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New B2B Buying Journey & its Implication for Sales

B2b buying process has changed, and your sales strategy must, too, a new understanding of the b2b buying process is needed.

Sales leaders often attribute this lack of customer access to a failure on the part of sellers to deliver enough value as part of a typical sales interaction.

However, in studying ways to address this access challenge‚ Gartner research found a different reality altogether. The problem is rooted far less in reps’ struggles to sell and far more in customers’ struggles to buy.

Learn what sales must do to adapt

Download our special report, “cso update: the new b2b buying journey and its implication for sales.”.

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Sellers have little opportunity to influence customer decisions

The ready availability of quality information through digital channels has made it far easier for buyers to gather information independently, meaning sellers have less access and fewer opportunities to influence customer decisions.

In fact‚ Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. When buyers are comparing multiple suppliers‚ the amount of time spent with any one sales rep may be only 5% or 6%.

Brent Adamson

The customers buying journey is hard

The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers‚ each armed with four or five pieces of information they have gathered independently and must de-conflict with the group. At the same time, the set of options and solutions buying groups can consider is expanding as new technologies, products, suppliers and services emerge.

These dynamics make it increasingly difficult for customers to make purchases. In fact, more than three-quarters of the customers Gartner surveyed described their purchase as very complex or difficult.

B2B Buyers complete a set of jobs to make a purchase

To understand how to best help customers advance through a complex purchase, Gartner research identified six B2B buying “jobs” that customers must complete to their satisfaction in order to successfully finalise a purchase:

• Problem identification.  “We need to do something.”
• Solution exploration.  “What’s out there to solve our problem?”
• Requirements building.  “What exactly do we need the purchase to do?”
• Supplier selection.  “Does this do what we want it to do?”
• Validation.  “We think we know the right answer, but we need to be sure.”
• Consensus creation.  “We need to get everyone on board.”

The buying journey is not linear

B2B buying does not play out in any kind of predictable, linear order. Instead, customers engage in what one might call “looping” across a typical B2B purchase, revisiting each of those six buying jobs at least once.

Buying jobs do not happen sequentially, but more or less simultaneously.

Information drives purchase ease and high-quality sales

All of this looping around and bouncing from one job to another means that buyers value suppliers that make it easier for them to navigate the purchase process.

In fact, Gartner research found that customers who perceived the information they received from suppliers to be helpful in advancing across their buying jobs were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high degree of purchase ease, and three times more likely to buy a bigger deal with less regret.

Suppliers must enable buyers to complete buying jobs

To win in this B2B buying environment, suppliers should focus on providing customers with information that is specifically designed to help them complete their buying jobs.

We call this “buyer enablement” — the provisioning of information to customers in a way that enables them to complete critical buying jobs.

Implications of today’s B2B buying behaviour

Sales reps are a   channel to customers, not the   channel

Customers are largely channel-agnostic when seeking the information they need to get a job done. 

As a result, sales reps are not the only channel to customers, but simply a channel, and alignment across in-person and digital channels is crucial for supporting customers in the way they actually buy.

Supplier pipelines cannot speak the truth

Most sales organisations organise activity around a linear pipeline, seeking to move opportunities from one stage to the next. For customers, however, purchase progress is far better defined in terms of job completion rather than stage progression.

As a result, while pipeline reviews might indicate a preponderance of opportunities stuck in sales Stage 5, for example, there is no way of knowing through a linear, supplier-centric sales funnel where exactly customers are truly struggling to make progress in any given deal.

Sales and marketing must operate in parallel, not serial, fashion

Most sales and marketing teams are organised in serial fashion: Marketing generates and nurtures demand early through digital channels before handing off the most qualified of opportunities to sales for in-person pursuit. Customers, however, do not buy in a linear fashion. Rather, they use both digital and in-person channels with near-equal frequency to complete each of the buying jobs more or less simultaneously.

As a result, in today’s world of B2B buying, there is no handoff from marketing to sales, or digital to in-person. It’s a parallel process, not a serial one.

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The Ultimate Guide to the B2B Buyer’s Journey

What's on this page:.

The B2B buyer’s journey has changed.

Gone are the days of traditional sales tactics; buyers are more clued-up on products and services than ever before.

This presents a challenge to B2B salespeople and marketers. How can they guide prospects from awareness to purchase when so much information is freely available and influences decision-making?

In this blog, we’ll decode the modern B2B buying journey and show you how to redefine your sales and marketing strategies for this new era.

Scroll 👇 for the ultimate guide to the B2B buyer’s journey.

What is the B2B buyer’s journey?

HubSpot de fines it a s:

"The process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and decide to purchase a new product or service."

In a nutshell, it’s a series of steps a buyer takes from first recognising they have a problem to ultimately selecting a solution that best solves that problem.

We’ll explore the different stages of the buyer’s journey later, but first...

Why is the buyer’s journey important in B2B?

When a buyer turns up for a product demo, they already know lots about it. They’ve already done their research, Googling your brand and comparing it to the competition.

This is backed up by the statistics. According to Sirius Decisions , 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally!

What does this plethora of online info mean for sales?

It means that it’s very easy for buyers to collect information independently. And that means your outbound sales reps have fewer opportunities to influence their decisions.

In fact, Gartner research finds that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers.

And if you consider that they compare multiple suppliers, the amount of time they spend with your sales rep may only be 5-6%.

SaaS sales leaders often attribute this lack of customer access to a failure on the part of sellers to deliver enough value in their outreach and demos.

However, the problem is rooted far less in reps’ struggles to sell and far more in customers’ struggles to buy.

The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves 6-10 decision-makers; each armed with 4-5 pieces of information they’ve gathered independently.

At the same time, there are more options and solutions for buying groups to consider; new B2B technologies , products and services emerge every year.

These factors make it increasingly difficult for customers to make purchases. In fact, more than three-quarters of the customers Gartner surveyed described their purchase as very complex or difficult.

Understanding the B2B buyer’s journey is crucial to solving this problem and making your B2B sales process smoother.

Once your reps know who your buyers are, what they’re looking for and where they’re looking, they’ll be able to...

• Improve the buyer experience.
• Build value for your product or service.
• Increase their win rates.
• Move prospects quickly through the sales funnel .

How does the B2B buyer’s journey differ from B2C?

1. you sell to teams, not individuals.

A B2B buyer’s journey is unique in that, a B2B customer is often more than a single customer.

In B2B, you’re selling to an entire team or group of people, all of whom might have input in the purchase decision.

According to a study, 79% of B2B buyers said there are 1-6 people involved in the purchase process. Hence, the decision-making process is longer and more tedious.

This is a clear contrast with the B2C buyer’s journey, where the buyer is often an individual and the purchase decision is faster.

2. The deal sizes are bigger

B2B transactions are typically larger, both in terms of deal/order size and total revenue per customer.

These deals can take a lot longer to develop. But when they do, you often make a lot more money on each sale.

This also means that, as compared to B2C companies, you can be more choosy and afford to pay more to acquire each B2B lead . You want to make sure they’ll be the right fit for your business.

3. The sales cycles are longer

Most B2C purchases throughout the course of a year fall in the ~$100 range. And these can often be made on impulse without too much thought, research, or in-depth analysis.

It’s the complete opposite in B2B.

When you sell a large deal to a big team of decision-makers , the inevitable result is longer sales cycles. The average B2B buying cycle is 6-12 months; this is much longer than B2C.

That means you need a much slower ramp from attention to interest to purchase. You have to break down your B2B marketing and sales strategy into bite-sized chunks that can be consumed over the course of a few months.

The trick is to provide upfront education and value that convinces all the decision-makers to get on board. In other words, you need a logical progression of micro-conversions to seamlessly lead people from one step to another.

4. B2B is more emotional

On the surface, it seems like B2B decision-making would be more logical, while B2C is more emotional. However, that’s not the case.

According to this study conducted by Google, Gartner and Motista , on average, B2B customers are significantly more emotionally connected to their vendors and service providers than B2C customers.

And according to Bain, B2B offerings provide their customers with 40 distinct kinds of value . Some of these revolve around logical decisions (does it offer the features I need? Do I have the budget for it?).

But after that, it becomes more about who’s a better ‘fit’ than which one provides the lowest price. This represents an emotional decision on the part of the B2B buyer.

What are the stages of the B2B buyer’s journey?

