Once upon a time I got to participate in a journey mapping exercize.
The company I worked for had invested pretty heavy in a top tier journey mapping consultant group. They walked our team through how to think about journey mapping and then as the decision maker crew, of which I was a super baby member, we scoped out how our users (generic term for clients and prospects) discovered our brand.
From the discovery phase we tracked all the choices they could make and every decision/outcome combination we could think of.
In marketing land this is divided into several phases and in a later article we can focus more on those, but the idea is to understand what it’s like to be your user. What are the cool parts of the journey through discovering your brand? What are the pain points? You track everything you can.
The end result is a visual map covering their journey and it gets linked to a bunch of projects and things you want to achieve that span several years.
First think about yourself (the artist) and your art as a brand that people need to meet
If you think of the branding side of art, it’s really no different than anyone else.
When you are considering things for journey mapping think about stuff like:
How do they discover your art?
When they come across your brand online, what happens?
When they meet you in person what is the flow like?
The most important thing to answer is:
What is the perfect set of circumstances that turn a prospect into a paying fan?
This is some real nitty gritty logistical questions. Here’s a quick flow based on me meeting people in real life. Assume they asked to follow up with me.
I offer them my physical business card (if they don’t want it I follow up with Instagram).
From the card they can do the following:
Use the QR code to go to the linktree
Text me
Email me
Find my socials
Cut it up and use it as filter
Based on each of those choices what happens:
Linktree: They click on a link or they close the page
Email or Text me: They send me an email and I either answer, or have something automated in place.
Socials - They follow me or they don’t.
Cut it up and use it as filter - They smoke some weed and have a good time.
I prefer this flow because it means the people who go from card to following me are actually interested. I’ve spent too many years collecting aimless follows in person to want the unengaged or disinterested there.
The idea is to track everything and understand how you can improve.
Second write it all down and create a visual map of the flow
This part gets a little technical and boring, one day soon I’ll write something on how I accomplish the goal but here’s a quick article on making flowcharts to get you started.
You want to use a flowchart to visually map the flow. I know a lot of you look at the bullet points above and cringe, now you will have a visual aid that does not make people cringe. As you begin to think about everything a person will do, various paths will become clear.
Your goal is to map each one of these, and see how they all link together into the greater picture.
There’s a bunch of free software out there and here’s a basic rundown of shapes:
Ovals - The beginning and end point of a flow/procedure/journey
Square - A step that has to be followed that leads to a next step.
Diamond - This represents a choice that a user can make creating a fork in the path.
Within each shape you write down what is happening. Focus on the action that takes place. Here are some examples:
User enters email address into webform
User clicks on the Spotify link from my Linktree
User hands me cash for my sweater now a satisfied client.
The more detailed you can list everything out, the easier the next step will be.
Thirdly identify your pain points and expansion plans
As you take the time to map out the current reality that your fans face when encountering your art, you may begin to notice the glaring annoyances they face.
For a long time my Linktree was cluttered and there was no clear way to follow me on Instagram. This created a lot of effort. The harder you make it for someone to do something simple, the less they want to actually complete the action. There are definitely people who would have supported me, but because of a bad Linktree setup, chose not to.
One day I went through the flow and said, damn, my Linktree sucks. I improved it and saw an increase in the number of clicks overall. It should be said maybe I got more people to my Linktree and that’s why, but I think cleaning it up had an impact.
Whatever you discover, don’t stop and fix it right away. Instead, take the time to create a list of problems that need to be fixed. When your map is done, you are probably going to have 30-40 ideas for improvements and projects.
You can’t do everything at once, so you’ll want to prioritize which ones matter the most. If you stop and jump at each one, you may miss some low hanging fruit that would give you big wins. This is a process of mapping, not of fixing.
Think of it all like diagnosing the health of how easy it is for your prospective fans to give you money and support. A lot of folk are whining that no one supports them but have no central place to find their art.
Let’s get better together.
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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