Customer Journey / Content Marketing, Marketing Terms Customer Journey The customer journey is the complete experience a person has with a brand, from their first interaction to long-term engagement or loyalty. It includes every touchpoint across marketing, sales, service and support. Rather than a linear process, the journey is often dynamic and multi-channel, shaped by the customer’s needs, behaviours and expectations. Mapping and understanding this journey helps businesses and nonprofits create more personalised, relevant and effective interactions. A typical customer journey moves through key stages such as awareness, consideration, decision, and retention. For example, someone may discover a brand through social media, visit a website to learn more, sign up for a newsletter, speak with a sales rep, and eventually make a purchase or donation. After that, they may receive onboarding messages, follow-up support or loyalty offers. Each step presents an opportunity to build trust, answer questions and remove friction. The journey can take place across websites, email, search engines, social platforms, events and more. Optimising the customer journey involves using data, user feedback and behavioural insights to improve each stage. Journey mapping helps identify gaps, bottlenecks or moments of delight that influence outcomes. Tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics and Hotjar support this analysis by tracking interactions and revealing common paths. For B2B, SaaS or mission-driven organisations, a strong customer journey leads to higher satisfaction, better conversion rates and long-term advocacy. It also supports cross-team alignment by ensuring everyone works toward shared goals with the customer experience at the centre.