From a high-level perspective, the B2B buyer’s journey consists of a three-step process:

• Awareness Stage: the buyer realises they have a problem.
• Consideration Stage: the buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it.
• Decision Stage: the buyer chooses a solution.

When we compare the buyer’s journey vs the traditional sales process, it’s easy to spot where many sales teams fall down.

Too many reps focus on automation and delivering generic, product-based messaging. Instead, they should learn how to guide buyers through their journey.

To improve your sales effectiveness , you have to invest time in your process. Good product knowledge is important, but more so is knowing which stage in the journey your buyers are at and how you can move them onto the next stage.

Now, let’s deep dive into each stage and see what you can do to align your sales process to the buyer’s journey 👇

Aligning the sales process to the buyer’s journey – in 6 easy steps

1. create an awareness of need.

At this early stage, the buyer recognises they have a problem. They identify a challenge they want to solve or an opportunity they want to pursue.

They also ask themselves if the need is significant enough to warrant action.

An example could be: “I need to improve the quality of my sales data .”

Marketing’s job is to create awareness of your product, service, or company. They must educate buyers about their product and how it helps.

To do this, they should create content focused on your buyer’s pain points - not on your own product or brand.

The best sales professionals don’t wait for the buyer’s journey to start — they start it themselves!

For instance, in order to enter the discussion in this early part of the journey, you can take cues from issues affecting your industry.

Post your thoughts about them on social media; this will build up awareness of your product and make potential clients trust you as a source of information.

2. Educate your buyers

Once your buyers acknowledge they have a pain point, then the research begins.

The first stage of research begins with general, broad search terms as buyers explore their options. At this stage, they typically look for educational material, customer reviews, online courses and testimonials.

As they do some research, they’ll begin to understand what does and doesn’t meet their needs. At this point, they might eliminate some of the vendors who don’t provide the functionality or service they’re looking for. Eventually, they’ll narrow their focus to just a few competing companies.

In this stage, they also define...

• The desired outcomes they want from a new vendor or provider.
• Which stakeholders will be involved in the buying decision.
• How they’ll measure success in the short and long-term.

They often use this information to draft an RFP and establish a budget.

Educational content like whitepapers, reports and surveys are critical at this stage. Make sure you have these types of resources on your website.

Use a marketing automation tool and build lead nurturing campaigns to gradually deliver this content to your prospects.

Sales professionals must engage with B2B prospects at this point.

Because this is the stage where buyers evaluate options and draw up shortlists.

Approach likely prospects with the educational content developed by marketing. Demonstrate how your product/service delivers results that exceed the competition. Case studies and other social proof are very useful here.

How has the B2B buyer’s journey changed? Watch this discussion from Cognism’s marketing leaders to find out 🎬

3. Qualify your buyers

At this stage, buyers have clearly defined their goal or challenge and have committed to addressing it.

Once they’ve narrowed down their choices to just a few companies, they’ll return to the research stage. This time, they’ll dive even deeper into each company’s offerings, reviewing how they address their pain points.

In this buying journey stage, they’ll reach out to sales reps for further inquiries or to sit in on personalised product demos . Your buyers will want to really drill down into the features that matter to their teams.

At this point, more stakeholders will likely enter the picture. This brings more biases and diverging opinions into the mix.

As a result, priorities might change along with decision criteria and requirements. ROI usually enters the discussion at this stage.

As your buyers continue their research, you should update their lead scores in your marketing automation tool.

Your goal is to qualify them and keep track of their growing interest.

Sales reps have to help the buyer see the benefits of making a change.

To do this, they should act like trusted advisors, solving objections and providing as much information as the buyer wants.

Don’t be afraid to let a buyer go if your solution really can’t help them.

4. Prove your product’s ROI

In this stage of the journey, B2B buyers (who aren’t always the ultimate decision-makers) often have to secure buy-in from their managers.

To get sign-off from their C-suite colleagues, your buyers will want to see content that addresses things like pricing and ROI. They’ll want to justify spending money on your brand.

When creating content for this stage, remember to speak the language of the C-suite.

Drop the jargon and keep it real - focus on numbers, statistics and testimonials that prove ROI and value for money.

You’ll find more top tips on Cognism’s ultimate guide to C-suite marketing .

At this stage, your sales reps must act like consultants. They have to help the buyer convince internal stakeholders.

Proving your solution’s value is critical. You have to convince the buyer that your solution is better than the rest.

5. Guide the buyer to a decision

Once your buyers have sign-off from the C-suite, they’re ready to select a vendor and make a purchase.

At this point, they’ll start thinking about preparation, implementation, quick start costs, and customer support - the things that determine which solution best fits their needs and budget.

At this point, the customer gets serious about costs. They’ll consider the risks of doing nothing and the risks of choosing the wrong solution. Customers need assurance that implementation will be fast and pain-free.

It’s time to get brand-specific with your content.

Have a number of case studies and customer testimonials on hand. Show your buyers what other companies have achieved in choosing you, and how positive their experience has been.

Your role at this stage of the B2B buyer’s journey is to keep up the momentum!

There will be lots of stakeholders involved and lots of questions to answer. Make sure you’re available and ready to deal with sales objections .

A good way to create urgency is to show the buyer the rewards of choosing your product vs what will happen if they stick with the status quo.

6. Ensure a smooth implementation

Finally, after all these months, your buyers have chosen your product and are ready to purchase. It’s time for paperwork, setup and implementation.

At this stage, pricing and terms enter the discussion. Negotiations will occur; customers will often seek a lower price to reduce risk and financial exposure. While procurement, finance, and other stakeholders compare the implicit and explicit costs associated with your solution, your buyer will continue to research best practices, implementation guides, and more; they’ll want to hit the ground running with their new solution.

Create a drip nurturing program containing helpful content; this will move your customers through the B2B marketing funnel . You can also supply tips for using your product more effectively and efficiently.

If you can help them see more value in your product, they’re far more likely to remain your customer when renewal time comes around.

In this last phase of the B2B buyer’s journey, the sales rep is like the glue holding the deal together!

Liaise with your product and CS teams to ensure the implementation process goes smoothly. When the deal is done, hand your new customer over to CS; make sure you manage the handoff process correctly , or it’ll leave a bad taste in the customer’s mouth.

What is the future of the B2B buyer’s journey?

Where is the B2B buyer’s journey headed?

Our take is this:

It’ll be shaped by three things: technological advancements, changing customer behaviours and evolving market dynamics.

Here are some trends and possibilities 👇

Digital transformation

The B2B buying process will be heavily influenced by digital channels.

Buyers will increasingly rely on online research, social media, and virtual interactions to gather information, evaluate options, and communicate with vendors.

Personalisation and AI

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will enable more personalised experiences for B2B buyers.

AI-driven analytics will provide insights into individual buyer preferences, allowing businesses to deliver targeted content and recommendations.

This trend is already coming to pass with the rise of ChatGPT for sales .

Virtual selling

The rise of remote work and virtual interactions may lead to a more prominent role for virtual selling techniques.

Video prospecting , virtual product demonstrations, and online collaboration tools will become even more critical in engaging buyers.

Emphasis on customer experience

The focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences will intensify.

B2B buyers will demand seamless interactions, efficient communication, and responsive support throughout their journey.

Account-based marketing (ABM)

ABM strategies will gain prominence, allowing businesses to target accounts with personalised messaging and solutions tailored to their needs.

Content evolution

B2B buyers will seek more interactive and engaging content to aid their decision-making.

Videos, virtual reality experiences, and interactive product demonstrations will become key parts of the B2B buyer’s journey.

Predictive analytics

Predictive analytics will play a role in helping businesses anticipate buyer behaviour and preferences.

The future of the B2B buying journey will be proactive, not reactive; salespeople and marketers will be able to address buyer needs in advance.

Post-purchase engagement

The buyer’s journey will extend beyond the purchase.

Post-purchase engagement, customer support, and ongoing relationship-building will be crucial to retaining customers and fostering brand loyalty.

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What Is the Buyer’s Journey? (And Why It Matters)

• July 7, 2021

The buyer’s journey seems simple: awareness, consideration, decision.

But implementing these steps requires a lot of planning and coordination. We’re diving into how and where to get started by sharing a few different frameworks so you can map your buyer journey to your sales process.

What is the buyer’s journey?

