Step-by-Step Guide to Modern B2B Buyer Journey and How to Influence it With Full-Funnel Marketing

The steps to purchase are the four core stages of the buyer’s journey. So, the buyer journey can be defined as the steps to make a purchasing decision. Similar to a purchase funnel, "conversion funnel" is a technical term used in e-commerce operations to describe the track a consumer takes through an Internet advertising or search system, navigating an e-commerce website and finally converting to a sale. Adobe Marketo Engage allows you to map the buyer’s journey and gives you the data you need to measure engagement at every stage and identify areas of low conversion.

Document the questions and objections each stakeholder has at each step – the champion's concerns at consideration stage are different from the CFO's at decision stage. We've seen teams skip this step and end up with a funnel map that could belong to any company in their industry – generic to the point of uselessness. The difference between a useful map and a decorative one comes down to five steps. Fewer people with more individual influence makes multi-threading even more critical. The once-dominant 5-8 member buying committee is shrinking, with 3-4 member groups rising in software decisions. You need to realize that you’re setting yourself up for a very key skill for the future of your career.

Gartner's research describes B2B buying as a set of "jobs" buyers revisit in loops rather than steps they climb once — design your funnel to tolerate that. A buyer journey funnel is a model of how a person moves from "I might have a problem" to "I'll buy this solution," drawn as a funnel because fewer people remain at each step. Ensuring you have a unique selling proposition that provides value to the buyer and sets you apart from competitors. Do buyers have expectations around trying the offering before they purchase it? When buyers investigate our company's offering, what do they like about it compared to alternatives? Buyers are comparing features, pricing, implementation processes, and overall satisfaction with the product or service they’re considering.

Then, follow the next steps to develop a buyer journey for your top segment, before refining it for the other segments. Study your target segments, analyze your CRM, and identify the segments you want to focus on. Furthermore, by regularly sharing stand-out, educational content about industry challenges, opportunities, and the approach and category, you are becoming known in your industry—or in other words, known by the people your buyers ask for a recommendation. Because, while researching their problems (awareness stage) and different solution approaches and categories (category consideration stage), the buyers are already discovering the vendors who are actively educating them during the earlier stages. Once the buyers settle on a specific category, they will start researching, evaluating and comparing the different vendors. The key is to identify the core goals, issues and triggers of your ideal buyers, so that your content is relevant for the buyers at this stage.

What are the five stages of the customer buying journey?

Considering how our direct and indirect competitors show up in buyers journey funnel the marketplace and how they influence perception. When buyers are in the awareness stage, they recognize a challenge or opportunity that needs attention. The customer’s journey focuses on building loyalty, satisfaction, and long-term relationships; it’s about turning buyers into repeat customers and, hopefully, brand evangelists. However, in the B2C buyer’s journey, there’s a reliance on brand awareness through ads, social media, influencer marketing, and promotional strategy. Customers make purchase decisions based on personal needs, desires, or impulses. Like I previously shared, the decision-making process, sales cycle, and customer motivations vary, ultimately shaping how businesses approach their sales and marketing strategies.

What metrics should you track at each funnel stage?#

SDRs focusing on the buyer’s journey will win because they appreciate that the journey can be complex. Based on previous research, the prospect is now provider-aware. To alleviate this, they might start looking at resources online and type keywords into Google or other search engines.

Each process varies significantly depending on whether the buyer is an individual consumer or a business decision-maker. They go through a specific process to become aware of, consider, and evaluate a new product or service before purchasing it. Understanding the buyer’s journey is only valuable if you have the tools to act on it—connecting data, context, and customer interactions at every stage.

The buyer’s journey primarily focuses on the path a customer takes from the initial stage of identifying a problem or need, through the evaluation of solutions, to the final purchase decision. During the awareness stage, customers recognize that they are facing a problem or a need, but they haven’t identified the specific solution yet. It also details how each step leads to the next, ensuring customers don’t drop out of gaps in the funnel. The rep is supposed to be loyal to the old purchased cold list; the head-turn toward verified, current data is the upgrade every BOFU stage actually needs.

Analyze Users’ Traffic Journeys

When you’re ready to get started, start to outline what your current buyer’s journey looks like so you can define when customers move from stage to stage and begin to identify areas of optimization. When you understand the buyer’s journey, you can provide valuable insights into how customers make purchasing decisions. It also focuses on understanding the customer’s mindset, motivations, and decision-making process during this specific period.

They need better, stand-out content that answers specific questions and objections they have as they move through the buying process. The majority of B2B content driven by keyword research is boring, superficial, me-too content that doesn’t have any influence on the target buyers. I’ll then guide you through the steps to create a buyer-centric approach that we use to land qualified, in-the-market, five and six-figure opportunities with 20%+ of target accounts. Companies, especially large accounts, can have complex internal organizations, highly developed prospecting operations, and rich content platforms. Expand to five or seven once you have conversion data justifying the complexity.

But the key is to identify the topics in which your buyers are genuinely interested in. Invite key people from the marketing and sales team, and a subject-matter expert to a workshop. For each step, you should have collected the informational needs, questions and objections your buyers have as they move through the buying process. By now, you should have mapped out the different buying triggers and steps that buyers subsequently take. Most B2B companies focus their marketing and sales development effort on the decision makers.

The goal at this stage is to identify any critical questions, concerns or doubts that buyers have as they move through the buying process. As buyers move through the stages of the buying process, you want to understand what they are trying to learn, and what questions they have. Finally, review the steps you’ve identified to see if something was missed. For each of these events, ask, what do the customers do next to try and map out the initial steps. With your team, map out all the steps that you are aware of that happened for several selected customers (usually, the team will be aware of the later stages of the buyer journey).

• You’ll be able to ensure you’re executing marketing tactics at each marketing funnel stage.
• In the Awareness stage, you'll want to create content targeting keywords that your target audience are likely to be searching for early in their journey.
• That’s why food companies offer free samples—one taste, and you’ll know if you’ll buy it.
• Some people in your industry have built a large audience of loyal readers, listeners, and viewers.
• Therefore, the marketing funnel simplifies the customer journey and serves as a mental model for businesses to tweak their marketing strategy.
• For example, you could be driving a lot of traffic to your website; yet none of those people are signing up for your email list.

The accounting business now knows it needs online file storage and organization software. Rainstorm Storage is a B2B business that sells online file storage and organization software. Prospects have now clearly defined their problem and are researching how to solve it. At this point, they are researching their options with more intent for a resolution or purchase. Observe how prospects respond to every step of your sales cycle so you can continue identifying and knocking down obstacles.

However, buyer journey maps can serve as a guide to learn more about consumer behavior and how to capitalize on it. Craft your content to meet any sales objections and pain points that typically arise, including issues related to pricing, contract length, supply concerns, or something else. In this stage, focus on product reviews, consumer polls, and any relevant forums. After learning more about Rainstorm and its competitors, Z&D feels confident that Rainstorm has a solution to the firm’s problem.