In the evolving landscape of B2B marketing, brands gain significant advantages from understanding the intricacies of customer behavior. One powerful tool for doing that? The customer journey map. Developing a B2B customer journey map gives you deeper insights into your customers' behaviors, preferences, and motivations — allowing you to create personalized experiences that boost customer satisfaction.

What is B2B customer journey mapping?

In B2B customer journey mapping, a strategist describes and visualizes the process a customer goes through as they interact with your business and identifies potential touchpoints with your brand. These touchpoints span the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement, loyalty, and advocacy. A journey map also highlights the customer’s  key activities, information sources, channels, influencers, and mindset during each stage.

By visualizing this journey as a map, B2B marketers and sales teams can discern patterns and trends in how customers engage with your brand and how to improve the overall experience with brand content, dealers and sales reps, and brand channels.

What is the difference between a customer journey and a buyer journey?

The terms "customer journey" and "buyer journey" are often used interchangeably, but they represent unique perspectives. The customer journey begins with the very first touchpoint, like a website or an ad. It focuses on how a customer interacts with your business throughout their entire experience, including after a purchase. Conversely, a buyer journey outlines a prospective buyer's experience as they move through the stages of awareness, consideration, and conversion. It focuses on what the buyer is thinking, feeling, and doing, beginning with when they recognize a need or problem. A buyer’s journey ends at the point of purchase.

Why should B2B brands invest in customer journey mapping?

There are multiple benefits for B2B brands to map their customers’ journeys, but the most significant is that it helps you drive more customer engagement and conversions. Using the insights from the journey map, you can create more targeted marketing efforts that align with each customer’s motivations and preferences and deliver more personalized messages and offers that resonate with them.

Another key benefit of developing a customer journey map for your B2B brand is the opportunity to better align your sales and marketing teams. At 2RM, we’ve found that hosting a journey mapping workshop with marketing and sales teams in the room together helps everyone understand the full decision-making process and identify where gaps may exist in prospect handoffs between marketing and sales. When teams work side by side to understand what matters to customers, they bond over a shared goal of serving the customer, making team buy-in much easier and getting campaigns out the door much smoother.

Plus, when you consistently deliver exceptional experiences across all touchpoints — following the framework of the customer journey map — you can cultivate strong relationships with customers. This turns them into loyal advocates who not only repeat purchases but also recommend your brand to others.

Finally, developing a customer journey map helps brands recognize opportunities for growth and expansion. By analyzing customer behaviors, businesses can anticipate future needs and preferences and stay ahead of the curve with new products, services, or marketing initiatives that will give their brand a competitive advantage.

Best practices for creating a customer journey map

For the best results, develop your B2B customer journey map around a specific buyer persona taking a singular path with your brand. For example, the role a facility manager plays when purchasing a new piece of equipment. Creating a journey map is a detailed process. By focusing on just one customer type, you ensure that you’re paying close attention to that individual’s experience throughout the buying process. It also gives you a specific customer to target when it comes to putting their journey to work in campaign planning.

As part of the journey mapping process, be sure to: 

  • Gather data from various sources, including customer surveys and interviews, industry research, and interviews with company stakeholders, your sales team, and distributors. This data is the foundation for understanding customer behaviors, preferences, and pain points.
  • Set clear objectives and goals for what you want to achieve. Remember to focus on the customer's perspective and not just the internal business processes.
  • Map all the different phases or stages of the customer journey. This can vary by brand or organization.
  • Account for all the different paths a customer can take when interacting with your brand. Your customer’s journey may be non-linear, and that’s OK.

Journey mapping is an iterative process. As B2B consumer behaviors evolve, new expectations emerge — your customer journey map must evolve as well. Plan to review and update your brand’s customer journey maps at least once a year to ensure they’re relevant and that you’ve accurately reflected current customer touchpoints and needs. 

Applying the customer journey map to your B2B marketing strategies

By understanding the intricacies of the customer journey, your brand can tailor strategies to better meet customer needs, enhance the customer experience, and drive sustainable growth and success. In today's competitive market, customer journey mapping is not only a valuable asset — it's a necessity for businesses aiming to thrive and flourish.

If you’re ready to create a customer journey map to enhance your B2B marketing efforts, contact us to get started.