The buyer’s journey is an engagement model that takes a customer through three stages of evaluation before making a purchase. This framework asks sales and marketing to work together to provide buyers with the content they need at the right time in the sales process.

What are the three stages of the buyer’s journey?

The buyer’s journey typically includes three stages that a buyer cycles through before making a purchase: awareness, consideration, and decision. Let’s talk about each in more detail to understand their purpose in the buyer’s journey.

The first stage aligns with the top of the sales funnel. The buyer knows they have a pain, but they aren’t sure what solutions are out there. The awareness stage is when your marketers should introduce your product, service, or company.

The content they see must help them understand what you do and how you can help them with their problem. Avoid talking about your brand or your products at this stage.

Consideration

The buyer has done research to figure out what solutions are available for their pain and goals. They have narrowed down a list of vendors that should fit their needs and are ready to engage with a sales rep.

This is the middle of the sales funnel, and your content needs to focus on persuasion and a commitment from your buyer to pursue a full evaluation. The type of content you provide can be much more product-based, but with a focus on the ROI and how your product can increase revenue.

The buyer has reached the bottom of the sales funnel and has chosen a vendor based on features, pricing, set up costs, and customer support. But the journey doesn’t end here. You still need to demonstrate competence and help them give you the formal “yes.” Your content should help them feel ready to deploy and includes case studies, product webinars, and technical guides.

Why is mapping a buyer journey important?

Buyers are not conducting evaluations in face-to-face meetings anymore. The content that you have available needs to capture the attention of digital buyers in every stage of the journey.

Since 72% of buyers will turn to google to search for solutions during the awareness stage, it’s important to have thought leadership and product content ready. Vendor comparison sites like G2 allow buyers to see how your product compares to your competitors; they’ll know if your company starts dropping the ball in features, support, or implementation.

Today’s decision-makers prefer to research and make the decision to purchase remotely . In fact, 99% of B2B buyers claim they would make a purchase entirely through a digital self-service model and are comfortable spending $50K or more.

The buyer’s journey also helps sales reps be more prepared, confident, and successful. Reps can expect higher quality engagement from their prospects and faster deal cycles. By providing customers with a better prospecting experience, reps can build trust with their knowledge and insights.

Are there buyer journey models?

There are a number of models out there so we’ve recommended three that are the best fit for B2B SaaS sales. These models will give you a framework to start mapping your customer journey to your sales process.

• Inbound Buyer’s Journey Model: Suitable for companies with straightforward product evaluations and a bigger focus on new business, rather than growing existing customer spend.
• Circular Model: Appropriate for companies with account-based sales and subscription models that must nurture a customer through their renewal date and beyond.
• Gartner’s B2B Buying Journey Model: Applicable for companies that have complex, big ticket evaluations with multiple decision-makers and long sales cycles.

Inbound Buyer’s Journey Model

HubSpot and IMPACT teamed up to create the inbound buyer’s journey that relies on the three stages of awareness, consideration, and decision. This model is a very straightforward approach to managing content in the buyer journey, especially if your business is focused primarily on acquiring new customers.

Your inbound sales reps need awareness content that helps establish them as trusted advisors without just promoting your brand. Your consideration and decision content then gives reps the tools to showcase their technical competence and their ability to understand their customers needs.

The types of content for each stage include:

• Thought leadership articles
• Educational blog posts
• Whitepapers, infographics, and ebooks
• Guides and checklists
• Explainer videos
• Industry reports

Consideration:

• Technical articles
• Competitor comparisons
• Live and recorded how-to webinars
• Product feature videos
• Success stories, case studies, testimonials
• Product and pricing comparison documents
• Live, personalized demos
• Free trials

Circular model

Anthony Christie created the circular model that can work particularly well for B2B SaaS companies with high-value products or a subscription model. If your company has an account-based selling and marketing plan, the circular model can create consistency in your interactions – even if you have decision-makers who are in different stages of the evaluation.

The six stages of a buyer’s journey can be revisited when your customer wants to purchase additional products or increase your solution’s footprint in their organization.

Most importantly, the model makes it clear what matters the most: that the customer should expect empathy, accountability, and proactive support from your whole revenue team including sales, marketing, client support, and even finance.

Gartner’s B2B Buying Journey Model

Gartner’s buyer journey involves a lot of looping back to earlier stages or content. This is a realistic map for high-value, complex products – especially if you have an enterprise customer. There is no linear path if you have a lot of decision-makers at a target account with shifting priorities, leadership changes, and unexpected changes to requirements.

There are four stages in the Gartner model:

• Problem identification. The buyer(s) know they need to do something about their problem
• Solution exploration. The buyers put out feelers to see what kind of solutions are available in the market
• Requirements building. the buyers works with internal end-users to make sure that the strategic requirements are aligned with tactical needs
• Supplier selection. The buyers validate that the vendor they choose can provide what they need

How to tie your sales process to buyer journey

Once you have decided which model works best for your business, it’s time to map the sales process to the buyer journey. The sales funnel, marketing funnel, and your buyer journey are intertwined. The content you deliver to customers needs to provide value for marketers filling the funnel, and sales reps closing deals and expanding their accounts.

ICPs and personas

Before you can deploy the perfect buyer journey, you need to identify your ideal customer profile. Your ICP is the dream customer for your product and services and has the potential to consistently increase spend over time. So if you’re creating a lot of content but aren’t receiving quality leads, you’ve targeted the wrong people and are spinning your wheels.

The ICP helps you define and drive the right strategy at the start of your buyer journey. This is the company that will most likely purchase your product. To determine who your ICP is, use these key attributes :

• Annual revenue
• Employee size
• Current subscriptions

The next step on your way to deploying a successful buyer journey is to identify buyer personas. These are the individuals at your ICP accounts that will be doing the buying. Creating these quasi-fictional characters helps sales reps relate to their buyers as real humans and informs your content creation strategy.

Your personas showcase the details about your potential client’s business interest, demographics, and even likes or dislikes. To determine which personas your reps and marketers need to target, use market research relevant to your industry – or even better – analyze the data you’ve collected about your existing customer base to identify why they were such a great fit.

Content creation

Now that you have your ICP and your buyer personas ready, you can start mapping your content to the buyer journey. When building your content strategy, use the data and tribal knowledge collected by sales and marketing to create content that resonates with your buyer.

Our webinar on How to Connect Your Sales Process and Buyer’s Journey provides five steps to get started:

• Determine what awareness, consideration, and decision mean for your sales funnel. Use your buyer personas to flesh out your answers.
• Identify where your product can add value. Again, use your personas to create content that is helpful for all of your key decision-makers.
• Create content and resources for awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Remember you need to deliver educational content, technical how-tos, and social proof, respectively.
• Validate that your content is hitting the mark by testing and modifying your content. Your high-performing reps can give you insight into the success of each piece of content.
• Don’t just give reps dozens or hundreds of content pieces and hope it works out. Train them on which content is most effective in each stage.

Measure your success

Don’t forget to measure the success of your buyer journey. These stats can help you tweak content if or when it isn’t working anymore. Key metrics to track the effectiveness of your content strategy include:

• Number of demos held
• Opportunity age (how long it takes to close a deal)
• Account revenue and retention
• Lifetime value of customer

Creating a smooth experience for your buyer is a perfect opportunity to use empathy, build trust, and show value. Learn more about creating an effective content strategy by aligning your personas and utilizing all marketing channels.

Colin Campbell

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B2B Buying Journey: 5 Challenges & 5 Best Practices in 2024

Today, the B2B buying journey is digitized . A McKinsey report indicates that 65% of B2B companies across different industries were transacting online in 2022. 1

Consequently, customers now spend only 5% of their time on sales representatives. 2 So, businesses require newer, creative, effective ways of sales and marketing for adapting to changing customer demands and expectations.

In this article, we will investigate the modern B2B buying journey in its various aspects like stages and challenges. To help businesses in the process, we will list 5 best practices for it.

What is a B2B buying journey?

A B2B buyer journey is a process the prospective buyers goes through before making a purchase, including: 

• researching
• evaluating 
• selecting a product or service

B2B buyers need to be informed about the product in order to understand why it’s a better fit for their needs than any competitor’s offering. Companies must understand how B2B customers research and make decisions, so they can properly direct their marketing and sales efforts to generate more high-value leads and conversions.

