It’s no secret that the world of marketing is dizzyingly fast-paced, where change being the only constant is not just a cliche. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on the latest trends and techniques, something new comes along to shake things up. Over the last few decades, the B2B journey has steadily become elaborate and complex – with more stages and more customer touchpoints being thrown into the mix every now and then. Know-hows and best practices periodically become outdated; user expectations and needs keep changing. You know your destination – a successful purchase – is out there somewhere, but how on earth are you supposed to get there? It’s enough to make you want to pull a Michael Scott and just declare (intellectual) bankruptcy!
In recent years, no change has been more evident and drastic than the one that has swept the B2B customer journey in the aftermath of the pandemic.
A Blueprint of the B2B Buying Journey
The B2B buying journey is the process that businesses go through when considering purchasing products or services from another business. Let’s take a look at a very simplified basic structure of this journey:
- Identification of a need or problem: The buyer becomes aware of a need or problem that they want to solve. This can be triggered by a variety of factors, such as a change in business objectives, a new product or service offering, or a problem with their current solution (like when your coffee machine breaks down and you need to replace it ASAP).
- Research and evaluation of potential solutions: Once the buyer has identified their need or problem, they will typically begin researching potential solutions. This may involve conducting online research, talking to industry experts, or seeking recommendations from colleagues (aka, asking their coworkers if they know of any good coffee machine brands). At this stage, the buyer is looking to gather information about the options available and assess which ones are the best fit for their needs.
- Decision-making: After researching and evaluating potential solutions, the buyer will enter the decision-making stage. This is where they will consider various factors such as the competitive landscape, budget, and internal processes to determine which solution is the best fit. The buyer may also seek input from various stakeholders, such as colleagues or upper management, to help make their decision (aka, getting approval from their boss to buy that fancy espresso machine).
- Purchase: Once the decision has been made, the buyer will proceed with the purchase. This may involve negotiating terms, signing a contract, and completing any necessary paperwork (aka, clicking “add to cart” and entering their credit card info).
- Post-purchase evaluation: After the purchase has been made, the buyer will typically conduct a post-purchase evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the solution and determine whether it has met their needs. This may involve gathering feedback from internal stakeholders, analyzing data on the solution’s performance, or seeking additional support or resources (aka, brewing that first cup of coffee to see if it meets their expectations).
While this breakdown seems rather linear, when mapping the actual buying journey, it becomes evident that some of these activities happen simultaneously. Research and consensus creation during decision-making, for example, are processes that remain ongoing right up until a purchse is made. Buyers often revisit multiple tasks before making a decision, leading to a complex and non-linear path.
A Seismic Shift: Changes in B2B Buying Behavior
When the pandemic hit, B2B businesses were hit significantly harder than B2C, because the former has always been more contingent on in-person sales, with longer and more complex buying cycles. While many businesses were already turning towards digital transformation, lockdowns made it a necessity. The research stage of the B2B purchase journey, in particular, has since become streamlined, with buyers now conducting most of their research online to make purchase decisions. In fact, 17% of a buyer’s time is now allocated to meeting with suppliers, whereas 27% is spent on conducting independent online research.
The shift in the B2B purchasing process is characterized by a few key aspects:
The Journey is Now Less Predictable.
77% of buyers state that their most recent purchase was difficult or complex.
Buyers now create their own paths to purchase, and prospects are able to come up with their own terms and conditions based on the information they gather online. This shift has led to the abandonment of traditional journey maps and conversion points, as well as longer buying cycles and more touchpoints. Since a buying group for a complex B2B solution can include up to ten decision-makers, there are often conflicting information and opinions to consider. All these factors contribute to the complexity of the B2B purchasing process.
Buyers are Calling the Shots.
45% of the time spent on buying activities goes into independent research.
B2B buyers are taking control of the purchasing process and are becoming more reliant on digital channels for information gathering. Websites, social media, and webinars are now the most important sources for B2B buyers. This shift means that the traditional handoff from marketing to sales no longer exists, and the process has become more parallel than serial.
Simplified Information Leads to Smooth Purchases.
Helpful supplier information increases purchase ease by 2.80x and odds of landing a bigger deal by 3x.
Conflicting information can decrease consumer trust and the chances of a big purchase by almost 160%. Businesses that provide clear, helpful information to buyers stand a higher chance of driving sales, so it’s important for companies to prioritize the quality of the information they provide. This can include customizing information for each buyer’s needs, leveraging experts to supplement the limitations of sales reps, and simplifying the buying process as much as possible. By making it easier for buyers to complete their purchasing tasks, companies can increase the likelihood of making a successful sale.
