Customer Journey
Brand Leadership. Storytelling. Customer Research & Insights. Product Positioning.
Approach
Creating an effective customer journey isn’t just about driving traffic—it’s about guiding people through a transformative experience, speaking to their motivations at the right moments. My approach blends psychographics, behavioral insights, and strategic storytelling to meet customers where they are, ensuring engagement at every stage.
Execution
Compassion
It starts with slowing down—not just to observe the customer, but to truly understand them. Empathy allows you to see their struggles, but compassion compels you to step inside their world. This means going beyond demographics and data points to uncover the deeper motivations behind their choices.
For Ice Barrel, this meant asking: Why are people turning to cold therapy in the first place? Was it for physical recovery? Mental resilience? A sense of control over their well-being? The answer wasn’t in the numbers—it was in their stories.
Data can show patterns, but it can’t reveal the personal narratives that drive decision-making. Metrics alone won’t give you the language needed to speak to your customers in a way that feels relevant, anticipated, and deeply personal.That’s why we take the time to talk to real people, hear their experiences, and understand the story they’re already telling themselves—before we ever create a message that invites them into something new.
Character Profiles
A great customer persona isn’t just about demographics—it’s about understanding what truly drives your audience. What motivates them? What keeps them up at night? What breaks their heart?
When teams deeply understand these emotional drivers, they don’t just market a product—they speak to real human needs. A well-crafted character profile becomes a lens through which every decision is made, ensuring that messaging, product development, and experiences resonate on a deep, intuitive level.
Without this clarity, brands risk speaking in features and benefits when they should be speaking in desires and emotions. But when we take the time to build character profiles that capture the inner world of the customer, we create marketing that doesn’t just get noticed—it gets felt.
Story Shift
At every stage of the journey, the customer’s story is shifting—their needs, beliefs, and expectations evolve as they move closer to making a decision. The key to creating an effective journey isn’t just understanding where they are—it’s understanding the story they’re telling themselves in that moment and how to meet them with the right message.
Each phase of the journey requires a slightly different nuance:
Awareness → The customer is discovering a problem or aspiration. The story here is about possibility—expanding their understanding of what’s possible for them.
Consideration → They start looking for solutions and weighing their options. Now, the story shifts to clarity—helping them connect the dots and see a clear path forward.
Decision → This is where they commit. Here, the story is about confidence—removing doubt and reinforcing their belief that they’re making the right choice.
Loyalty & Advocacy → After purchase, the story must evolve into identity—helping them integrate the product into their life so deeply that they see it as part of who they are.
If we fail to recognize these shifts in the customer’s mindset, we risk telling the wrong story at the wrong time—causing disconnects and hesitation. But when we align our messaging, brand narrative, and product positioning with the story they’re already telling themselves, we bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be.
Great marketing isn’t about selling a product—it’s about helping the customer step into a better version of themselves. And that requires knowing when, where, and how to shift the story.
Mapping the Journey
The foundation of our strategy at Ice Barrel revolved around the five key stages of the customer journey:
Catalyst – The spark that drives someone to seek change.
Exploration – Researching solutions and experimenting.
Decision Making – Evaluating options and making a commitment.
Purchase – Finalizing their choice and integrating it into their life.
Advocacy – Becoming a brand evangelist and sharing their experience.
At each stage, we strategically place content, messaging, and experiences that resonate with the customer’s needs, whether it’s inspiration, education, or validation.
Core Story
At the core of every great brand experience is a universal story—one that resonates with the customer across every stage of their journey. For our audience, that story is about becoming better—stronger, more resilient, more in control of their health and well-being.
This overarching narrative isn’t confined to a single touchpoint. It acts as the throughline, weaving together every interaction a customer has with the brand. But while the core story remains the same, the way we tell it must adapt to where the customer is in their journey. Building on top of that corner story is a set of content pillars that resonate with the universal themes
Content Lens
To truly democratize storytelling from brand creative to UGC, it’s crucial to develop a set of lenses that storytellers can use to ensure that the content consistently resonates with the core story and aligns with the brand’s identity. To achieve this, we crafted a set of phrases that encapsulated the desired emotional tone for our stories.
The Art of the Right Moment
Pulling everything together comes down to one key principle: delivering the right story, on the right channel, at the right time. It’s not just about having great messaging—it’s about ensuring that message meets the customer exactly where they are in their journey.
When timing, channel, and story align, marketing doesn’t feel like marketing—it feels like guidance, inspiration, and momentum toward a better future.
Customer Journey
Brand Leadership. Storytelling. Customer Research & Insights. Product Positioning.