B2B marketing teams should gain insights into current market trends as well as customer preferences by understanding their B2B buyers journey. 

What are the stages of a B2B buying journey?

In a traditional buyer’s journey.

The traditional buyer’s journey refers to the linear process of a customer becoming aware of a product or service, evaluating options, and making a purchase. We can list the steps in a traditional buyer’s journey decision-making process as:

1. Identifying the business need or problem

The customer becomes aware of a problem or need that they have and begins to search for information and solutions.

2. Exploring a solution 

The customer conducts research via various ways (online reviews, referrals, websites) to gather information about potential products or services that can meet their needs.

3. Specifying the scope 

The customer evaluates the options they have researched and narrows down their choices. They may compare features and pricing, as well as consider factors such as brand reputation and customer service.

5. Deciding the supplier and finalizing the purchase. 

The customer makes a final decision and purchases the product or service. This can be done online, over the phone, or in person.

6. Evaluating the product/service after the experience. 

After using the product or service, the customer evaluates their satisfaction and may provide feedback or leave a review.

In the modern buyer’s journey

The new buyer’s journey, also known as the modern buyer’s journey, recognizes that the process of making a purchase is no longer linear (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1. The illustration of a modern B2B buying journey

Source: CEB analysis

Customers are more likely to engage with a brand before they have a specific need, and they may research and evaluate options multiple times before making a final decision. Additionally, new technologies and channels have made it easier for customers to research and compare products and services, making the process more complex.

How is B2B buying journey different from B2C buying journey?

The biggest difference between these two buying journeys is their decision makers. Decision makers in B2C buying journey are generally individual customers while it is entire teams or departments of a business in B2B. Typically, a B2B buying group consists of 6-10 decision makers who need an agreement. 3

This fundamental difference leads to others such as:

• Buying criteria : B2B buying decisions often involve a larger number of criteria such as technical specifications, scalability, and integration with existing systems. B2C buying decisions are more likely to be based on personal preferences and emotions.
• Longer sales cycles : B2B sales cycles are often longer and involve multiple meetings and presentations. B2C sales cycles are shorter, and the purchase decision is often made quickly.
• Sales teams : B2B sales teams often include specialists such as engineers or product managers, who can provide technical support and advice. B2C sales teams are more likely to be focused on customer service and building relationships.
• Marketing and sales approaches : B2B companies often use account-based marketing (ABM) and sales strategies, targeting specific accounts and decision-makers. B2C companies typically use mass-marketing and sales strategies, targeting a broader audience.
• Distribution channels : B2B products and services are often sold through intermediaries such as wholesalers or distributors, while B2C products and services are sold directly to consumers through retail outlets or e-commerce platforms.
• Budget and contract : B2B transactions often involve larger budgets and longer-term contracts. B2C transactions are usually smaller and involve shorter-term or one-time agreements.

Top 5 challenges in the B2B buying journey

1. complexity of the journey.

As we mentioned, B2B buying decisions often involve multiple decision-makers from different departments and levels of the organization. Also, as emerging technologies, products, and services enter the market, buying groups now have a greater variety of solutions to choose from.

These circumstances make it harder for customers to complete their purchases easily. The Gartner report revealed that 77% of consumers found their most recent purchase to be intricate and overwhelming. 4

2. Non-linearity of the journey

The non-linearity in a B2B buying process refers to the fact that the process of making a purchase is highly unpredictable.

As we discussed, traditional B2B buying journeys were more predictable and linear, with a clear set of stages that a customer would go through before making a purchase. However, now with the rise of digital channels and technologies, customers have more access to information and can research and evaluate options multiple times before making a final decision (see Figure 1 again). 

On the other hand, the rise of digital channels and technologies also enables other vendors to get in touch with the same customer. This can lead to indecisiveness about the final decision and render the process non-linear.

This nonlinearity can make it difficult for B2B companies to predict when a customer is ready to make a purchase, and which stage of the buying journey they are in. This can make it challenging to:

• develop an effective marketing and sales strategy
• measure the success of these efforts
• identify the decision-makers and influencers within a buying organization and to engage with them effectively

3. Need for personalized and authentic service due to excessive access to information

More than a quarter of the customers in the B2B market conduct independent research online. 5 Although it increases buyer awareness, buyers’ excessive independent access to information can challenge the B2B buying journey for both companies and buyers:

• For companies, it can make it more difficult for sales teams to differentiate their products or services and to effectively communicate their value proposition to potential customers. Customers may already have a good understanding of the market and may be less likely to engage with sales representatives.
• For buyers, it can lead to information overload and make it more difficult to compare and evaluate different options. With so much information available, it can be challenging to determine which sources are credible and reliable.
• For both, it can lead to increased pressure on price as buyers may have more knowledge about the market and be better equipped to negotiate. Additionally, it can also lead to an increase in the number of stakeholders involved in the buying process, making it harder to reach a consensus on purchase decisions.

Excessive information also leads to less personalized and authentic content from the customer’s perspective. Besides the availability of vast amounts of knowledge about their needs, customers desire adjustments that address the complexity of B2B buying, like obtaining a personalized account with modified catalogs and exclusive pricing along with consideration to product availability.

E-commerce is on the rise in the B2B market. 6 Therefore, businesses must embrace an intelligent search-driven experience for their customers if they wish to be successful.

As customers become more informed, they have higher expectations for the level of service they receive. There is a need for companies to stand out by providing a more tailored and customer-centric experience.

Also, personalization and authenticity are required to build trust and credibility with customers, which is particularly important in the B2B space where the buying process is complex.

4. Lack of personal interaction due to the decreasing in-person sales process

According to research, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend only 17% of that time interacting with potential suppliers. 7 If multiple vendors are being evaluated for the same product or service, then each sales rep can expect to get no more than 5-6% of the buyer’s attention during this process.

This means that sales reps have less influential effect on the customers and new digital channels are required for attracting potential buyers.

5. Involvement of many stakeholders

The stakeholders in a buying journey can be:

• Recommenders/influencers
• Decision makers
• Financial representatives

With such complexity, it’s essential to stay organized and manage the back office with precision.

Top 5 B2B buying journey best practices for vendors

1. simplify the buying process.

There are several ways that companies can simplify the complex buying process for customers in the B2B market:

• Define value proposition of the products : Define and communicate the value proposition of your products or services clearly and concisely. This will help customers understand the benefits of the products or services and make it easier to compare different options.
• Streamline the buying process : This can be achieved by automating certain tasks, such as order processing and tracking, and by providing customers with clear and easy-to-use online portals for making purchases.
• Offer helpful information : Provide customers with easy access to relevant and accurate information about products or services. This can include detailed product specifications, case studies, and testimonials.
• Enable multiple options for purchase : Provide customers with multiple options for making a purchase, such as online, phone, or in-person. This will help to accommodate the different preferences and needs of customers.
• Leverage new technology : Use technology such as AI-powered chatbot to provide customers with instant access to information and assistance during the buying process. Although 87% of consumers prefer human interaction, chatbots increase sales by 67%.

2. Adopt a customer-centric marketing strategy

To overcome the nonlinearity challenge, B2B companies can adopt a more customer-centric approach that focuses on understanding the customer’s needs and goals, as well as their buying journey. 

• By using digital tools such as marketing automation and analytics, B2B companies can track and measure the customer’s interactions with the brand and adapt their messaging and engagement strategy accordingly. 
• B2B companies can use account-based marketing (ABM) strategies to target specific accounts and decision-makers, and personalize their messaging and offers.

3. Provide useful & specific information for buyer enablement

For an effective buyer enablement, the buying process should be:

• Relevant to the customer’s specific problems in the journey 
• Easy for the customer to understand and engage with quickly and effectively
• Useful for the customer in accomplishing the intended purchase process
• Credible and backed up by data and facts 

To ensure the best customer experience, buyer enablement should be socially and emotionally resonant while exuding confidence in your brand’s distinctiveness. Doing this will guarantee a positive outcome for both customers and suppliers alike. 

To increase buyer enablement, companies can:

• Conduct customer research : Understand the specific needs and pain points of the target audience by conducting surveys, focus groups, and interviews with current and potential customers.
• Create buyer personas : Use the information gathered from customer research and data analysis to create detailed buyer personas that represent the target audience. These personas can be used to guide the creation of content and resources that meet the specific needs of different segments of the target audience.
• Use customer testimonials : Include customer testimonials and case studies in the content and resources, as they provide valuable insight into how the products or services have helped other customers solve specific problems.

