While the idea of the customer journey is not new, the growing complexity of the buying environment, ongoing digital transformation, and the intense competition for attention have all triggered an evolution in recent years. In this article, we will explore how we see the current marketing landscape, why we believe the traditional sales funnel is no longer relevant and how a new customer journey-driven approach to marketing can bring clarity to a complex environment and drive success.
“77% of B2B buyers believe their experience was very complex.”
- Gartner
1. The challenge of marketing B2B enterprises today
TL;DR
The modern marketer faces the Herculean challenge due to the evolving complexity of the buyer’s journey, from more savvy buyers and an excess of information to external and psychological factors.
Purchasing a B2B product or service is a complex process. Buyers face an overwhelming array of possible solutions to address their challenges, and there have been noticeable shifts in their behavior within the evolving business environment.
Buyers are more savvy than ever. They want to research and assess options independently before deciding which brands to take to ‘the next stage.’ That doesn’t mean they don’t want to be guided, nor does it mean that they can’t be helped along the way. It does, however, mean content and thought leadership must be high quality to attract, engage, and retain these buyers.
Because buyers are more savvy, they’re also more likely to have residual knowledge of possible solutions, making the modern buyer’s journey all the more chaotic and unpredictable. How they progress, skip stages and repeat parts of their journey is difficult to capture with a traditional sales funnel. This non-linear process adds extra complexity for the modern marketer to navigate.
“73% of B2B buyers expect to engage with brands through multiple channels during their purchase journey.”
- Forbes Magazine
While the vast amount of content and information available to buyers today means they can do more research before speaking to anyone in sales, the flipside for marketers is that much of this information is unreliable or incomplete. Buyers, therefore, often gather fragments of information from various sources without comprehensively understanding their needs. So, while this abundance of information can empower buyers, it complicates their decision-making process. What sources can they trust? Who is right, and who is wrong?
Bad content creates an opportunity
- Thought leadership content
LinkedIn thought leadership study discovered that 52% of decision-makers and 54% of C-suite executives spend at least an hour or more per week reading thought leadership content. However, other studies suggest that 46% of decision-makers said the content was too focused on selling, 40% said it was unoriginal, and 31% said it was too corporate. So, while there’s a need and an appetite for engaging content, not everyone gets it right. - Customer journey mapping
Customer journey mapping exercise enables modern marketers to identify their target audience's needs, desires, and passions to optimize their experience with the brand. It sharpens the focus on engaging the audience at the right time and place with the right content.
This abundance of information has led to a greater expectation about where they experience brands and how often they can interact with them over multiple channels. Businesses are evolving as they try to navigate challenging economic times. According to Gartner, the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to ten decision-makers, each armed with four or five pieces of information they have gathered independently and must ‘de-conflict’ with the group. The 6Sense 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report suggests two overarching buying phases were identified: the Selection Phase and the Validation phase. In the Selection Phase, which makes up the first 70% of the buying journey, buying groups collect information and build a shortlist of potential partners with a favorite at the top of that shortlist. Furthermore, according to the report, that favorite will win the deal more than 80% of the time, pointing to brand awareness's importance in making that original shortlist.
This leads to our final complexity: psychological factors. With all this information, additional challenges, and increasing pressures, buyers are impacted not just by rational considerations but also by emotional considerations. Emotional engagement is often dismissed in B2B marketing, but seeking reassurance and validation throughout the decision-making process is as much an emotional need as it is rational.
Given the complexity of the buyer’s journey, what must modern marketers consider to stand out and gain a competitive advantage?
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2. Customer-centricity complimenting brand-to-demand
TL;DR
An empathic view of the customer’s challenges enables the modern marketer to reflect on the long and short-term goals.
In such a complex environment, brands must recognise the need to balance their long-term brand equity with short-term sales objectives. To do this, they should take a customer-centric approach, using the customer journey map as their guide, to complement a brand-to-demand strategy that helps them create a comprehensive marketing strategy.
In the maelstrom of information available to curious and savvy buyers, the importance of trust and credibility has never been greater. The pressure around pressing the button on a six-figure to multi-million dollar deal is huge, so when they’re deciding what to opt for, decision-makers need to feel confident.
To gain that confidence, we need to take a customer-centric approach that enables us to get under the skin of the target groups. We can identify their pain points, motivations, and behaviors to create super-relevant content and campaigns that resonate emotionally and rationally. By creating meaningful and action-oriented content, we can develop the buyers' trust, credibility, and confidence to take that crucial next step.
