What is a company’s biggest asset?
Its product? Its employees? Its unique selling proposition?
More and more people are recognising it’s something else entirely: your customers.
Without your customers, your business can’t exist.
Nearly 77% of B2B buyers found the buying process too complicated.
With more competition than ever, it’s crucial you provide the best possible experience for them.
That’s where your customer journey comes in.
If you’re in the B2B space, you need to know how to map out the journey.
By building a B2B customer journey map, you’ll be able to analyse the weak spots in the customer journey so you can improve the experience (and generate more revenue).
In this article, we break down the B2B customer journey stages, how to build a customer journey map and how Matomo can help you track your customer journey automatically.
What is a B2B customer journey?
Every customer goes through a specific path within your business.
At some point in time, they found out about you and eventually bought your products.
A B2B customer journey is the collection of touchpoints your customer has with your business from start to finish.
From discovery to purchase (and more), your customers go through a specific set of touches you can track. By analysing this journey, you can get a snapshot of your user experience.
One way to track the customer journey is with a B2B customer journey map.
It helps you to quickly see the different steps your customers take in their path with your business.
With it, you can quickly identify weak spots and successes to improve the customer journey.
5 stages of the B2B customer journey
Every one of your customers is unique. Their specific needs and their journey.
It’s all different.
But, there are crucial steps they take through their journey as your customer.
It’s the same path your entire customer base takes.
Here are the five stages of the B2B customer journey (and why you should track them):
1. Awareness
Awareness is the first stage that every B2B buyer goes through when they start their journey in B2B companies as a customer.
At this stage, your target buyer understands they have a problem they need solving. They’re out, actively trying to solve this problem.
This is where you can stand out from the competition and give them a good first impression.
Some helpful content you could create to do this is:
- Blog posts
- Social media posts
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
2. Consideration
Next up, your buyer persona has an awareness of your company. But, now they’ve started narrowing down their options for potential businesses they’re interested in.
They’ve selected yours as a potential business to hand their hard-earned cash over to, but they’re still making up their mind.
At this point, you need to do what you can to clear up any objections and doubts in their mind and make them trust you.
Some helpful content you could create here include:
- Product demos by your sales team
- Webinars
- Case studies
3. Conversion
Next up, your target buyer has compared all their options and decided on you as the chosen product/company.
This is where the purchase decision is made — when the B2B buyer actually signs or clicks “buy.”
Here, you’ll want to provide more:
- Case studies
- Live demos
- Customer service
- Customer reviews/testimonials
4. Loyalty
Your B2B buyer is now a customer. But, not all customers return. The majority will slip away after the first purchase. If you want them to return, you need to fuel the relationship and nurture them even more.
You’ll want to shift your efforts to nurturing the relationship with a post-purchase strategy where you build on that trust, seek customer feedback to prove high customer satisfaction and reward their loyalty.
Some content you may want to create here includes:
- Thank you emails
- Follow-up emails
- Follow-up calls
- Product how-tos
- Reward program
- Surveys
5. Advocacy
The final stage of the B2B customer journey map is advocacy.
This is the stage beyond loyalty where your customers aren’t just coming back for more; they’re actively telling others about you.
This is the cream of the crop when it comes to the B2B buyer stages, and it happens when you exceed customer expectations repeatedly.
Your goal should be to eventually get all of your customers to this stage. Because then, they’re doing free marketing for you.
This is only possible when a customer receives enough positive B2B customer experiences with your company where the value they’ve received far exceeds what they perceived they have given.
Here are a few pieces of content you can create to fuel advocacy:
- Surveys
- Testimonial requests
- Referral program
Difference between B2C and B2B customer journeys
Every person on earth who buys something enters the customer journey.
But, not all customer journeys are created equal.
This is especially true when you compare the B2C and B2B customer journeys.
While there are similarities, the business-to-consumer (B2C) journey has clear differences compared to the business-to-business (B2B) journey.
The most obvious difference between the two journeys is that B2B customer journeys are far more complex.
Not only are these two companies selling to different audiences, but they also have to deploy a completely different set of strategies to lead their customers down the path as far as they can go.
While the journey structures are similar (from awareness to advocacy), there are differing motivating behaviours.