4. Provide engaging and helpful digital information channels for your product

According to research, during the later stages of their purchasing journey, 83% of consumers access one or more digital information channels after the initial contact with sales (see Figure 3). 8 As buyers are increasingly leaning on digital information platforms in their buying journeys, companies should catch up with this need.

Figure 2. Buyer use of digital channels throughout buying process

Source: CEB 2017 Digital B2B Buyer Survey

Companies can provide engaging and helpful digital information channels for their products to attract buyers by implementing these strategies:

• Use a variety of digital channels : Create a presence on multiple digital channels, such as a company website, social media, and email marketing, to reach a wider audience. This can also help to improve visibility and increase the chances of attracting new customers.
• Create a user-friendly website : Make the company website easy to navigate, with clear calls-to-action and well-organized product pages. Use visuals, such as images and videos, to showcase the products and their features.
• Create engaging and informative content : Use a variety of content formats, such as blog posts, videos, and infographics, to provide valuable information about the products and their features.
• Make use of social media : Use social media to engage with potential customers, share content and updates, and build brand awareness.

5. Centralize information exchange with the stakeholders

• Providing self-service options can help ensure buyers acquire the information they seek quickly and easily
• Enabling easy access to key lead and customer-related data can help your sales and marketing teams work more consistently.

If you have questions or need help regarding B2B buying journey, feel free to reach out:

External Links

• 1. “Busting the five biggest B2B e-commerce myths.” McKinsey , 26 January 2022, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/busting-the-five-biggest-b2b-e-commerce-myths. Accessed 13 January 2023.
• 2. “The B2B Buying Journey | Sales Insights.” Gartner , https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey. Accessed 13 January 2023.
• 3. “Win More B2B Sales Deals.” Gartner , https://www.gartner.com/en/confirmation/publications/win-more-b2b-sales-deals. Accessed 13 January 2023.
• 4. Supra note 2.
• 5. Supra note 2.
• 6. “B2B E-Commerce.” Statista , https://www.statista.com/markets/413/topic/458/b2b-e-commerce/#statistic1. Accessed 13 January 2023.
• 7. Supra note 2.
• 8. “CEB Digital B2B Survey.” CEBglobal , https://www.cebglobal.com/content/dam/cebglobal/us/EN/best-practices-decision-support/marketing-communications/pdfs/mlc-infographic-b2b-digital-journey.pdf. Accessed 13 January 2023.

Cem has been the principal analyst at AIMultiple since 2017. AIMultiple informs hundreds of thousands of businesses (as per similarWeb) including 60% of Fortune 500 every month. Cem's work has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider , Forbes, Washington Post , global firms like Deloitte , HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum and supranational organizations like European Commission . You can see more reputable companies and media that referenced AIMultiple. Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised businesses on their enterprise software, automation, cloud, AI / ML and other technology related decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization. He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider . Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.

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How the B2B Buying Journey is Changing

It’s a widely known fact that the COVID-19 pandemic spawned drastic changes in the business sector, dramatically transforming the consumer buying journey across industries. However, consumers aren’t the only ones changing how they approach the purchase process. Transformation is also evident in business-to-business (B2B) commerce.

B2B buyers are now exhibiting wants, expectations, and needs that are different from what we used to know. But how exactly is the B2B buying journey evolving, and how should B2B marketers adapt? Read on to find out!

The New B2B Buying Journey

Over the last few decades, the B2B buying process has become more complex. It has come to include various new stages – identifying business needs, researching solutions, communicating with stakeholders, and evaluating and analyzing options before making a final decision.

However, because of the significant shift in the marketplace structure and the decline in face-to-face interactions due to the COVID-19 health crisis, the B2B purchase journey has become more streamlined.

B2B buyers now conduct shorter and more efficient online research. According to a study conducted by Gartner, 17% of a buyer’s time is spent meeting with suppliers, while 27% is allocated to independent online research.

Here are other significant findings of the Gartner research:

1. Sellers have fewer opportunities to influence customer decisions

Since information is accessible online, B2B buyers can now easily canvas, compare, and gather data about suppliers independently. In evaluating multiple suppliers, they only spend approximately five to six percent of their time communicating with sales representatives. Consequently, sellers have fewer opportunities to influence the purchasing decisions of their prospects.

2. Buyers are researching on their own terms

In-person sales representatives top the list of less critical sources influencing purchasing decisions. On the other hand, websites, social media, and webinars have been ranked as the most important references for B2B buyers. With the prevalence of these platforms, the B2B buying journey is now circulatory instead of linear.

As earlier mentioned, B2B buyers are now afforded more opportunities to look up potential suppliers online. They loop across a typical B2B purchase, completing buying jobs simultaneously. Thus, for B2B sellers, there is no handoff from marketing to sales, as the purchase process is now parallel instead of serial.

3. The B2B buying journey isn’t predictable

B2B buyers are now creating their own paths to purchase, causing a paradigm shift in the B2B buying process. Based on the findings of the Gartner study, prospective clients can now better come up with their own terms and conditions given all the research they conduct and the information they consume. In turn, this ends the commonly accepted and traditionally constructed journey maps and artificially timed conversion points.

Longer cycles and touchpoints have also increased. Add the fact that the typical buying group of a complex B2B solution consists of six to ten decision-makers, each equipped with four to five deconflicting facts they’ve gathered.

Hence, the expanding buying group and the inclusion of validation and consensus creation in B2B buying jobs are making it difficult for customers to purchase efficiently. In fact, 77% of B2B buyers have stated that their latest purchase was complex or challenging.

4. Buyers value information that simplifies the purchase process

The Gartner research shows that customers who perceive information from suppliers as helpful are three times more likely to purchase bigger deals with less regret. In addition, they are 2.8 times more likely to experience ease in their purchase transactions.

For suppliers, this means providing buyers with information that specifically addresses their needs can help drive sales. With customers bouncing from different buying jobs and looping around many sources, simplified information is then crucial to making purchases more manageable.

Also Read: Understanding B2B Marketing Funnel & Role of Email Marketing

5 Ways Marketers Can Leverage the Evolving B2B Buying Journey

In rethinking their marketing strategies to suit the new B2B buying journey, companies have to organize their practices around a circulatory framework. Instead of moving opportunities from one level to the next and waiting for deals to be closed before progressing, they should simultaneously sell their solutions with enough predictability and speed.

Here are ways sellers can effectively leverage the new B2B buying process:

1. Simplify the buying process.

B2B transactions are generally complicated. And as buyers rely less on sales representatives to get information about a product, it becomes vital to improve the quality of limited interactions with customers.

Marketers can achieve this by customizing information according to each buyer’s needs. Leveraging experts to supplement the expected shortcomings of sales representatives can also enable customers to better navigate the purchasing process.

2. Provide useful information to enable customers to complete buying jobs.

With technology dominating almost every aspect of business, B2B buyers now look for readily accessible information on the Internet when embarking on the purchase process. Marketers can maximize this opportunity by integrating into their campaign the strategy called buyer enablement . This is aimed at providing useful information that allows buyers to complete the buying journey as efficiently as possible.

Buyer enablement can come in the form of prescriptive advice, which seeks to ease customers’ buying stress by providing recommendations and discussing best practices. Specific examples include webinars, blogs, and white papers.

Practical tools that supplement prescriptive advice are also a form of buyer enablement. These include tools in evaluating suppliers, checklists, and ROI calculators, among others.

3. Support B2B buyers through online channels.

Whether online or offline, B2B buyers want immediate feedback. They want information that’s relevant to their needs, wherever they are on the customer decision journey. As such, suppliers should strive to be responsive in all stages of the purchase process to allow customers to accomplish buying tasks as efficiently as possible.

It’s particularly important that suppliers establish an integrated ecosystem using multiple platforms to amplify their reach and expand customers’ access to relevant product information. Due to the restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, customers have turned to a vast array of channels when searching for product information. This serves as an opportunity for suppliers to leverage digital platforms to support customers in navigating the buying process.

4. Adopt a buyer-driven B2B marketing strategy.

Customers simultaneously seek validation and consensus from various stakeholders throughout the buying process. These two jobs are always present while they are purchasing. It then results in a buying journey that resembles more of a maze rather than a linear path.