A holistic approach, one that considers the multiple stakeholders within the buying group, the multiple channels, and the various challenges buyers face, can do two jobs simultaneously. It can build brand awareness to create a bookmark in the minds of potential buyers for when they need you tomorrow, but we can also drive demand and generate leads for those who need you today.
How do you structure a holistic response to this complex challenge?
The sales funnel is often treated as a static model, while in reality, customer behaviors and market dynamics are constantly evolving. It does not adequately reflect the diverse touchpoints and channels through which customers engage with brands today. The rigid structure of the sales funnel does not accommodate for variations in the journey, leading to ineffective marketing strategies.
3. Sales funnel: RIP
TL;DR
In less complex environments, the sales funnel is an adequate tool for understanding the buying process; however, the modern marketer needs a more effective tool to reflect and detail the challenges a buyer faces today.
You don't use the traditional sales funnel to build a holistic marketing response to a complex customer challenge. It’s a mistake to assume today's complex audiences are captive to universal marketing motions determined by marketers or academics. To deliver to enterprise brands and help them show up in the moments that matter for multiple stakeholders in a complex environment, the sales funnel is too simplistic and has had its time.
Retiring the traditional funnel is necessary for several reasons, from the proliferation of consumer choices and the empowerment of customers through information to an increased emphasis on customer experience and the fragmentation of the media landscape. The influence and evolution of behavior of both social media users and Millennials/GenZ hasn’t helped its cause either. Still, perhaps the greatest reason for moving beyond the traditional funnel is the non-linear nature of customers' engagement with campaigns and content.
But while the traditional funnel simply doesn’t account for this shift in behavior, we are nevertheless aware of how deeply ingrained the traditional sales funnel is within our marketing world, so we will often need to refer back to it to help modern marketers understand and navigate their routes through a non-linear customer journey.
4. What is a non-linear customer journey?
TL;DR
A non-linear customer journey refers to customers' complex and unpredictable paths when interacting with brands. In this dynamic experience, customers move back and forth between different stages, influenced by personal preferences, social media trends, and real-time data.
We believe in an empathy-led approach that recognizes and understands the emotions and motivations of customers at each stage of their buying journey. We explore and examine the quantitative and qualitative pain points to address their needs and desires and tailor content to meet them. Our approach to the customer journey begins before a customer even knows they need help from the brand. A place where we work hard to develop brand awareness and recognition for the moment of “need.”
This passive period is reflected in our journey as much as the active period, such as self-search and education, across the multi-stage journey. The passivity and activity across the journey reflect, too, how different stakeholders can engage and dip out as they begin to build their understanding. To build a formidable picture of the process, we look to gain an understanding of the customer and stakeholders, which requires deep introspection of the business and brand as much as it does engagement with current customers.
By exploring and examining the customer journey, we can begin tailoring content solutions to the needs of stakeholders. By doing so, we can enhance engagement, build trust, grow confidence, and drive conversions. Most importantly, our approach to the customer journey enables us to create meaningful content that matters, understanding where and when to show up and have the greatest impact.
Strategic B2B partnerships:
With the customer journey mapped out with preexisting content, it’s possible to see where gaps in customer needs need filling. Depending on the campaign, we have used third-party experts, such as publications, industry media, and sector-specific organizations, to draft reports and lead podcasts to establish credibility, build trust, and extend reach.
Community management in B2B:
Key influencers within the buying group can often be internal communities or external user groups. Their impact on how a target persona perceives a challenge or an opportunity can be incredibly influential. Between the dark funnel and owned channels, we have found ways to influence and inspire conversations within these well-informed and opinionated groups.
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5. Ten things to ensure your agency is doing when taking a customer journey-driven approach to campaigns and content.
