The customer journey in B2B marketing has always been random and unpredictable. For B2B customers, the time from realizing the need to buy a solution often takes several months, with many checkpoints.
As digital channels, user preferences, and the B2B industry evolve, so do buyers’ paths to find the commodities and services that best suit their needs.
What Is The Customer Journey In B2B Marketing?
The B2B customer journey describes the set of steps or stages that occur along the path from unknown prospect to customer conversion. This journey is designed from the audience’s perspective to help marketers understand and align the various motivations and needs at each stage of the journey.
B2B marketing strategies succeed by making it easy and challenging for target audiences to move from one stage of the customer journey to the next. Your B2B marketing funnel should be closely aligned with your customer journey and the content and campaigns that support it.
In-market vs. out-market
Before we break down the different stages of the B2B customer journey, starting with a broad classification that can guide higher-level marketing strategy, in-market and out-of-market prospects is helpful.
- In-market: Buyers in your solution category actively need what you offer.
- Out-market: Buyers in your solution category who do not currently have a realized need but will in the future.
Research conducted by LinkedIn shows that at any given time, approximately 95% of all B2B prospects are “marketers.” They haven’t yet begun their customer journey, but capturing the minds of this remarkable segment will yield huge benefits.
Many techniques and optimizations can be applied to the B2B customer journey, but engaging prospects at the first stage (awareness) is critical for growth-focused organizations. After all, your brand journey can’t be developed or completed if it never begins.
Stages Of The B2B Customer Journey
There are different models and terminology used to represent the B2B customer journey, but the most common is this six-stage model:
- Awareness: The buyer identifies a problem, pain point, or challenge your solution can solve.
- Consideration: The buyer begins researching vendors, suppliers, or agencies that meet their needs. They begin to narrow down their choices.
- Decision: Once a final option is reached, the buyer decides. This stage often involves price discussions and contract negotiations.
- Sales: Sales occur when deals are closed, contracts are signed, and payments are finalized.
- Implementation: The buyer accepts and implements the new solution into their business, often with ongoing service from the vendor.
- Support and Retention: The relationship between the converted customer and the brand. Successful marketing at this stage can lead to retention, renewal, and growth.
How Customer Journeys Are Evolving In B2B
We believe many forces are at play in changing the B2B customer journey.
Maturity Of Digital Transformation
Business has become increasingly digital in recent years. The number of online platforms involved in the B2B customer journey has increased significantly, while the share of face-to-face interactions has decreased. Trends such as AI personalization and the rise of self-service shopping are fundamentally changing the dynamics of B2B buying.
By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur through digital channels.
Expansion Of B2B Content And Engagement Channels
In 2021, McKinsey found that B2B customers will routinely use 10 or more channels to engage with suppliers, up from five in 2016. Omnichannel marketing has become widespread as brands embrace the augmented media landscape.
Given the changing ways people interact with brands—online, social, mobile, search, connected TV, and even online channels—marketers must maintain a proactive and experimental mindset.
Economic Trends And Budget Impacts
As the world continues to experience economic uncertainty, its effects naturally lead to discretionary spending. B2B sales, considered less critical, tend to be more closely scrutinized, lengthening and sometimes interrupting the customer journey.
A 2023 study found that buyers scrutinize ROI and spend more time making purchasing decisions.
Shifts In Decision-Making Dynamics
One of the key variations between B2B and B2C is the practice of marketing to a commission per purchase rather than to a single customer. By necessity, B2B purchasing is a team sport, often involving multiple decision-makers, stakeholders, and influencers.
Team structures vary across organizations, within organizations, and over time. Different roles on purchasing committees may have very different needs, interests, and sourcing objectives.
Customer Journey Mapping For B2B Marketers
Customer journey mapping is a valuable exercise used to understand how people interact with your brand on different levels. Here’s how you can do it:
Define Your Customer Journey Stages
The structure above serves as a standard, but the customer journey can be customized and tailored to suit your business model and marketing strategy.
For example, a SaaS brand that sells subscription-based services will focus on customer retention metrics compared to a product provider that often makes one-time sales. Another company might have an entire stage dedicated to referrals and advocacy.
Research And Understand Customer Touchpoints
You can place these markers on your proverbial map — key channels, locations, and places where customers encounter or interact with your brand on their journey. These include your website, social media, search results pages, email, customer reviews, influencer content, and more.
Gather And Analyze Customer Data
This is where you start digging into the data you have (first-party or third-party data is the most reliable and robust these days) and start developing ideas to inform your customer journey map. Using a goal-based approach, you’ll need to connect different touchpoints, actions, and keywords to different levels.
Develop Buyer Personas
No two buyers are the same, but for the most part, you can differentiate between different types of ideal customers and key decision-making roles based on common characteristics and needs. Developing buyer personas helps personalize the score by optimizing content across different stages and touchpoints.
Create A Customer Journey Map
Now, you can organize all the information and ideas gathered in the previous steps into a visual representation, showing a sequence of paths that represent the ideal journey for your brand. This often takes the form of a flow chart or diagram that is easy for marketers and beyond to understand.
Identify Opportunities And Optimize
The real beauty of this exercise is the actionable data it can yield. Measuring and analyzing performance in the context of customer journeys will help you better understand how customers perceive your brand. You’ll be able to identify strengths and weaknesses, spot gaps, and discover new opportunities.