Successful Customer Journey in B2B: Explanation, Relevance & Measures
Marco Gilly2/17/2023
Marco Gilly explains how your B2B customer journey can become a dream journey for your customers - and how you can make the best use of it for yourself.
Table of contents
- What is the Customer Journey in B2B?
- What is the difference between a B2C and B2B Customer Journey?
- What phases and touchpoints does the B2B Customer Journey consist of?
- DemandgenReport
- Improvement of the customer experience
- Identify your target group:
- Customer-Journey-Mapping-Tools
- So, on the Customer Journey, offer your customers what you also hope for from your dream vacation: Smooth processes and great moments towards a happy conclusion that invites you to come back. Then your corporate goals are also better achievable. With a small „but“: The perfect Business-to-Business Customer Journey must always be checked and revised. After all, touchpoints and customer interests change with time. Thanks to the right tools, however, this should not be a problem.
Pack your swimming trunks - we're going on a journey to show you how you can build and optimally utilize your B2B Customer Journey. From theory to practice with the best CRM, mapping and analysis tools.
Think back to your last vacation. Was everything flawless or were there unexpected challenges such as flight delays, rainy weather or inedible food? After all, one bad experience can tarnish your memories of the trip and possibly lead to you making a different decision when planning your next vacation.
Similarly, this also applies to your customers on the Customer Journey, translated as „Customer Journey“. This describes the complete path that customers take from the first point of contact to the purchase and beyond with a company. Bad experiences should also be avoided as much as possible so that prospects become happy customers. What sounds like classic B2C marketing at first, is however also of high relevance for B2B companies - after all, the customer journey should also run flawlessly in business relations. In the following, you will learn what a B2B Customer Journey looks like and which tools can help you design a perfect customer journey.
Think back to your last vacation. Was everything flawless or were there unexpected challenges such as flight delays, rainy weather or inedible food? After all, one bad experience can tarnish your memories of the trip and possibly lead to you making a different decision when planning your next vacation.
Similarly, this also applies to your customers on the Customer Journey, translated as „Customer Journey“. This describes the complete path that customers take from the first point of contact to the purchase and beyond with a company. Bad experiences should also be avoided as much as possible so that prospects become happy customers. What sounds like classic B2C marketing at first, is however also of high relevance for B2B companies - after all, the customer journey should also run flawlessly in business relations. In the following, you will learn what a B2B Customer Journey looks like and which tools can help you design a perfect customer journey.
What is the Customer Journey in B2B?
The Customer Journey, also known as Buyers Journey („Purchaser Journey“), describes the complete purchase process that a business customer goes through with a company. This can be a single purchase, but also a long-term business relationship. Accordingly, it is important to know the customer journey of your own customers in order to perfectly prepare the relevant contact points („touchpoints“).
In addition to generating new customers, the Customer Journey also aims to satisfy already existing customers with targeted measures and, if necessary, to encourage them to buy again.Source: Salesforce (Go directly to the Salesforce website)
Customer Journey at a fictional company:
For an example of a company's customer journey, let's look at the purchase of a marketing automation solution. In the first step, the social media manager of a start-up informs herself online, for example at OMR Reviews, thus having the first contact points on the Customer Journey. After she has thoroughly researched the subject, she selects various providers in the field of marketing automation and gets more information on their website, for example in the form of a white paper. Finally, she is convinced based on various arguments that she has found the best offer and coordinates with her executive directors, who ultimately make a decision - a purchase is made. The customer journey is not over yet, as the solution still has to be implemented. The social media manager is satisfied with the software she found and writes a detailed review on OMR Reviews. She also acquires several expansions of the software for her company, thus continuing her journey on the B2B Customer Journey.
As you can see – a perfect B2B customer journey ideally never ends, but constantly evolves.
What is the difference between a B2C and B2B Customer Journey?
A B2B Customer Journey basically follows the same approach as a B2C customer journey: The path from the first touchpoint to the perfect buying experience. However, the Customer Journey with a B2B focus usually differs in six key points:
- Target Group:As you probably expected, a B2B Customer Journey deals with business customers, while the focus in B2C is on the end consumer.
- Decision-making process:While Business-to-Customer decisions are often made by a single person, the decision-making process in Business-to-Business transactions is usually more complex and involves several decision-makers. According to Harvard Business Review, 6.8 people have a say in corresponding purchasing decisions.
- Purchase cycle:The more parties involved in the decision-making process, the longer the purchasing process. Impulse purchases as in B2C practically do not exist in B2B. Accordingly, the customer journey is also longer.
- Budget:B2B companies usually have higher budgets than B2C businesses, which also has a greater influence on the purchasing decision.
- Relationships:Relationships play a more important role in B2B than in B2C. A close connection between customers and the company changes the purchasing process and also the customer journey. The importance of loyalty building in B2B is therefore much higher.
