In the past, B2B transactions included a convoluted sales process with numerous decision- and influence-makers. Before making any judgments, this frequently tortuous process includes research, assessment, and stakeholder involvement. Then, it is necessary to go back and do additional research, evaluation, and stakeholder engagement before making a purchase decision.
In this article, we will talk about the B2B buyer journey, the stages involved, including how to create a B2B buyer journey map. We will also highlight the differences between a B2B and b2c buyer journey and clearly define the characteristics of B2B marketing.
What Is A B2B Buyer Journey?
Let's quickly review the definition of a buyer journey. A buyer's journey, which is often referred to as a customer journey or buying cycle, is simply the path your customers take from being unaware of their problem to deciding to buy your solution.
As you are aware, consumers don't just decide to buy anything out of the blue (especially true in the B2B world). Instead, before choosing a solution, purchasers must first acknowledge that they have a problem, learn more about it, then investigate the best answers.
The risk involved frequently determines how long a buyer's journey lasts.
The Importance of B2B Buyer's Journey
The buyer journey is essential because it generally shapes a customer's route through to the purchase process. Therefore, understanding buyer behavior during this process can significantly improve your chances of upselling and retaining your customers later down the line.
What B2B Buyers Look For
B2B decision makers, in summary, desire high-quality, data-driven information that streamlines their tasks and improves their quality of life. Information that addresses their problems and encourages them to purchase your goods or services without being "sold" to.
Most sales and business development teams recognize that B2B audiences are less swayed by emotion and favor value-driven content supported by concrete evidence. A recent study found that 73% of B2B buyers said they have less time than they used to for reading and research, making the creation of exciting content even more crucial.1 However, despite having less time available, 60% of B2B buyers still desire access to thought leaders' market insights, making it possible to reach this crucial group.
You must show that you can exhibit thought leadership by raising the quality, proving value, utilizing the appropriate voice, and making material simple to obtain because there are fewer possibilities to reach decision-makers.
Source : gartner
Quality
B2B audiences have always valued data, and current research suggests that this trend is unlikely to change very soon. In a poll, 66% of B2B buyers said they wanted more concrete information before making purchases.1 90% of buyers say they are more likely to engage with content that is connected to a subject they are presently dealing with, working on, or thinking about. Buyers also have a strong preference for timely content.
B2B decision-makers are receptive to real-life examples, fresh insights, and thought leadership. However, 72% of respondents believe that content that makes essential points quickly and without extraneous fluff is valuable.
Value
B2B decision-makers only have so much time to read content, so they strongly prefer high-value content. To provide your audiences with the information they need to make purchasing decisions, use infographics, checklists, webinars, and white papers. Align content with the purchasing process to offer recommendations and information that is useful.
According to data, 65% of B2B buyers prefer content that is less salesy.1 Make sure your material is "all meat" by reducing or eliminating redundant elements. Avoid the obvious sales pitch in favor of addressing the audience's problems, pain areas, concerns, or most pressing queries. To make new connections and improve existing client relationships, show laser-like attention to your audience.
Voice
B2C content marketers put a lot of emphasis on style, tone, and brand voice, carefully preparing these components to improve communication and sales. However, these components are frequently not given as much weight in B2B material.
Current perceptions of B2B content make it obvious that there is an opportunity for improvement.
Honesty and transparency should be communicated in B2B applications just as in B2C settings. Keep in mind that factual and data-driven B2B content doesn't have to be uninteresting. Thought leadership pieces may be easier to convey personality in than infographics, checklists, and white papers. Focusing on brand voice is a brilliant method to make content more interesting and shareable.
Accessibility
Businesses that cater to other businesses frequently limit access to their greatest material in exchange for contact details that go into a sales lead pipeline. High-value material, however, cannot be successful if no one sees it. Naturally, audiences would like to have access to content that isn't locked or constrained in any way.
Giving out all of your greatest material without receiving a lead in return, however, can jeopardize your B2B content strategy. Therefore it should not be done at random. It is important to carefully assess which content should be kept behind the wall and which can be freely provided.
Shorten your forms as much as you can when access to the content is restricted. Make sure you are simply requesting the bare minimum of data required to generate the lead. Get the remaining information you need after you've established the relationship.
How Long Is The B2B Buying Journey?
Longer sales cycles are a natural outcome of selling a major deal to a large group of decision-makers. The usual B2B buying cycle is substantially longer than the B2C buying cycle, lasting 6 to 12 months on average.
The degree of risk involved typically determines how long a buyer's journey can last.
The purchasing process takes longer for more expensive solutions. To support their purchase, buyers should conduct extra research. And they'll need more persuasion to convert.