- Respecting and optimizing your time
While thorough discovery and research are essential for creating an effective customer journey map, this doesn’t have to be laborious or unnecessarily time consuming. In an ideal world, you’d be offered the flexibility to engage in conversations face-to-face, but should it prove difficult to get all stakeholders together, ask for the ability to respond asynchronously via a simple questionnaire or survey. Make sure all meetings have agendas and precise outcomes: your input is vital, and your time is important. - Understanding how you work best
Collaboration is key for the successful completion of a customer journey mapping exercise. Transparency, honesty, and progress reporting are essential on both sides, but you should look for teams that accommodate your processes and approach. By doing so, you will work at your best while delivering high-value feedback to develop a comprehensive customer journey. - Walking in the shoes of your customers
This may seem obvious to some, but you should expect a depth of enquiry from the agency team that enables them to get under the skin of your target customer group. From persona development to understanding customer pain points, needs, and expectations, a good team will engage you in discovery so they understand every aspect of your customer. This should include time-efficient conversations to discover qualitative insights from your sales teams, valued customers, subject matter experts and key internal stakeholders within your business. - Taking discovery to the next level
While your input into discovery is invaluable, the team should also engage with third-party data, external sources and competitors in their research and analysis. This may highlight gaps and missed opportunities, but the value of this work in providing a 360 perspective of your customer’s journey is huge. You should expect the team to do a complete competitive analysis of your in-market content and creative compared to your competitors, identifying key phrases, messages and motifs prevalent in your sector or industry. They should also look at your competitor's work and content to identify where their focus lies. Further exploration of contextual narratives associated with your industry and sector from third-party thought leaders, sector-specific publications, influencers and social listening will also be key. - Understanding the power of emotional and rational decision-making
Emotionally connected B2B customers are 306% more valuable over their lifetime. Les Binet and Peter Field have been highly influential in suggesting that B2B campaigns that appeal to emotions are 7x more likely to drive long-term sales, profits and revenue than rational messaging alone. You should expect the team you’re working with to understand this and begin to model where and how an emotional message within the customer journey will be most effective. You should pressure test the team's hypothesis and ask where the balance between emotional and rational messaging is along the journey. - Don’t be daunted by the customer journey map
A customer journey map should be a living document, possibly created on expansive tools like Figma. It should incorporate insights into, for example, persona-led needs and challenges across the segmented journey, touchpoints that enhance or interrupt the journey, and customer actions and feelings. A comprehensive map will be significant and detailed, but a good team can infer and interpret vital insights from every aspect. They should be able to give you a tour of the maps they create. One should outline the current state, while the other should outline the future. You will benefit from understanding both and should be able to use the maps throughout the campaign period. - Expect the unexpected
The customer journey map should drive your campaign and content approach. A good team will be able to use it to fundamentally understand and comprehend your customers, your challenges and your goals. On the back of the maps, they should be able to offer you at least three distinct creative directions for your content strategy. Flowing from the customer journey, you should be able to see the strategic threads that connect to the creative ideas. However, the interpretation and analysis executed outside of your ‘bubble’ may hold a mirror to difficult truths. It’s too easy to hold on to comfortable habits, and remaining open-minded to alternative perspectives and new opportunities is essential. - Making the most of what you have and making more
Following a comprehensive content audit that helped to inform the customer journey, you should expect a content strategy that both utilises pre-existing content and recommends new content. Ideally, your pre-existing content will require minor tweaks to align it to the new editorial and content strategy. The team should be able to suggest how they can maximise the use of pre-existing content in new and innovative ways. - The fluidity of being in the market
One key benefit of a living document like the customer journey map is that it’s flexible and adaptable to change. You should expect the team to be ‘always on’ and aware of news, competitor updates, and other external influences. A customer journey map coupled with a strong, robust, and comprehensive content and editorial strategy will be able to flex and accommodate any cultural, societal, or economic changes that may impact the campaign. - Eyes on the prize
Once the campaign is in motion, you should expect regular updates about progress. The team should be working closely with you throughout the phases of the campaign with a transparent approach that should instill trust in their process and in their ability to adapt to changing situations. To achieve that you should ask the team for a dashboard to keep you updated while the campaign is ‘in-flight’. The information, data, and insights that arise should also be used to amend and update the customer journey map. A dashboard will identify key areas of improvement for content and creative and inform of changes in buyers' behavior.
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6. The power of customer-journey campaigns and content
TL;DR
A customer journey-driven approach to campaigns and creative enhances the relevance of content and improves engagement. It enables brands to deliver tailored content that resonates with their customers at each stage of their journey, leading to improved conversion rates and increasing customer loyalty.
The experience a customer has through a campaign and content is as important as the product and solution itself. A recent report by Salesforce suggests that 80% of customers agree. Our brand-to-demand approach goes a long way toward delivering a B2B content strategy that gives customers a meaningful experience that drives action.
We know that to deliver incredible experiences, we must tell wonderful stories, create incredible B2B journey-driven campaigns, and create engaging content. We also know that incredible campaigns and content will deliver fantastic results. Our approach to customer journey and creative excellence combine to produce powerful marketing that achieves game-changing outcomes.
We are an integrated marketing agency driving the evolution of the customer journey and how brands can maximise their opportunity within the ever-changing and remorsefully volatile environment. Mark Schaefer said, “In today’s world, the customer journey is more complex than ever. Brands that understand this complexity will thrive in the marketplace.” We help you do that: we work with brands that are ready to show up.
Do you want to show up for your customers?
Further information:
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