To succeed in moving forward, suppliers should simplify their prospects’ B2B buying process with buyer enablement. They should guide their customers as they explore their options and provide insights to help their prospects overcome anticipated obstacles.

5. Fill in the gaps.

An effective B2B marketing campaign incorporates empathy into the equation. As such, B2B marketers should ensure that their strategies connect, align, and respond to how buyers decide on their purchases.

This entails understanding the entire buyer’s journey and how the acquisition funnel works. In particular, knowing how their prospects research online can enable suppliers to close a deal.

It is also essential that sellers measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts by taking a look at the numbers reflected in the key performance indicators . This way, they can optimize their strategies and further refine them accordingly.

The Messy Middle: How to Make the Buyer’s Journey More Predictable

The messy middle is the critical part of the buyer’s journey where the customer decides to purchase or not. What lies in the messy middle is a complicated web of touchpoints that varies from business to business. While this is the case, there is one thing that’s common across all types of businesses and industries: the buyers’ tendency to change their minds.

As buyers embark on the purchase process, cognitive biases shape their buying behavior. These biases influence their decision to choose one product or service over another.

While hundreds of cognitive biases exist, here are the six common ones:

• Category Heuristics

These are short yet accurate descriptions of products or services that help simplify purchase decisions.

• Power of Now

This refers to timeliness or recency, where a seller delivers a product or completes a service immediately to strengthen their proposition.

• Social Proof

This refers to the use of reviews and recommendations from a significant number of people to persuade potential buyers to purchase a certain product.

• Scarcity Basis

This operates on the premise that when a product’s availability decreases, its desirability consequently increases.

• Authority Bias

This includes tapping experts or trusted sources to sway prospects into supporting a product or service.

• Power of free

This is associated with the psychological phenomenon that people change their behavioral patterns when something free comes along, as freebies are a powerful emotional trigger that prompts buyers to choose products with giveaways.

These biases can become powerful tools when applied intelligently and responsibly by empowered teams. They can fill the gaps in the messy middle, allowing buyers to navigate the purchase process with ease while enabling sellers to close more deals.  

Future-Proof Your Business

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the continuing digital revolution, has indeed transformed the B2B buying process. It prompted a shift in B2B transactions, reshaping business processes to fit into the new reality.

In navigating the new B2B buying process, B2B sellers and marketers should remember that the goal is to guide buyers through the new purchase process. In particular, providing customers with relevant and responsive information can enable suppliers to simplify the complex B2B buyer’s journey. All this while helping sellers secure brand presence and win potential buyers. 

Looking to grow your business through content marketing? Spiralytics has a pool of digital marketing experts who can help you reach your business goals. Contact us today to learn more about our content marketing services !

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Chapter 1: The B2B Customer Journey + Buying Process

Welcome to Chapter 1 of A Master Guide To B2B Content Marketing .

Understanding the B2B customer journey is the first step to building an effective content marketing strategy.

The art of B2B content marketing involves aligning your business goals with your audience's needs. A good B2B content marketing strategy caters to your audiences' personalized interests within specific phases of the buying process and sales funnel.

Let’s run through the top 10 factors that define B2B customer journeys, looking at the buying process in particular.

1. Longer Nurturing Times

B2B sales conversions are not immediate impulse buys. They are highly logical decisions that require multiple data inputs, and will be considered at more than one level of an organization.

• Gartner found that 77% of B2B buyers found purchasing very complex or difficult. The process is not linear, with buyers typically looping back to previous stages. 
• On average, 75% of B2B companies take at least 4 months to win a new customer, but more complex deals can take much longer. 

It takes time to fully define purchasing criteria, explore options, and weigh them up before reaching a final decision. That’s why the B2B customer conversion process is a sustained effort that requires a diversity of content to support effective lead nurturing strategies.

2. Multiple Buyer Roles With Differing Priorities 

Collective purchasing decisions will make or break a business, so of course, it’s not taken lightly. A B2B buying process will potentially involve multiple departments and job roles. 

• Data from 2017 found that an average of 6.8 people were involved in purchasing decision making, up from the previous year. (Of course, this depends on the size of your target customers’ businesses.)
• Today, 73% of people involved in the B2B buying process are millennials, and 81% of non-C-suiters have a say in purchase decisions.

Your content library needs to target decision-makers for conversion, but equally cater to influential researchers and end users as crucial players within the process. If you're only marketing to the highest level, you're overlooking people who need to notice you before things progress to the decision-making stage.

There are typically 4 main buyer roles:

1. Influencer or Initiator - A person close to the process who identifies the need for an outside solution and whose opinion counts in the buying decision. They could be an end user, a team manager, or act in an advisory capacity.

2. Information Gatekeeper - A person who controls the flow of information and communication in the organization, whether a manager or a tasked assistant. They typically control access to decision makers.

3. Decision maker - The person who makes a final call and approves the purchase. They aren’t often an end user, but sit higher up within the managerial hierarchy with priorities that could differ from an end user or manager.

4. End User - The people who will actually use your solution or service in an operational capacity. They might become the main contacts for the relationship on a day-to-day basis after purchase.

3. Online Research Is the Biggest Purchasing Activity

It is vital that your brand shows up during the online research process. In 2019, Gartner found that 27% of the complete B2B buying process is spent on online research. This is the largest portion of time spent on purchasing activities. 

• The amount of time spent on online research increases in line with the value of the purchase, but is 20 hours on average. 
• Your sales reps may get as little as 5% of total buyer time during the whole process. B2B buyers can carry out over half of the buying process through digital touchpoints before they establish contact.
• In terms of making a decision, buyers will progress more than 70% of the way to making a final decision before engaging sales representatives. 
• 62% of B2B buyers say they can make a purchase selection based solely on digital content. 

4. Vendor Websites Is the Favored Research Channel

Most B2B buyers will use your website as their primary research tool.

When it comes to channels for purchase planning specifically, a 2018 Statista survey of global B2B marketing professionals found:

• 88% of buyers most commonly used vendor websites, returning to sites multiple times in their journey. 
• 70% go directly to a known website.
• 67% conduct a general internet search.
• 53% go to social media to find purchasing information. 
• 50% used LinkedIn to research vendor content.

5. Buyers Want Content To Guide Them

When it comes to online research, 32% of buyers said they couldn’t find the information they needed, and 37% said there was not enough information relating directly to purchase. 

Creating clear and streamlined content flows for defined buyer personas according to their interests, roles and needs is a crucial goal to work towards.

• C-level executives ( 60% ) and VPs (82%) report that content-related issues - such as not understanding the content or not being able to share content internally - are the top factors slowing down purchase decisions.
• 45% of buyers said they want a personalized content portal to help them find relevant content. 

Content personalization is a trend that continues to grow as inbound marketing evolves, raising customers’ expectations.

6. Several Pieces of Content Are Required (But Not Too Many) 

Key content touch points must be planned to progress users within a B2B buying process to completion. Expanding your customer touch points while portraying your brand authority consistently at every journey stage is a key part of building brand awareness and then trust. 

More B2B marketing touch points are required than B2C on average. We’re talking around 10 digital touch points before first contact as a general rule of thumb. And most buyers ( 77% ) will consume more than 3 pieces of long-form content before making contact.

However, content provision needs to be strategically considered with relevance prioritized over volume. There is a sweet spot for deeper-funnel content volume in terms of driving conversion. 

• Buyers have been found to consume 13 pieces of purchasing content on average, with 8 being from the leading supplier they are considering.
• 86% of buyers get overwhelmed when there are more than 10 pieces of purchasing content to read from an individual supplier.

7. Trust Is the Most Important Factor

The larger and longer-term investments typically involved in B2B mean that buyers need to build trust before they make any commitments. Relationship building for extracting high lifetime value is a much larger part of the equation. Your leads are evaluating your company for the commitment to serve their best interests and deliver what they expect over time with consistency. 

• Over 90% of decisions to buy from another business depend solely on the trust created.
• 84% of buyers say they would be more likely to purchase from a supplier they had a good relationship with, even if their competitors had better sales terms.
• 75% of B2B marketers found that content marketing was successful for building trust during 2021.

8. Industry Trends and Tech News Is Favored

The B2B customer journey can start long before an active buying process. Building topical authority within your niche helps you reach the relevant people to build brand awareness and credibility. You want your brand to come top of mind when a buying process is activated. 