- Communication:While B2C communication is more focused on emotions and brand awareness, B2B communication targets logical decisions and long-term business relationships.
By showing how complicated a purchasing process can be within the B2B Customer Journey, the following overview by Gartner, including various decision-making processes, is very detailed. (Source:Gartner)
What phases and touchpoints does the B2B Customer Journey consist of?
Every journey is different and so, B2B Customer Journeys often have to be looked at very individually. Therefore, it is advisable to have a detailed breakdown for your company in cooperation with the marketing and sales departments. We consider five phases as a standard for a good elaboration of the customer journey. Along these phases, companies should define and place their B2B Customer Journey touchpoints with interested parties. The more accurately these contact points are known and played, the higher the probability of a successful customer journey.
These five phases of a Customer Journey B2B with possible touchpoints for potential providers (Source: Concept Draw)
1. Awareness (Raising awareness):
A trigger/problem causes potential B2B customers to search for a solution. The focus is not yet on the conclusion of the purchase, but initially on non-binding research to eliminate a specific problem.
- B2B touchpoints in the awareness phase: The classic first point of contact for searching for solutions is Google. Here, appropriate touchpoints should be implemented through extensive SEO and SEA measures. Your own social media presence (especially on LinkedIn in B2B, but also on other channels) should not be neglected either. Further touchpoint opportunities are offered in content marketing through the free provision of white papers or informative blog articles.
2. Consideration (Deliberation):
In the consideration phase of a customer journey, those responsible on the customer side begin collecting information on various providers and compare them with each other.
- B2B touchpoints in the consideration phase: It's high time to support the customer journey with lead nurturing. This measure ensures that we support prospects in the decision-making process with precise information about their product. With targeted re-targeting campaigns via social media or Google Ads, potential customers can be directed to customized landing pages. Newsletters, blog articles or white papers are still in demand during the consideration phase. In addition to your own online presence, it is helpful to convince on review portals and with social proofs.3. Purchase / Conversion (Purchase):
If a provider has survived the first two phases and is still available as an option, the probably most important section along the Customer Journey in B2B: the purchase phase. Prospects decide on the best offer in their view. With the final purchasing decision, an important step of the B2B customer journey is completed.
B2B touchpoints in the purchase phase:
- For the complete evaluation of an offer, supporting (E-mail) communication from the provider's side is advantageous. In addition to the price/performance ratio, strong arguments, such as free trial versions or case studies, play an important role. Ultimately, all persuasions should be exhausted here to make sure that the investment in the prospects also pays off.4. Retention / Experience (Retention):
The purchase is completed, so what are the two outstanding phases for? Quite simply: For a long-term customer relationship, the satisfaction of these is of enormous importance. Thus, a customer journey does not end after the purchase, but aims at further sales. Here, a provider can score points with good after-sales service and a positive customer experience is being enforced. The focus of the retention phase is customer retention.
B2B touchpoints in the retention phase:
- Contact points are provided by support services, such as HelpDesks or Service Portals, as well as mailing campaigns (Newsletter) or social media postings (Stay-In-Touch).5. Advocacy / Loyalty (Recommendation):Happy customers are invaluable for companies. This not only applies to potential follow-up orders through loyalty building, but also to the marketing of customer acquisition. After all, as early as the Consideration phase, interested parties are examining very closely what reviews and experiences there are in connection with the desired provider. Accordingly, the submission of reviews / experience reports by satisfied customers should be forced at the „end“ of the Customer Journey. Ideally, this will create a perfect cycle of new and existing customers with ongoing purchases.
B2B touchpoints in the advocacy phase:
The expectation that satisfied customers will also spontaneously express their opinion is rather naive. Accordingly, calls for surveys or for direct review submissions should be sent out at certain providers. A friendly social-media-posting can also be helpful in loyalty building.
- Why is the B2B Customer Journey important for a company's success?Tracking and optimizing customer journeys has long been a non-issue in B2B marketing. Generated leads were processed accordingly by sales staff and the customer journey was practically not taken into account. In the past, this often led to short-term success, but it can no longer withstand in the long term on the market. Especially not if competing companies „intercept“ potential customers with marketing tailored to customer journeys in the crucial phases of the journey. According to
DemandgenReport
, interested parties are now investing significantly more time in researching providers and evaluating various offers.
At this point at the very latest, it is important to work out Customer Journeys. They serve B2B companies as support in order to optimally prepare all touchpoints with interested parties and to create a perfect customer experience.Creating a customer journey in B2B has the following advantages:Increase in customer trust
At this point at the very latest, it is important to work out Customer Journeys. They serve B2B companies as support in order to optimally prepare all touchpoints with interested parties and to create a perfect customer experience.Creating a customer journey in B2B has the following advantages:Increase in customer trust
Improvement of the customer experience
- Increase in customer retention and allocation
- Strengthening brand awareness
- Generation of qualified leads
- More efficient sales processes
- Higher conversion rate and sales increase
- How can the Customer Journey be designed in the B2B area?