The reverse is true for less-priced options. Buyers feel more comfortable making hasty selections when there is less at stake.
What Are The Main Characteristics Of B2B Marketing?
There are particular B2B market characteristics that you should obviously take into account, despite the fact that it resembles the B2C market in some respects.
Complex Purchasing Behavior
Corporate purchasing is a challenging process that frequently involves multiple decision-makers and final approval from the finance team or, in some circumstances, the company's directors if the purchase is important. The fact that decision-makers constantly change presents a major difficulty for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. In order to reduce costs and increase the profit on product sales, some organizations may go for the cheapest quote.
A B2B vendor must possess extensive market and product knowledge due to the involvement of numerous important personnel in the acquisition of essential things for a corporation. To provide after-sales help during the transaction process, they should demonstrate excellent product knowledge and guarantee technical expertise.
Logical Purchasing
In contrast to the average consumer, businesses make purchases after making a fair assessment of the benefits and costs to the business. The main difference between B2B marketing techniques and consumer marketing is this.
Businesses base their purchase decisions on a variety of factors with the aim of boosting profit for the company or providing a return on investment, in contrast to B2C market characteristics (ROI).
The tasks of B2B marketers get more challenging since purchases are based on a thorough analysis of benefits and downsides. The reputation and performance of the provider may also be taken into account when making purchase selections. Even if the cost benefits are in the company's favor, only a few B2B buyers will purchase an unproven product in business marketplaces.
Complex Products
Depending on the company's efforts to build its brand and increase consumer awareness, B2C products sell. The more complex technological features of the product could not pique consumers' curiosity. As a result, B2B markets require a different marketing strategy.
One of the most important aspects of the B2B market is product complexity. Therefore, in order to gain access to the customer's key decision-makers, B2B marketers should be prepared with the necessary technical requirements and standardization procedures. The information offered must be truthful and should aim to provide the buyer with a sense of value. A sale based on technical specifications can also save money on brand development and value creation in the eyes of the consumer.
Fewer Buyers, More Sellers
The business-to-business (B2B) market is more limited to a small number of potentially large and medium-sized consumers than a consumer market, which may have hundreds or even millions of purchasers. These B2B customers can choose from various vendors as a result. The 80:20 Pareto Principle governs how the B2B market works, with 80% of providers vying for 20% of the market's clients.
However, compared to the average market customer, whose spending on that product category may be limited to a few thousand dollars, the few significant firm buyers may be making massive purchases.
The lack of purchasers presents vendors with both a challenge and an opportunity. Presentations, awareness-building, tight customer collaboration to achieve critical product changes, conducting the selling process, and providing post-sale support are all part of the B2B marketing process.
The B2B provider is ultimately assessed based on the product's attributes, technical advice, usability, value creation, and on-site support services.
Limited Segmentation
A product may be categorized in a consumer market based on need, purchasing power, and features. A single corporation may have a number of brands with different price points to appeal to budget, mainstream, and luxury consumers.
On the other hand, a B2B purchasing team does not consider products for end-user consumption and is therefore preoccupied with evaluating them from a consumer's perspective.
Since purchasing decisions in the B2B sector are not motivated by emotions, there is substantially less segmentation. Finding the right market segment and engaging with them to create long-term strategic engagement is challenging for B2B enterprises. In comparison to consumer markets, constrained segmentation is relatively helpful at this point.
The most challenging aspect of the B2B market is industry segmentation. The most successful B2B marketing strategy for this feature is to separate the target market by size and geography while giving clients all the assistance they require.
B2B Buyer Journey Stages
Below are the following stages to the B2B buyer journey including:
Awareness
The buyer at this stage is simply learning about your business, your offerings, and your services at this point. Your marketing team members are responsible for promoting this awareness with the assistance of your sales and customer success teams.
At this point, it's crucial to show that you comprehend the prospect's or client's actual business needs and customer pain points and that you are able to emphasize the ways in which your company can help to address these issues. Here, marketing teams will be engaged in content production, using digital channels like websites and social media platforms to create content that your sales and account teams may use as leverage to communicate with potential clients.
One other effective method you can use is to get help with qualified leads, people who are likely to do business with you, and devise a means of reaching out to them. This is a very effective method as these leads have been qualified and may reduce the length of your buyer's journey.
Image alt text : awareness stage
Consideration
The goal of this stage is to demonstrate how you can alleviate their problems in a way that increases trust in the value and competitiveness of your service.
Once potential clients are aware of your products, case studies, professional guides, efficient in-person engagement, and comparative information can assist your sales team in the lead nurturing.