Navigating the Tidal Wave of Changes
Within this complex B2B buying journey, effective B2B marketing should above all focus on simplifying and enhancing the customer’s experience. How exactly does one achieve this simplification in a landscape that is complex and prone to frequent shifts? At Heltr Skeltr, we believe in focusing on two critical, high-reward aspects to ensure agility in the face of change.
Boost Buyer Enablement.
Buyer enablement involves equipping buyers with the information, resources, and tools they require to make informed purchasing decisions. It is the counterpart of sales enablement that aims to assist buyers in their buying journey by providing them with guidance and practical support, making the process smoother and more efficient. By providing your potential customers with the right information and tools, you’ll not only increase the chances of closing a sale, but also establish a strong foundation for a long-term business relationship. This is especially important in the B2B buying journey, as the stakes are often high and the decision-making process can be complex. According to Gartner VP Brent Adamson, “There’s a massive opportunity for supplier organizations to simplify the purchase process by providing customers the information they need to anticipate obstacles and overcome them.”
The first step in buyer enablement is understanding your target audience. This means not only identifying the specific companies that make up your target market, but also gaining a deep understanding of their pain points, goals, and decision-making processes. This will help you create content, resources, and tools that are tailored to their specific needs. Next, it’s important to make this information easily accessible to your potential customers. This can be done through a variety of channels, such as your website, social media, email campaigns, and in-person events. It’s also essential to make sure your content is easily searchable and easy to find. Having a well-designed and user-friendly website with a clear structure and search function can go a long way in this regard. Another key aspect of buyer enablement is providing multiple resources and tools that cater to different stages of the buying journey. For example, a white paper or case study can help educate a potential customer during the initial research stage, while a product demo or free trial can help them move closer to making a purchase.
By Gartner standards, content that meets the qualifications of buyer enablement must be:
- relevant to the majority of our buyers
- easy for the customer to use quickly and effectively
- useful for customers in accomplishing the intended buying job
- credible, objective, and highlighting unique differentiators
- easily shareable
- aligned to customer needs and painpoints
Mould the “Messy Middle”.
A big part of customer enablement is to understand every part of the customer journey. Alistair Rennie and Jonny Protheroe, in the Think with Google report “Decoding Decisions: Making Sense of the Messy Middle” talk about how people make decisions in a messy manner — and this is painfully accurate when it comes to purchase behaviour. The “messy middle” is the “complicated web of touchpoints” between the first step (identification of need) and the purchase, a space in which a buyer processes all of the information and choices discovered along the way. This is where customers make up their minds about brands and products – and to maximize enablement, this space must be leveraged.
As customers explore and evaluate their options, they engage in two distinct mental modes: exploration, where they gather information about a category’s products and brands, and evaluation, where they compare and contrast the information. This process happens across a variety of online sources, including search engines, social media, review websites, and aggregators. Customers loop through these modes multiple times until they reach a purchase decision. Throughout this journey, cognitive biases shape their behavior and influence their choices. By leveraging these biases, it is possible to positively influence buyers to close a sale. In a large-scale shopping experiment, 310,000 purchase scenarios were simulated across various industries. Participants were asked to pick their first and second favorite brands within a category, and biases were applied to see if preferences would change. The results of the experiments showed that even fictional brands with no prior exposure to consumers can perform well when “supercharged” with benefits such as 5-star reviews and discounts. In one scenario, a fictional car insurer won 87% of consumer preference.
Thus, while the middle stage of the buying journey seems like a messy labyrinth of confusion, principles of behavioral science can help control the consumer experience in this space. According to Rennie and Protheroe, the following strategic actions are key to ensuring marketing success in the messy middle:
- Establish a strong brand presence to keep your products and services top-of-mind as consumers explore their options.
- Utilize the principles of behavioral science cleverly and ethically to make your proposition irresistible during the evaluation process.
- Bridge the gap between the trigger and purchase to minimize the time customers spend exposed to your competitors.
- Build flexible, cross-functional teams to avoid traditional branding and performance silos, which create gaps in the messy middle.
Our Take – Marketing Must Evolve
The more complex the B2B buying journeys become, the greater the demand for simplification. For businesses to truly stand out, they will need marketers who can evolve as the consumers evolve – to understand and effectively reach their target audience at every stage of the journey.
Winning marketing must now be more strategic and data-driven, leveraging a variety of digital tools and tactics to build trust, establish thought leadership, and drive conversions. Moreover, it will become increasingly important to measure and optimize efforts, in order to continually improve performance and achieve better results that ensure your business’s growth and success.