- The best-case scenario for the process of a customer journey in B2B is clear: At the beginning, the brand is perceived as best as possible by the interested parties, at the end you have paying representatives of your brand. As you now know, every customer journey is unique and hardly comparable. However, there are some best practice options for the perfect design of your B2B company's customer journey. To design your individual B2B Customer Journey, you can orientate yourself along the following five guidelines:
Identify your target group:
Let's first split the customer journey into two words and deal with the first part: your customers. Your target group has needs, challenges, motivations and problems. To help them, you should have already created suitable
Buyer Personas
for your company. Surveys, customer feedback and targeted data and customer analyses are also helpful. This way, you can ensure that you know the needs of your target group and can respond to them within the Customer Journey. Analysis of the purchasing process:Now that you know your customers, let's deal with the journey. Here, the focus should first be on the various phases of the buying process of your target group, including the most important touchpoints. You have to understand how your customers inform themselves, compare and buy. Again, data and behavioral analysis on your website (plus possibly social media, in app insights etc.) are essential. Also, customer surveys, competitive analysis, market research and behavioral analyses help optimization of the customer journey in the B2B.
When analyzing, you should list all contact points within the five phases for your own overview. It is also helpful to rate these touchpoints from customers' perspective. So, for example, negative reviews on Google can be a major pain point within the customer journey that needs improvement. On the other hand, a very extensive service portal including a helpdesk can be perceived very positively by customers. An exemplary analysis of the B2B customer journey looks like this:
When analyzing, you should list all contact points within the five phases for your own overview. It is also helpful to rate these touchpoints from customers' perspective. So, for example, negative reviews on Google can be a major pain point within the customer journey that needs improvement. On the other hand, a very extensive service portal including a helpdesk can be perceived very positively by customers. An exemplary analysis of the B2B customer journey looks like this:
Exemplary overview of Customer Journey B2B touchpoints including the assessment of the customer experience. (Source:
Verdure
)Creating a customer journey map:You should implement the visualization of a B2B customer journey map professionally to improve your internal marketing in the long term. B2B journey mapping provides you with valuable information for improving your service and customer experience. What exactly a Customer Journey Map looks like is very individual for each B2B company to answer. Mainly, it represents the sales process including touchpoints, shows discrepancies within customer experience and evaluates how internal factors affect it.
Plus, your Customer Journey Map should answer the following five W questions:
Plus, your Customer Journey Map should answer the following five W questions:
Who
is responsible in the purchasing process?
- Why does the purchaser want to achieve a specific result? (Pain Points)
- When is a purchaser in a specific phase?
- Where does a purchaser search for information?
- How can you answer questions or concerns of B2B purchasers in that moment?
- Example of answering the W-questions within a Customer-Journey-Map B2B. (Source: Forrester
, for you.Personalized Interactions:Now that you know how your customers act and react, you can deal with optimizing the B2B Customer Journey. Design personalized interactions and offers based on the needs and preferences of your customers. This can be accomplished by using datas and AI technology but also by deploying professional CRM software. Personalized interactions improve the customer experience and increase trust in your B2B company.
Even though most interactions should be tailored to your company, you will find five typical examples and tips for touchpoint optimization within B2B customer journeys:
Personalized Landing Pages:
In B2B, websites are often the first point of contact with potential customers. Therefore focus on designing one or more landing pages which improve lead generation.
- Adjustable e-mail campaigns:Newsletters often lack personality and quickly end up in the trash. Therefore rely on sending personalized e-mail campaigns which are tailored to the specific needs of your customers.
- Personalized product recommendations:Your customers are interested in your offer or have already bought? With product recommendations, based on prior interactions of the customer and their interests, you can even increase your revenues.
- Individual offers:Consider your customers as individuals and make appropriate offers based on certain needs of a specific target group.
- Webinars / training courses:Webinars can be real lead magnets in the B2B sector. Offer your interested parties corresponding digital further training and integrate your offers to increase your conversion rate.
- A customer journey often changes within a short period of time. Therefore, monitor it regularly and optimize accordingly if necessary. It is important that the Customer Journey in the B2B area is designed data-driven to gain a deep understanding for the behavioral patterns of your customers. With constant optimization and through the feedback of your customers, you can ensure that you are always up to date and can offer the best possible customer experience.Which tools can help with designing the Customer Journey in the B2B area?