• Learn more about brand awareness and how to measure it .

Most buyers ( 75% ) say that thought leadership helps them create a vendor shortlist, and 49% of decision-makers say thought leadership has directly led them to do business with a company.

B2B audiences regularly spend time consuming content:

• 88% of B2B professionals consume business-related content online at least once a week and are prepared to spend time consuming content. 
• A 2019 study found that 34% of buyers would invest 30-60 minutes in a content session, and 26% spent as long as it took if the content was great. 
• In 2021 overall B2B content consumption increased by 22% .

In terms of topics, B2B buyers are most interested in industry trends, especially backed up by data and metrics: 

• Clutch found that the leading reasons for consuming content was to stay up to date with industry trends ( 45% ) and industry technology (45%), followed by 24% looking for small business topics. 
• IT and tech buyers are particularly driven to stay up to date with new trends. Isoline’s 2019 survey of IT buyers found that 66% of respondents were aiming to learn about industry developments, and 56% read for purchase planning.
• 66% of surveyed B2B buyers say they want vendors to use more data and research to support their content.

9. Content Must Integrate With Sales Processes

While B2B buyers spend most time researching online, 70% still want contact with a sales rep at some point in the buying process. B2B is significantly more dependent on people relationships for conversion. 

Marketing content should integrate with your sales team’s processes for a smooth wooing and conversion process. Your business's financial success depends on how easy it is for buyers to move through the funnel and convert. Every part needs to function together, with a smooth hand over to sales staff for qualified leads.

Automated marketing tools can really help you with this, but more on that in Chapter 4!

Given the importance of online content marketing for building B2B brand awareness and nurturing the buying process, your business can’t afford not to show up online!

Search engines are particularly important at the starting point of a buying process. However, pre-building brand awareness among your target audience using online thought leadership puts you 10 steps ahead of competitors who don’t do this as well. You want buyers to come directly to your website as the first port of call.

Getting to grips with what your audience are most interested in and providing genuinely helpful content relevant for your offering will make sure they think of you first when a buying process is activated. To achieve this, leverage online channels where your audience spends time consuming business content, such as LinkedIn, online media publications, eNewsletters and Google.

Once a buying process starts, your job is to provide clear content for the consideration + action stages by explaining solutions, the value they deliver and supporting evidence.

• Data visualization is a crucial tool for understanding and optimizing how your marketing content performs.
• Learn how to build your marketing data inputs .

And this concludes our exploration of the B2B buyer customer journey.

Discover more of this four-part series below, designed to help you achieve your content marketing goals. Or why not bookmark them for later?

More In This Series:

• Chapter 2: Building Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy
• Chapter 3: How To Create B2B Marketing Content
• Chapter 4: Distribution Tactics for B2B Marketing Content

Unlock Revenue Growth With Data

Knowing where to invest marketing budget to increase contribution margin and overall revenue growth is the #1 pressing challenge for any marketing or growth leader.

As multichannel complexity and media budgets grow, attribution becomes one of those topics we really can’t ignore.

To truly understand the most valuable customer journey design, relying on default attribution reporting within ad platforms or Google Analytics just doesn’t cut it. In fact, it can even do more harm than good due to misattribution and double attribution - a big problem with these uncensored (and self-serving) tools. 

The trouble with free on-platform attribution reporting (like Facebook or Google Analytics) is that they are siloed walled gardens that work in isolation with their own limited data sets. Your most powerful and valuable attribution analysis needs to cover everything, directly tied back to revenue results. 

Without a proactive attribution strategy that connects all your customer journey and conversion data, optimized customer journey design will remain an elusive mystery. Highly influential channels like dark social or offline interactions are often underestimated or completely missing, while non-profitable campaigns are over-indexed. 

The difference in business results can easily stack up to millions of dollars in wasted budget and lost opportunities - especially where larger paid media budgets are involved. 

 Let’s explore how marketers can master attribution to start hitting revenue targets with much greater confidence and certainty.

The Impact of Not Using Accurate Attribution Reporting

The impact of not using attribution reporting - or using it poorly - is worth understanding. It can have multiple negative impacts on decision-making and overall business performance.

The common consequences are:

Incomplete Customer Insights Cause Poor CX

An incomplete understanding of customer preferences, motivations, and pain points hinders the ability to tailor marketing strategies to effectively engage and convert customers.

This can result in a lack of adequate content personalization and a poorer customer experience (CX), meaning your brand gets overlooked in favor of others by potential customers.

Unprofitable Resource Allocation

Struggling to accurately identify the marketing channels, campaigns, or touchpoints that are driving conversions or desired outcomes results in less effective use of resources.

For example, over-investing in underperforming channels, and underinvesting in high-impact touchpoints, wasting budget in the process.

Poor Revenue Growth and Limited Brand Equity

Incorrect assumptions about the impact of specific touchpoints or channels results in suboptimal marketing performance and missed opportunities.

If marketing efforts fail to engage and convert customers effectively over time, the business can suffer from stunted revenue growth, also putting a cap on brand equity.

Understanding the Challenges for Accurate Attribution

Marketers can’t fully rely on free attribution solutions for the insights they need to drive significant optimizations. Results can be significantly misleading when solely using free on-platform attribution reporting.

On-platform attribution issues:

• ‍ No Cross-Channel Visibility - On-platform attribution doesn't have full visibility into the performance of other channels, or wider customer journey outside of their own ecosystem, acting as walled gardens. This limited view can make it difficult to understand the true impact of each channel on conversions and ROI (or ROAS). 
• Double Attribution - When using multiple platforms, there's a risk of double attribution - where more than one platform takes credit for the same conversion. This overlapping attribution may cause businesses to overestimate the performance of certain channels or campaigns, and consequent overinvestment stunts overall marketing ROI.
• Inconsistent Attribution Methods - Different platforms apply different attribution rules, leading to inconsistencies in how they assign credit to various touchpoints. This inconsistency can make it challenging to accurately compare the performance of different marketing channels or campaigns.
• Tracking Limitations - With increasing data privacy regulations, third-party platforms may face challenges in accurately tracking user behavior across channels. A custom attribution model can help overcome some of these limitations by incorporating first-party data and other tracking methods.
• Lack of Customization - On-platform attribution reporting may not be tailored to your specific needs, goals, and marketing strategy. A custom attribution model, on the other hand, can be designed to accurately reflect a business's unique customer journey, allowing for more precise insights into the performance of each marketing channel and campaign.

There is a compelling case for marketers to invest in their own customized attribution solutions. Especially when paid media investments start becoming more significant.

However, accurate attribution modeling isn’t one of the most straightforward tasks for a marketing department to tackle.

There are several hurdles to overcome to extract and benefit from the most valuable insights:

  1. Tracking Data Across Complete Journeys  

A typical user journey involves multiple devices, channels, platforms, and time breaks between visits, making it difficult to track a complete customer journey path from the first touchpoint to conversion. Cross-device tracking techniques are needed, such as device matching or probabilistic modeling.

  2. Data Privacy  

Tracking restrictions and cookie limitations can limit the ability to track customer interactions across marketing channels, sometimes requiring workarounds. Yet it's essential to adhere to data privacy regulations, maintain transparency and obtain appropriate consent from customers when collecting and utilizing their data.

  3. Offline Data Tracking  

Marketers may need to implement strategies such as unique identifiers, coupon codes, QR codes, or call tracking to link offline interactions to specific customers and attribute them properly. However, implementing and managing these tracking mechanisms may require additional resources and operational adjustments, including manual data entry from both customers and staff.

  4. Data Quality and Completeness  

Ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the data is crucial for building reliable attribution models. Marketers must establish data quality control measures, address data gaps, and perform regular data validation to maintain the integrity of the data.

  5. Data Integration  

Integrating data from various sources, both online and offline, can be complex. Offline data sources such as in-store purchases, call center interactions, or direct responses may not be easily captured and linked to other digital data. Marketers need to develop data integration processes to build a unified view of complete customer journeys.

  6. Attribution Modeling Complexity  

Choosing the best-fit modeling approach for marketing goals, and accounting for multiple touchpoints both online and offline, adds complexity to attribution modeling. Marketers need to understand statistical models that can properly attribute credit to different touchpoints based on their real impact on conversions. This requires analytical expertise, plus the budget for necessary data tools as marketing complexity grows.