Decision
Your potential consumers will be choosing whatever products or services they are most interested in at this point. They may contact sales, but in order to move potential customers closer to making a purchase, sales representatives may require marketing assistance in the form of product demonstrations, endorsements, and product evaluations.
B2B vs. B2C
You Sell To Teams, Not Individuals
A B2B buyer's journey is unique in that a B2B customer is often more than a single customer. In B2B, you're selling to an entire team or group of people, all of whom might have input in the purchase decision.
On average, 1-6 persons are involved in the B2B buying process. As a result, making decisions takes more time and effort.
This is in stark contrast to the B2C buyer's journey, where the decision to buy is made more quickly, and the buyer is frequently an individual.
Bigger Deal Sizes In B2C Than B2C
B2B transactions frequently have bigger deal/order sizes and average customer revenue per deal. These transactions may take a very long time to develop. But when they do, you frequently earn far more on each transaction.
This also implies that you may be more selective and afford to pay more to obtain each B2B lead than B2C businesses can. Make sure they are a good fit for your company before hiring them.
B2B businesses don't necessarily need to go viral on social media, although B2C businesses frequently do.
The Sales Cycles Are Longer
Longer sales cycles are a natural outcome of selling a major deal to a large group of decision-makers. The usual B2B buying cycle is substantially longer than the B2C buying cycle, lasting 6 to 12 months on average.
Over the course of a year, most consumer purchases are in the $100 to $200 area. And they are frequently made without much consideration, investigation, or in-depth study.
Therefore, the ramp from attention to interest to purchase needs to be much, much slower. Your B2B marketing and sales strategy need to be divided into manageable bits that can be digested over the course of a few months.
How Do I Create A B2B Customer Journey Map?
You can do this by incorporating the following steps:
Set Goals That Are Unique To Your Business
Define your larger business and customer goals before you begin to sketch out the customer journey.
Asking yourself what you want your customers to accomplish—their jobs to be done (JTBD)—is a good place to start. Does your company rely on repeat business, or are your product's larger ticket items sold only once? If you sell business clients a one-time purchase product, such as hardware, as opposed to a subscription service, your customer journey will appear different.
For instance, different B2B companies, such as GE Renewable Energy and Hubspot, will have quite diverse goals. A corporation like GE Renewable Energy, which sells substantial equipment to B2B clients, can give priority to objectives like increasing website conversions and cultivating brand evangelists who will refer GE items to other companies in the sector.
To enhance client retention, a software business like Hubspot must highlight the onboarding and renewal phases of the customer cycle.
Prioritize the most crucial steps for your consumers and company before building your B2B customer journey map.
Identify Your Customer Segments
Because the decision-makers are frequently different from the ultimate users of your product or service, the purchase cycle is particularly complex for B2B firms.
To accurately map out the B2B customer journey, understand every stakeholder engaged in the purchasing process, not simply the people who will use your product or service or the C-level decision makers.
Think about how your user personas may vary depending on the size and nature of your firm, the varying needs of end users versus buyers, and more.
Consider the design platform Canva, which is utilized by a range of companies, including freelancers and major firms like PayPal and Danone. Canva gained the knowledge necessary to design its homepage for various B2B client types who may select their own path and embark on the most pertinent user experience by understanding diverse user-profiles and wants.
Define Your Customer Journey Stages
Once you have clear goals and user personas, it's time to define the stages of the customer journey. A typical one is what we've discussed earlier, awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Of course, you can add more steps if your business requires them.
List All Possible B2B Customer Touch Points
Once you've outlined the steps in your customers' B2B journey, pinpoint each "touchpoint"—from social media postings to CTAs on your webpage to the actual product—where they interact with your business.
Make sure you continue to plan out how users connect with your B2B during the advocacy and retention phases after they become customers. How can you make the membership renewal process simpler for them? Do you provide incentives for referrals?
Consider the many touchpoints experienced by various user personas in addition to mapping out touchpoints by customer journey phase.
High-level executives, for instance, who make the purchasing choice, may not have the same product experience as their staff, who are your end customers.
You may improve UX and turn your consumers into brand champions for your products by finding the crucial B2B customer journey touchpoints for various clients and purchasing stages.
Conclusion
B2B marketing is a more challenging endeavor than B2C. However, there are ways to make the most of your marketing dollars. Qualifying leads is one of the most important factors if you want to simplify your B2B buyer journey.
If you are able to put your business in front of people who have been carefully profiled for your business, you stand a better chance of bringing them on board. You can contact Green Leads to speak to a professional who can help you on this journey.
Sources:
- Warren-Payne, A. (2019, April 12). B2B buyers want more data and research in vendor content. Marketing Charts. Retrieved from https://www.marketingcharts.com/cross-media-and-traditional/content-marketing-108076
