What is a customer journey in digital marketing?
A customer journey is the full path a person takes from first hearing about your business to buying, and ideally buying again. In digital marketing, it's every ad, search, post, website visit and message along the way.
ShoaibUpdated 4 min read
What does a customer journey look like?
Here's an illustrative example for a perfume shop in Kuwait:
| Step | What happens |
|---|---|
| Discover | Sees a short video ad while scrolling |
| Consider | Searches the brand name, visits the website, checks reviews |
| Decide | Sends a WhatsApp message to ask about delivery |
| Buy | Orders online |
| Return | Gets a follow-up offer and orders again |
Real journeys are messier. Google Analytics Help notes that customers "may do several searches and click several of your ads before making a purchase."
How do ads fit each step?
Meta's help centre groups Ads Manager objectives by what you want people to do, from awareness and traffic through to leads and sales. Roughly:
- Discover: awareness or reach campaigns to get seen by new people.
- Consider: traffic or engagement campaigns to bring people closer.
- Buy: leads or sales campaigns aimed at people ready to act.
- Return: custom audiences, which Meta describes as a way to reach people who already know your business, such as past visitors or customers. See retargeting basics.
Our marketing funnel explained answer goes through these stages in more detail.
Why does mapping it matter?
When you know the steps, you can spot where people drop off. Lots of clicks but few messages points to the website or offer. Lots of messages but few sales points to the follow-up.
Google Analytics uses attribution to give credit to the different ads and clicks on a customer's path, so you can see which steps actually lead to sales. Tagging your links with UTM links makes those paths easier to read.
If you'd like help building ads for each step of your customer journey, it's part of the digital marketing we do in our Meta Ads service.