When creating a Customer Journey, you are of course not on your own but can resort to a whole pool of different tools. These are important for measuring and optimizing the Customer Journey in the B2B area. We have picked out a few providers for you for the various areas:
Customer-Journey-Mapping-Tools
Customer journey mapping tools
support you in the visual representation of the customer journey. Here, the emotions, needs and experiences of the customers can be visualized and tracked at every touchpoint in the journey. In addition, the weak points within the customer journey can be identified and optimization potentials can be shown.
Examples:Marketing Automation / CRM Tools
Marketing automation tools
Smaply
Mirotrigger email campaigns, landing pages and other marketing activities that are based on the behavior and interactions of customers within their journey. An associated
CRM system can also collect and analyze customer data and interactions to gain better insights into the sales cycle. This allows you to personalize and optimize your Customer Journey.Examples:Marketing Analytics Tools
Marketing Analytics tools
HubSpot Sales Hub
Salesforce Sales Cloudhelp you analyze data about customer behavior and interactions with the brand. This information can help identify and repeat successful campaigns, as well as identify and correct weak points in your Customer Journey.
Examples:Other Tools:
Survey & Survey Tools
Google Analytics
Matomo (zuvor Piwik)(e.g.
- Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey)Chatbot and
- Customer Service Tools (e.g. , ) Flixcheck Marketing Attribution BOTfriends Tools (e.g.
- Terminus)ConclusionA perfect Customer Journey is indeed like the perfect vacation trip: A thoroughly positive experience without disappointments. For far too long, B2B companies have underestimated the potential of a well-designed customer journey. But it can contribute to accelerating and improving the purchasing decision process. But to do this, it is important to respond to the needs and expectations of the target group. So that your B2B Customer Journey also becomes a success, you must consider all five phases individually and determine all touchpoints. We recommend you to use our recommended tools and set KPIs to measure the progress and effectiveness of your measures.
Empfehlenswerte CRM Tools & Softwares
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So, on the Customer Journey, offer your customers what you also hope for from your dream vacation:
Smooth processes and great moments towards a happy conclusion that invites you to come back. Then your corporate goals are also better achievable. With a small „but“: The perfect Business-to-Business Customer Journey must always be checked and revised. After all, touchpoints and customer interests change with time. Thanks to the right tools, however, this should not be a problem.
Eine perfekte Customer Journey ist am Ende tatsächlich wie die perfekte Urlaubsreise: Eine rundum positive Erfahrung ohne Enttäuschungen. Viel zu lange haben B2B Unternehmen das Potential einer gut gestalteten Kundenreise unterschätzt. Dabei kann diese dazu beitragen, den Kaufentscheidungsprozess zu beschleunigen und zu verbessern. Dafür ist es jedoch wichtig, auf die Bedürfnisse und Erwartungen der Zielgruppe einzugehen. Damit auch deine B2B Customer Journey ein Erfolg wird, musst du alle fünf Phasen individuell betrachten und sämtliche Touchpoints bestimmen. Wir empfehlen dir dabei auf unsere empfohlenen Tools zurückzugreifen und KPIs festzulegen, um den Fortschritt sowie die Wirksamkeit deiner Maßnahmen messen zu können.
Biete deinen Kunden auf der Customer Journey also das, was du dir auch von deinem Traumurlaub erwartest:
Reibungslose Prozesse und großartige Momente, hin zu einem glücklichen Abschluss, der zum Wiederkommen einlädt. Dann sind deine Unternehmensziele auch besser realisierbar. Mit einem kleinen „Aber“: Die perfekte Business-to-Business Customer Journey muss stets überprüft und überarbeitet werden. Schließlich verändern sich Touchpoints und Kundeninteressen mit der Zeit. Dank der richtigen Tools sollte das jedoch kein Problem sein.
Reibungslose Prozesse und großartige Momente, hin zu einem glücklichen Abschluss, der zum Wiederkommen einlädt. Dann sind deine Unternehmensziele auch besser realisierbar. Mit einem kleinen „Aber“: Die perfekte Business-to-Business Customer Journey muss stets überprüft und überarbeitet werden. Schließlich verändern sich Touchpoints und Kundeninteressen mit der Zeit. Dank der richtigen Tools sollte das jedoch kein Problem sein.
Author
Marco Gilly
Marco ist, je nachdem welche Definition man hernimmt, ein munterer Mix aus GenZ und Millennial. 2019 bog er beim Versuch Sportreporter zu werden irgendwo falsch ab und landete im Marketing der KG Media Factory, wo er als CDO die digitale Entwicklung der Videoagentur verantwortet. Diese kümmert sich um verschiedene Bewegtbild-Produkte für Unternehmen – von Imagefilmen über TV-Werbung bis hin zu Social-Media-Clips. Ansonsten wirft Marco nicht nur gerne mit Dartpfeilen, sondern auch diversen Marketingbegriffen um sich. Besonders wohl fühlt er sich dabei in den Bereichen B2B, CRM und 9:16-Videocontent.
