Your Guide To B2B Customer Journey Mapping  

B2B

B2B

Every client in your company has to go through a specific, multi-stage purchasing process. Your role is to understand it and manage it according to your goals. And while it can be a challenge, mapping your customer journey brings implicit profits and benefits. What are they? In this article, we will focus specifically on B2B customer journey mapping. How is it different from B2C? And what is important in mapping customer journeys? Let’s find the answers!

What is a customer journey map?

A proper relationship with your client has become as important as the product itself – more and more customers value good communication with the company. Their impressions (or rather experiences) are crucial for the whole company’s success. To ensure a successful transaction, businesses create customer journey maps – visual representations of your clients’ way through the purchasing process and the transaction. They include all your clients’ interactions with the company before, during, and after the buying process. These maps also take into account every touchpoint which has been used between the two parties.

In short, that information enables creating a better relationship with the clients, understanding their needs, and fixing potential problems.

B2B vs. B2C

B2B and B2C companies differ in operating and offering their services. Business-to-business (B2B) companies sell products to other enterprises, while business-to-consumer (B2C) companies deal exclusively with individual customers.

Because of that, customer journey mapping in the B2B case is much more complex. First of all, it involves more people than B2C transactions – and with more people, there are more demands and expectations. B2B buying cycles tend to be longer as they include more purchasers, decision steps and different user flows.

What to focus on while creating your customer journey maps

As we know the purpose of B2B customer journey mapping, let’s proceed to creating a map depicting it. As the process is about to start, it is very important to prepare two things beforehand. As the process is about to start, it is very important to prepare two things beforehand: buyer personas and touchpoints.

BUYER PERSONAS

They are well-thought-out profiles of your perfect or typical clients. They include aspects like positions, company departments, behaviors, needs or motivations. Setting a buyer persona will help you understand your clients better. As a result, you will be able to take care of their expectations and the challenges they face. The profiles provide great support in navigating through the buying process – you are prepared for possible problems, and you can respond to your clients’ needs faster.

TOUCHPOINTS

These are moments when clients interact with your company. They can come in the form of websites, ads, newsletters or live chats. Also, touchpoints can be divided into three groups, depending on the stage of a buying cycle. It is important to determine which of the channels are the most crucial for your clients.

These two things are the necessary foundation for any customer journey mapping. The next steps are generally about your clients and the areas you have targeted. These can be divided into different segments of specific targets, all of which will need a separate customer journey map.

Benefits of B2B customer journey mapping

As we stated, customer journey mapping reflects your client’s needs, expectations and obstacles. Creating the map will help you identify all of these aspects faster and more efficiently, resulting in better, more satisfying solutions. Customer journey mapping also aids in recognising these factors that make your clients forfeit the buying process. Being familiar with all of these issues will allow you to create personalised, competitive offers.

If you are curious about more details regarding customer journey mapping, including its examples, read more in this blog post: https://noaignite.co.uk/blog/customer-journey-mapping.