Latest / Customer Journey with Fexingo: Touchpoints, Mapping, and Multi-Channel Marketing / Why Journey Maps Miss the Social Commerce Funnel
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, I want to start with a number that surprised me. A direct to consumer skincare brand we've been following told me that in Q1 of this year, 40 percent of their revenue came from purchases that never touched their website. Luna: Forty percent? So those customers essentially bought without ever going to the brand's own storefront? Lucas: Exactly. They discovered the product on TikTok, clicked a link in the bio or a live-stream buy button, and completed the transaction inside TikTok Shop. The brand only knew about the sale because the order data eventually synced to their backend. But their customer journey map? It showed exactly zero touchpoints for those buyers. Luna: That's a massive blind spot. I mean, if you're mapping a journey, you usually start with awareness, then consideration, purchase, post-purchase — all on your own domain. But these people never visited the domain. Lucas: Right. And this is the social commerce funnel. It's not new — Instagram Checkout launched back in 2019, and TikTok Shop has been growing like crazy since 2023. But most journey maps still assume a website-centered path. The brand I mentioned, they're called Dew Drops — a small indie skincare line — they built their entire map around the Shopify funnel. Awareness via Instagram ad, click through to site, browse, add to cart, checkout. That's the classic D2C flow. Luna: And meanwhile, forty percent of their customers were taking a completely different route. So what did Dew Drops do when they realized the gap? Lucas: They decided to build a separate 'social journey layer.' They mapped the TikTok Shop funnel from scratch: awareness comes from a creator video or a live stream, then consideration happens in the comments or via in-app product tags, then purchase is a one-click buy inside the app. Post-purchase, the customer might get a notification in TikTok or an email from the brand — but the email is secondary because the primary relationship is still inside the platform. Luna: So they essentially had two parallel maps: one for the website, one for social commerce. And then they had to figure out how to attribute revenue correctly. Lucas: That's where it gets tricky. The brand's analytics tools were giving them blended numbers. They couldn't tell if a repeat purchase came from an email campaign or from a TikTok reminder. So they started tagging every order with its acquisition channel — 'web' or 'social' — and then they built separate funnels for each. It sounds obvious, but most companies don't do it. Luna: I bet a lot of marketers think, 'Well, the customer journey map is a framework, not a literal tracking tool.' But if you're not tracking the actual behavior, you're mapping assumptions, not reality. Lucas: That's exactly the problem. And the stakes are high. Social commerce in the US is expected to hit around 80 billion dollars this year, and it's growing faster than e-commerce overall. If your journey map ignores that channel, you're making decisions based on an incomplete picture. Dew Drops, for example, had been investing heavily in SEO and email capture — which made sense for the web funnel. But the social buyers rarely gave their email. They bought via guest checkout on TikTok. So the brand was spending money on email automation for a group that wasn't reachable by email. Luna: Ouch. So they were optimizing for the wrong channel. What did they change? Lucas: They shifted some budget from email capture to TikTok creator partnerships and live-stream shopping events. They also redesigned their post-purchase touchpoint for social buyers: instead of a 'welcome to our email list' prompt, they sent a push notification through the TikTok Shop app with a video tutorial on how to use the product. That kind of content actually drove repeat purchases. Luna: That's smart because it meets the customer where they are. The social buyer doesn't want to be pulled out of the platform. They want the whole experience inside TikTok or Instagram. Lucas: Right. And that's the key insight. The traditional journey map is linear and site-centric. The social commerce journey is platform-native and often non-linear. One customer might discover a product on Instagram, research it on the brand's website, but then buy on TikTok because they have a discount code from a creator. Where do you map that? Luna: It's not one path. It's like a web of touchpoints that the customer navigates depending on context. And the brand can't control which platform they end up on. Lucas: So what do we recommend? I think the answer is to build what I'd call a 'cross-platform journey map' — not a single map, but a set of maps that capture the most common routes. For Dew Drops, they found three dominant paths: the classic web funnel, the TikTok-only funnel, and a hybrid where discovery is on Instagram, research on the website, and purchase on TikTok. Luna: And then they can allocate resources accordingly. If the hybrid path is growing fastest, they might want to make sure the website information is optimized for comparison shopping, and the TikTok checkout is seamless. Lucas: Exactly. And one more thing — they also started tracking 'off-platform' actions that happen inside social apps. For example, a customer might save a post to a collection, or share a product link in a DM. Those are micro-touchpoints that most maps miss because they're not on the brand's own property. But they're critical signals of intent. Luna: That's a really good point. Saving a post is like adding to cart, but it's not captured by any web analytics tool. So you'd need to use the platform's own insights to see that behavior. Lucas: Right. And the platforms are getting better at providing that data. TikTok Shop gives sellers a 'buyer journey' report that shows views, saves, shares, and purchases — all inside the app. But most brands haven't connected that data to their journey mapping process. Luna: So the fix is both operational — pulling in new data sources — and conceptual: expanding what you consider a touchpoint. Lucas: If today's conversation actually helped you see your own journey maps differently — maybe you've got a social commerce funnel you haven't mapped — the way we keep these episodes free and ad-free is listener support. If you feel like tossing a coffee our way, it's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. And we mean it: every little bit helps us keep the lights on without selling your attention to sponsors. Luna: Yeah, it's a small gesture that makes a big difference for us. And we genuinely appreciate it. Lucas: So back to Dew Drops. After they implemented the social journey layer, they started running A-B tests on their TikTok Shop product pages. They tested different video thumbnails, different call to action buttons, and even the timing of their live streams. And they found that a 'buy now' button with a countdown timer — like 'ends in 2 hours' — increased conversion by 22 percent. Luna: That urgency play works well in a live-stream context. But if they hadn't mapped the social journey separately, they might never have run that test. They would have just optimized the website. Lucas: Exactly. The website had different dynamics. Their web funnel worked best with free shipping thresholds and email follow-ups. The social funnel responded to urgency and creator trust. Two different maps, two different strategies. And that's the takeaway: if your journey map doesn't reflect how customers actually buy, you're flying blind. Luna: So what's the first step for a marketer listening who suspects they have this blind spot? Should they just pull their TikTok Shop data and start mapping? Lucas: I'd say start with a simple audit. Pull your order data for the last quarter and see how many purchases came from a platform checkout — TikTok Shop, Instagram Checkout, Facebook Pay, whatever. If it's more than 10 percent, you probably have a social commerce funnel that deserves its own journey map. Then interview a few of those customers, or at least look at the platform's analytics to understand their path. You'll likely find patterns that are completely different from your web funnel. Luna: And once you have that map, you can align your marketing spend and your content strategy to match the actual customer behavior. It's not just about fixing a map — it's about capturing revenue you might be leaving on the table. Lucas: Absolutely. And as social commerce keeps growing, the brands that treat it as a separate journey rather than an add-on to the website will have a real advantage. Because the customer experience inside the platform is fundamentally different — and your map should reflect that.