Modern B2B Buyer's Journey

B2B buying journeys are random and arbitrary, but there are some things that are common throughout the buying journey of a b2b buyer. A true understanding of these commonalities can help us craft marketing strategies that complement the buyers buying process. So we can meet them where they are and help them in providing what they need to make a decision, where they need it.

Shabahat Ali

February 8, 2023

Shabahat Ali, our CEO, did an interesting linkedIn post on how he bought a SaaS tool in real life and what was his journey from awareness to conversion. Check out the post here.

BREAK DOWN OF THE MODERN JOURNEY:

  1. Demand creation / Problem awareness: Your buyer realizes they need a solution for a problem. This could be through facing a challenge directly, marketing content of a vendor, industry chatter, word of mouth, sales outreach etc.

  1. Solution awareness: B2B buyers become aware of the right solutions by the following ways:

    - Peer recommendations
    - Podcasts
    - Communities
    - Content
    - Advertising
    - Organic Search

    This leads to shortlisting of a few solutions

  2. Validation: The shortlisted solutions are validated by the following ways:

    - Asking friends / colleagues / users
    - Review sites and analyst recommendations
    - Social media search

  3. Conversion: They search you up directly on google and come inbound to have a sales call.

B2b Buyer journey illustration by Gartner
Buyer journey illustration by Gartner

Difference between Modern and Traditional:

                              OLD                                                                             NEW Considers journey to be linear Acknowledges the randomness of the journey Does not focus on creating demand Begins by creating the demand and getting to customer before they are problem aware Only considers touch points that can be measured by software Takes into account the human process and the touch points which are beyond the scope of an attribution software Does not focus on influencers of the purchase Takes into account the people and places that influence a buying decision Only focuses on paid media as an awareness channel Understands that organic awareness is which has a bigger and better impact in B2B
Traditional Vs Modern Buyer journey models

           

CONCLUSION: 

The B2B buying process is complex and the user behavior on the internet has evolved with the evolution and maturity of the internet.

We need to understand that high ticket items are not purchased just because we show someone an ad.

Traditional  funnel journey results in a very conversion based approach which might still be good for B2C low ticket purchase, but when it comes to enterprise B2B SaaS solutions, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, that is simply not how buyers buy.

When we demand gen according to the modern journey, we not only sell more but we lower our CAC by driving more word of mouth. 

We need to use our marketing to complement the buying journeys instead of manipulating them so that we can build trust, help customers and be seen as a true customer centric business solution.

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