How to Use an Empathy Map to Better Understand Your ICA
You know how much I love User Experience design and how much it can benefit you as an entrepreneur. In this post, I’ll walk you through a fun exercise that will help you get to know your Ideal Client Avatar better… so you can relate to them on a human level, and also so you’ll know what they’re saying, thinking, feeling, and doing to try to solve their pain points.
By running through an empathy mapping exercise, you’ll be able to serve them better as a service-based entrepreneur.
PS—I walk my clients through this exercise when helping them to create a holistic website or sales funnel experience. Want to work with me for an all-in-one website service (including visual design, copywriting, and user experience strategy)? Get in touch.
In this article, I’ll spill the beans about:
What empathy mapping is
The benefits of empathy mapping for entrepreneurs
How to do the empathy mapping exercise (on your own or with help), and
What to do with the data you come up with
Scroll to the bottom to get a free digital (or printable) empathy mapping template, too!
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What is Empathy Mapping
Empathy mapping is the process of taking a deep dive into what your Ideal Client Avatars are thinking, feeling, saying, and doing when they are experiencing a pain point.
With some writing tools and a blank template (free one below), you can easily create an empathy map by yourself or with your team.
In the traditional User Experience Design world, empathy mapping is done with the user experience researchers and designers, stakeholders, and other team members on a whiteboard. Everyone will get a stack of sticky notes and a marker, and begin to fill out pieces of paper to apply to the whiteboard for everyone to see.
This brainstorming event happens after research is done, in order to synthesize the findings and better understand the exact emotional state a user is in.
When the empathy mapping exercise is over, the result is a more complete picture of what the customer may be going through when faced with the specific problem they’re trying to solve.
As an entrepreneur, I’m sure you can see already the benefits that come from this exercise, but let me go a little further into detail.
Benefits of Empathy Mapping for Entrepreneurs
As service-based entrepreneurs, our job and passion is to help people solve specific problems so they can improve their lives.
Empathy mapping is the perfect place to start when creating a new aspect of your business, whether that’s a marketing piece, a website, a sales funnel, a product, a course, or anything else that you may create to help solve your audiences’ problems.
By taking your market research one step further in order to understand your customers, you’ll be able to create products and services that are more attractive to your Ideal Client Avatar (or “persona” as known in the UX world).
Yes, you will be able to connect with your people emotionally. By running through an empathy mapping exercise, you will also begin to see things or patterns that you didn’t know were there.
And also?
You will be able to sell more of your product or service because you can better communicate your solutions directly to your potential clients.
How to Complete an Empathy Mapping Exercise
First, grab a template (free one below!) or a blank sheet of paper. Draw a representation of your ICA at the center, and then create four quadrants:
Says
Thinks
Does
Feels
For your empathy map exercise, you will think of a specific goal that your customer is trying to reach, and what they are saying, thinking, doing, and feeling in order to try to solve their problem.
Yes, there are more complicated empathy maps out there, but y’all know I like to keep things simple—hence the simplified empathy map template.
Think about what your customer says. This is an external process. You can take quotes directly from your market research, or look at data you’ve collected through stalking Facebook groups or something similar. Keep in mind that what a person says can be vastly different from their internal experience.
Identify what your customer does. This is also an external process. What steps do they take to solve their problem? As entrepreneurs, we can think of it like this: are they going straight to Google, or are they going to Pinterest? Do they search in YouTube? Do they look to their Instagram? Or do they take a passive approach and wait for a solution to fall in their lap (maybe via a well-placed Facebook ad)?
Now, we want to think about what your customer thinks when they are trying to solve their problem. This switches over into the internal experience they have. These are things that your user may write down in her journal, like “Why can’t I figure this out on my own?” or “Will I be able to afford this?”
Finally, identify what your customer feels. This is also internal. Are they frustrated, overwhelmed, anxious, afraid? Are they excited, confident, or feeling empowered?
What To Do With The Empathy Map Data
Now that you’ve run through your empathy mapping exercise, it’s important to take a step back and think about what you learned in the process.
What new insights did you gain?
How can you use this information in your solution (your product or service)?
How can you use this information in your marketing, copywriting, and storytelling?
How can you create a sales funnel that will serve your user and meet them where they are currently: emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally?
I recommend journaling about these questions and other things that arise for you after running through the empathy mapping exercise. You can also talk through these things with your peers, business coach, sales funnel designer, etc.
A Free Empathy Mapping Template
Woop! To make things easier, I created an empathy mapping template for you. One is in Google Docs if you prefer to work that way, and one is more visual if you want to go the sticky note route.
Print them out or use them digitally on your computer or tablet.
Enjoy!
Have you run through an exercise like this—or do you plan to go through it with this template? Let me know what you are thinking, feeling, saying, and doing about this empathy mapping exercise!
Cover photo by UX Indonesia
