust, access or conversion problem; strong acquisition with weak retention points toward product experience, service reliability or expectation mismatch.
Use stage-specific evidence such as search behaviour, click paths, bookings, service records, reviews and repeat use. More reach cannot repair a broken delivery experience and may expose the failure to more people. Recommend the smallest change that addresses the diagnosed cause, assign a metric and state what alternative explanation could produce the same pattern.
This keeps marketing connected to operations rather than treating communication as the whole solution.
What makes positioning different from a campaign message?
Positioning defines the place the venture seeks in a target customer's mind relative to alternatives. It connects the segment, relevant problem, frame of reference, distinctive benefit and evidence that makes the claim credible. A campaign message expresses that position for a particular channel, moment and action. Messages may change while the underlying position remains coherent.
Test positioning by asking whether it guides product priorities, service standards, price expectations and channel choice, not only copy. If the venture claims dependable support but its operating model produces slow responses, the problem is not solved by a sharper slogan. Compare the desired position with actual customer evidence and identify which touchpoint most needs to prove it.
Assessment move
Draw the five journey stages and place each real touchpoint underneath. Label the channel as owned, paid or earned and state the metric appropriate to that stage. Then introduce one failure, such as good acquisition and poor retention, and explain why common tactics would miss the cause. Always connect the recommendation back to positioning.
Revise by assigning one customer question, one evidence source and one possible failure to every stage. Distinguish a channel metric from the business outcome it is meant to support. Write two competing diagnoses for the same pattern and choose a test that separates them. Finish by checking whether the proposed tactic reinforces the promised position and whether operations can deliver the experience that the message creates.
Repeat the map for a second segment and compare touchpoints, friction and evidence; this prevents a broad audience label from hiding journey differences that require different channels or service decisions. Date the map so later behaviour is not mistaken for current evidence.
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