Improve Your B2B Customer Journey In 5 Simple Steps

The B2B industry is massive. It is currently in the growth phase. By 2023, The US B2B eCommerce industry alone will reach $1.8 trillion. But does that mean the B2B businesses have figured it all out? 

Well, not exactly. 

Creating a seamless B2B customer journey becomes challenging sometimes. One of the biggest issues B2B companies are facing in recent times is making their customer journey as smooth as that of B2C. 

The key to creating a successful B2B customer journey includes dedicated team efforts, top-notch customer support, and above all, a strategic plan in place. But, of course, easier said than done. In reality, marketers need to go several extra miles to ensure the convenience of the B2B customer journey. 

This article will cover some of the major tactics to improve the B2B customer journey. So, let’s begin! 

What Is A Customer Journey Map And Why Is It Essential? 

A customer journey map/customer journey outlines the stages that a customer passes through while building a relationship with your brand. A comprehensive customer journey map is essential since it covers different stages of a customer’s journey starting from lead acquisition, conversion, purchase, upsell, referrals, and so on. 

In a typical B2B SaaS customer journey, you’ll find the following stages: 

• The awareness stage where you educate a prospect about your products and services 
• The engagement stage where the prospect is aware of your products and subscribes for a free plan or free trial 
• The conversion stage where the prospect converts into a paid customer 
• The next stage in a customer journey map is the onboarding stage. Here you need to complete all the set-ups so that the customer can get started with the usage 
• The next stage is the adoption stage, where the customers invent the new features and get familiar with your value proposition 
• Then comes the escalation stage, where customers face challenges, and they remove those obstacles by seeking support 
• One of the most important stages of the B2B customer journey map is the renewal stage, where customers will either renew or withdraw their subscription based on the value they acquired 
• Finally, there is the reference stage where satisfied customers refer your brand to others 

A customer journey map breaks down all these stages into several customer journey sub-stages to provide detailed insights on a customers’ mindset, the loopholes, and the improvement areas for a better B2B customer journey. Hence, B2B brands should make it a point to create a powerful B2B customer journey map. 

How To Begin Customer Journey Mapping

Now that you understand the concept of a customer journey map and know its effectiveness, it’s time that you start with your own B2B digital customer journey map.

Here’re a few tips to start with: 

• Create a specific, to-the-point buyer persona that you should target 
• Get a clear idea of what your buyers are looking for and what their goals 
• Now you need to find out the major touchpoints for customer interaction 
• Next, try to narrow down the major customer pain points that you can address 
• You can now match them with your offerings and draw the priorities 
• For a visual representation of your B2B customer journey map, you can use tools like IdeaRocket, Dapper apps, etc. 

So, start with these tricks and create your very first customer journey map. 

5 Tried And Tested Tips To Improve Your B2B Customer Journey 

Are you looking for ways to improve your B2B SaaS customer journey? It’s time that you start following these tips that worked wonders for us in customer journey management:

1. Personalize your sales activities
2. Create value-rich content
3. Switch to an omnichannel strategy
4. Explore and experiment with your marketing tactics
5. Customer retention should be your top priority

1. Personalise your sales activities 

Personalization is the key to standing out in an overly competitive B2B industry. This is true for your sales team too.
A single sales strategy can hardly work for all your B2B customers. In fact, it can affect your B2B customer journey on various levels. Hence, organizations should focus on training their sales reps so that they know about their target customers and their expectations and match these with your brand’s offerings to boost conversion. Reps should also get the chance to evaluate their interactions with customers in order to find out the improvement areas. 

A great way to personalize sales activities is through sales enablement software. Salesken’s sales enablement software can help you analyze your sales reps’ conversations with customers to find the gaps and build strategies for improvement.
A sales enablement software can guide your reps during the lead nurturing process and help them close more deals confidently. It can build a data-driven sales approach and work as a confidence booster for your sales team. 

2. Create value-rich content 

Every B2B brands create content. However, they often make the mistake of not adding sufficient value for their target audience.
To improve the journey of your B2B customers, you should add as much value through your content as possible. That’s the key to making a mark and outperforming your competitors. Remember that your prospects are always looking for a service that provides maximum return on their investment. So, content that’s not value-driven can hardly achieve desired results. 

3. Switch to an omnichannel strategy 

Switching to an omnichannel strategy will help you acquire more leads through your sales funnel.
An omnichannel strategy is the best way to convert larger numbers of browsers into customers. So, if you’re still following a single-channel strategy, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities. Also, make sure that all of the business channels are interconnected. 

For example, you may reach out to a client through email, but don’t forget to add your social profiles in your email signature so that the same customer can reach you through a social channel if they prefer. An omnichannel strategy can be costly, especially for startups. However, the results of executing a successful omnichannel strategy can be exemplary. 

4. Explore and experiment with your marketing tactics 

Never stop experimenting with your marketing tactics. Most B2B companies stop exploring new tactics as soon as they find one strategy that works.
However, in marketing, the one-size-fits-it-all approach doesn’t really work. You have to keep experimenting with the latest marketing trends to see how you can transform the B2B customer journey.
For years, B2C organizations have been changing their marketing approach to achieve customer satisfaction. It’s high time that B2B brands also adopt this perspective to develop pro marketing plans. 

5. Customer retention should be your top priority 

Finally, make sure that you’re focusing largely on retaining the existing customers. Concentrating on new customer acquisition doesn’t mean neglecting the existing ones.
A great way to improve retention and enhance the B2B customer journey is through interaction. Ask customers what they feel and how you can improve their experiences. You can arrange surveys, polls, 1:1 sessions to find out customers’ demands and adjust your strategies accordingly. 

How to improve business by customer journey mapping? 

Suppose you have developed a B2B customer journey map for your business. But what next? You need to know how you can utilize it to improve your B2B customer journey. Here are some ways to harness the findings of your B2B customer journey map in favor of your business: 

1. Identify the gaps in your existing strategy 

A customer journey map guides you through your sales funnel and shows you the points where leads drop off.
This is a great way to find out the gaps and change them into converting hooks. Suppose your customer journey map shows that majorities of the leads drop off from your Blogs/Resource page.
This would simply mean that your blogs do not represent your brand’s messaging properly or fail to educate the prospects. Hence, the finding from the B2B digital customer journey map will focus on improving your blog section and writing more relevant content. 

2. Analyse what’s working and what’s not 

Once you figure out the gaps from the customer journey map, you should scrutinize each of these drop points properly.
For example, if the Blog page is a major dropping point for your website, you need to go on to check each blog. Or say, most of the prospects are dropping off from your sales funnel after receiving your emails. That would mean evaluating each email that is going out to examine what’s lacking in them and how one can make them more personalized. 

3. Find new ways to adopt customization 

A customer journey map shows you all the customer touchpoints to get an idea of the big picture. Marketers should make an individual evaluation of each of these touchpoints to identify more personalization opportunities.
For example, let’s assume that you’re targeting both B2B and B2C users. Evidently, the requirements of both these groups are completely different.
The B2C users can demand low prices, whereas B2B users will expect more features and scaling options. A customer journey map helps you differentiate between the expectations of these two groups of customers. Hence, you can make the changes based on the demands of the respective users. 

Improve your B2B customer journey with Salesken 

 Are you looking for the right set of tools to power up the B2B customer journey? Get started with Salesken! We help you capture and analyze data insights from each sales call to focus on the improvement opportunities. Want to know more? Start your free demo!