03/23/2018
How to Define, Establish and Monetize B-2-B Customer Journeys
B2B sales and marketing have become complex. This can be largely attributed to customers’ ability to research and find relevant information long before interacting with a sales team. Research statistics support this new reality. For instance:
of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally.” (Sirius Decisions).
of purchase decisions are made before the customer even calls a supplier.” (CEB).
The result is a fundamental shift in the structure of B2B customer journeys, transitioning from sequential (Awareness -> Interest -> Decision -> Action -> Loyalty) to non-sequential. However, this new landscape also opens up multiple opportunities to improve and optimize the end-to-end purchase process. There are two main goals:
- Learn more about every customer interaction in order to influence it positively
- Use customer touchpoints to understand the customer mindset and pinpoint their exact stage in the sales process
Customer journeys also allow us to examine the workings of ‘conventional sales and marketing’ from a different perspective. For example:
| Business Problem | Conventional Sales & Marketing | Customer Journey Based Sales & Marketing |
| Budget Allocation | Estimate the ROI of our Marketing vehicles | Identify highly influential marketing vehicles that move customers to the next stage |
| Increase Top-Line Growth | How can I increase revenue by 20%? | How can I decrease the length of my B2B customer journey? |
Although the majority of B2B organisations recognize customer journey analytics as having sufficient potential to create significant impact, the challenge lies in translating this concept into meaningful outcomes. Here are four steps to move the needle in the right direction.
Build the Base (Master Dataset)
Invest in building a time-series customer dataset that encapsulates all outbound touchpoints (Marketing and Sales initiated– E.g. Emails) and inbound touchpoints (customer initiated – E.g. Customer white paper downloads).
Build insights from touchpoints; assess each customer ‘stage’
Previous customer journeys, coupled with outcomes (win/loss), should be analyzed to better understand the role of each touchpoint. This knowledge should be customized for each business. The goal of this exercise is to place each of your prospects into a specific sales stage. (Awareness -> Interest -> Decision -> Action -> Loyalty)
Learn from positive and negative journeys
Mine knowledge from the touchpoints that resonate with your customers and those that don’t. The results can be vastly different across companies and specific product lines. You may discover, for instance, that a high-investment touchpoint such as a product demo showcased to a customer in the ‘awareness’ stage might not be very effective.
Devise the ‘right’ metrics
Conventional metrics will not work for this customer journey based concept. This requires defining new metrics such as “the percentage of customers that are stagnant in certain stages” and “Length in days of the customer journey.”
Each key project should result in a playbook from which Sales and Marketing can act on together, to determine for instance, the right customers to be targeted at the right time with the right tools.
Working with customer journeys over time can provide incremental benefits in both efficiency and profitability. This is also a critical step in redefining how both marketing and sales can be coordinated to help close deals in a targeted manner.