Here’s a table showing the difference between B2C and B2B in the customer journey:
| Different Factors | B2B | B2C |
|---|---|---|
| Target audience | Smaller, industry more important | Larger, general consumer |
| Buyer | Multiple decision-makers | One decision-maker |
| Buying decision | Based on needs of the organisation with multiple stakeholders | Based on an individual’s pain points |
| Buying process | Multiple steps | Single step |
| Customer retention | Organisational needs and ROI-based | Individual emotional factors |
| Repeat sales driver | Deep relationship | Repetition, attention-based |
Step-by-step guide to building a B2B customer journey map
Now that you’ve got a basic understanding of the typical B2B customer journey, it’s time to build out your map so you can create a visual representation of the journey.
Here are six steps you need to take to craft an effective B2B customer journey map in your business:
1. Identify your target audience (and different segments)
The first step in customer journey mapping is to look at your target audience.
You need to understand who they are and what different segments make up your audience.
You need to look at the different roles each person plays within the journey.
Unlike B2C, you’re not usually dealing with a single person. You likely have a few decision-makers you need to interact with to close a deal.
The average B2B deal involves 6 to 10 people.
Analyse the different roles and responsibilities of your audience.
Figure out what requirements they need to onboard you. Understand each person’s level of influence in the buying decision.
2. Determine your customers’ goals
Now that you have a clear understanding of each person involved in the buying process, it’s time to analyse their unique needs and goals.
Unlike B2C, which will include a single person with a single set of needs and goals, you have to look at several people through the decision-making process.
What is every decision-maker’s goal?
An entry-level admin will have much different goals than a CEO.
Understand each of their needs as it will be key to selling them and taking you to the next person in the chain of command.
3. Lean on data and analytics
Now it’s time to analyse your data.
You don’t want to guess what will work on your B2B buyers. Instead, leverage data that proves what’s working (and what’s not).
Analytics software like Matomo are crucial tools in your B2B customer journey toolkit.
Matomo can help you make data-driven decisions to fuel customer acquisition and loyalty to help get more customers all the way to the advocacy stage.
Using Matomo (which analyses and interprets different data sources) can give you a holistic view of what’s going on at each stage of the journey so you can reach your goals.
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4. Draw out customer journey stages
Now that you have your data-backed plan, it’s time for some customer journey mapping.
You can do this on paper or use a diagram tool to create a visual B2B customer journey map.
Here, you’ll draw out every single stage in your customer journey, including every single touchpoint from different decision-makers.
5. Determine each customer touchpoint
Once you’ve drawn up the customer journey stages, you’ll have a key list of B2B customer journey touchpoints to implement.
Write down every single customer interaction possible on the journey through.
This could be reading an email, a blog post or watching a video on your home page.
It could be an advertisement, a phone call or a follow-up email.
It could even be a live demo or video sales call (meeting).
6. Identify your own goals
Now that you’ve got your visual B2B customer journey mapping done, it’s time to go back to you and your company.
What are your goals?
What are the end results you’re looking for here?
You’ve got your current map in place. Now, how would you like customers to go through this journey?
Where would you like them to end up?
Look back at your company’s primary objectives if you’re stuck here.
If your company is looking to increase profit margins, then maybe you want to focus more on retention, so you’re spending less on acquisition (and leaning more on recurring revenue from existing customers).
How to create a Matomo funnel to track your B2B customer journey
If you want to start tracking and optimising your B2B customer journey, you need to have a good grasp on your funnel.
The reality is that your customer journey is your funnel.
They’re one and the same.
Your customer journeys through your sales funnel.
So, if you want to optimise it, then you need to see what’s going on at each stage of your funnel.
With Matomo, you can map out your entire funnel and track key events like conversions.
This allows you to identify where your site visitors are having problems, where they’re exiting and other obstacles they’re facing on their journey through.
To start, you first define what events or touchpoints you want included. This could mean:
- Landing on your website
- Visiting a product page
- Adding something to cart
- Going to checkout
- Clicking “buy”
Then, at each stage, you’ll see conversion rates.
For example, if only 3% of your visitors go from landing on your website to the product page, you likely have an issue between your homepage (and other pages) and your product pages.
Or, if you can get people to add to cart, but you rarely get people going to checkout, there’s likely a problem to fix on your add-to-cart page.
By leveraging Matomo’s funnels feature, you get to see your entire customer journey (and where people are falling off) so you understand what you need to optimise to grow your business.
If you’re ready to start building and optimising your customer journey today, then try Matomo for free for 21 days.
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