Types of Attribution Data

Data attribution models are nothing without the data that you feed into them.

There are 2 main sources of attribution data.

1. Software-based Attribution Data

This utilizes digital tracking tools, such as analytics platforms or marketing automation software, to track and record user interactions and automatically attribute conversion actions to specific marketing touchpoints.

Pros - It provides objective and granular data on user interactions and conversions, and enables real-time tracking and analysis of customer journeys. The reliance on voluntary self-reporting and subjective recall is reduced.

Cons - Aside from missing touchpoints that are not digital or easily trackable by software, it can be complex to implement and require technical expertise. You’ll need the right tracking set up for accurate data and reliable insights, and the analytics tools.

  2. Self-reported Attribution Data

This is data collected directly from your customers and leads, who share information about the touchpoints that influenced their decision-making process. It’s usually collected via an online form or survey but can also be collected in direct conversation with customer-facing staff and then recorded in a CRM.

Pros - It allows for qualitative data collection, using direct insights from the individuals themselves to capture subjective factors and nuances that software-reported attribution may miss, such as offline interactions or word-of-mouth referrals.

Cons - It relies on individuals' willingness to provide information, and their memory and perception which may not always be accurate or complete. This type of data can be more time-consuming and resource-intensive to collect and analyze.

Hybrid Attribution Data

Combining both self-reported and software-based data sources into attribution modeling is what is known as hybrid modeling. It’s the ideal solution to mitigate the drawbacks of each data type, providing the most fully comprehensive understanding of your customers journeys.

Next, depending on your marketing activity and data tracking sophistication, you’re going to have some of the following types of data sets to work with.

The best way to categorize your data inputs is to split it into channel data and event data.

1. Event Data (What Happened?)

Event data typically includes:

• Conversion Data - Conversion data includes information about the desired actions taken by users, such as purchases, form submissions, or sign-ups. Conversion goals need to be set for each journey stage. ‍ ‍
• ‍ Behavioral Data – Any data related to customers' online behavior, such as organic website visits, page views, time spent on site, clicks, search queries, and interactions with specific content or features. ‍
• Clickstream Data – This is a record of each click a consumer makes while browsing online. Tracking all these actions can help brands form an accurate understanding of the most effective consumer journey design. ‍
• Ad Impressions and Clicks - Ad impressions combined with click data provides information on the number of times an ad was displayed to users, and the corresponding clicks made. This data helps gauge the effectiveness of specific ads. ‍
• CRM and First-Party Data - This data provides long-term insights into customer behavior and can include survey responses, purchase history, and any interactions with the brand. CRM data is necessary to link the direct impact on revenue generation and CLV.

Note, there are two common ways to give credit to touchpoints within a conversion sequence: post-click, or post-view.

Post-click Conversion Data - If attribution is done on a post-click (not necessarily last-click) basis, clicked touchpoints will get a part of the conversion credit as long as the action happens within the defined lookback window.

Post-view (or view-through) Conversion Data – Here, the content a user viewed (impressions) within the specified lookback window also gets part credit for a conversion. Most of the advertisers who advertise on multiple channels will have video and social media as part of the conversion journey. These channels usually are not driving clicks, but still contribute to outcomes. This data is more challenging to accurately collect.

The lookback window is how far back a conversion action is included, usually measured in days. So a 7-day lookback window would only include advert impressions or clicks 7 days before the customer converted. In low-cost eCommerce transactions where the selling cycle is short, the most relevant lookback window only might be 7 – 14 days. Whereas for more complex sales like business software, a lookback window of 60 days could be used.

‍ 2. Channel Data (Where Did It Happen?)

Channel source data typically includes:

• Referral Data - This identifies the source that referred users to your website (or app). It can attribute from the high-level referral sources, such as search engines, social media or email, right down to the specific pieces of content.
• Device and Platform Data – This gives information about the devices and platforms used by users during their customer journey. It allows marketers to track cross-device interactions and attribute conversions across different devices. Device data is also helpful for providing location information.
• Offline Data - This gives information about customer interactions outside of digital channels, such as in-store purchases, phone calls, word of mouth, events, direct mail responses, etc. Offline data is typically captured through mechanisms like unique identifiers, coupon codes, or CRM systems.

An attribution model is essentially used to link these two types of data together to show which marketing touchpoints deliver the best results. 

Types of Attribution Models

There are several types of attribution models to feed your data into. Applying the right modeling for the goal or KPI is key.

A model essentially joins up your event data (what happened) to your channel data (where it happened) to show you the most profitable journey connections. 

The difference between attribution models is where they place most credit for achieving a desired conversion goal (like submitting a contact form, generating an MQL or closing a sale). Conversion goals should be set up for each stage of the customer journey to feed attribution analysis.

Multi-touch models attribute results to more than one touchpoint, allowing for the influence of consecutive touchpoints to be considered as part of a process that led to the final conversion.

 A model either uses: 

• Rule-based methodology - Analyzes data in a completely static approach. 
• Data-driven modeling - Typically uses AI and machine learning to help automatically customize multi-touch attribution based on the influence of touchpoints.

Here’s a breakdown of the most common attribution models:

Last Touch (or Last Click) Attribution

This model assigns all the credit for a conversion to the last touchpoint (or channel) that the customer interacted with before making a purchase or completing the desired action.

When to use it? - To understand which touchpoints are most influential for prompting people to take the final step in completing a conversion goal (e.g., submitting a contact form or making a purchase).

Limitations? – Although easy to use and collect data for, it’s not a great stand-alone model for longer and more complex sales cycles where conversion still heavily relies on the preceding touchpoints, particularly in B2B.

First Touch (or First Click) Attribution

The first touchpoint (or channel) the customer engaged with receives 100% of the credit for the conversion.

When to use it? - To understand which early journey touchpoints are best at first reaching new audience members who will eventually convert.

Limitations? – It ignores the influence that mid to late journey touchpoints have for final conversion. Data accuracy can also be more difficult to assure depending on your data tracking methods and lookback window

Linear Attribution

Equal credit is given to each touchpoint in the customer journey, recognizing the role of all channels in driving conversions.

When to use it? – To understand how touchpoints and journey architecture work together to nurture conversions over time, including cross-departmental touchpoints between marketing and sales for B2B.  

Limitations? – The data collection process is more intensive and may require cooperation with other departments to capture all touchpoints, taking time to implement fully. This may include qualitative touchpoints through manual data entry. Distributing credit evenly doesn’t account for which touchpoints have most influence.

Time Decay Attribution

More credit goes to touchpoints that occurred closer to the conversion event, with the assumption that recent interactions have a greater impact on the decision-making process.

When to use it? – For longer, more complex customer journeys where later touchpoints are most influential. Equally, it can be useful for very short sales cycles where decisions are made quickly and you want to see which touchpoints have immediate effect for impulse conversion.

Limitations? – The influence of earlier touchpoints for creating brand awareness or intent won’t be accounted for.

U-Shaped (Position-Based) Attribution

A higher percentage of credit goes to the first and last touchpoints in the customer journey, while the remaining credit is distributed evenly among the other touchpoints. It's based on the idea that the first and last interactions play a more significant role to create new leads and drive conversions.

When to use it? – When you want to understand which channels generate most new leads, and which drive most conversions.

Limitations? – Again, the influence of in-between touchpoints will not be fully understood, and it requires data collection to cover all touchpoints within the journey.

W-Shaped Attribution

Equal credit goes to three key touchpoints: the first interaction, the lead creation event (e.g., form submission), and the final conversion event. The remaining credit is divided among the other touchpoints.

When to use it? – To highlight the key journey milestones from early journey, mid journey and late journey.

Limitations? – The influence of intermediary touchpoints is not fully understood

Data-Driven Attribution

Data-driven models use advanced analytics, machine learning, or artificial intelligence to analyze customer journey data and assign credit to various touchpoints based on their estimated influence on conversions. This can be done by off-the-shelf software solutions specifically designed for marketing attribution. There are two widely accepted data-driven models for attribution: Shapley value model, and Markov chain model.

When to use it? – For more accurate full-journey attribution across multiple touchpoints, providing greater flexibility for integrating multichannel data silos and more balanced weighting criteria.

Limitations? - An attribution software subscription is required, some of which can be costly. How the algorithms are coded and applied is sometimes proprietary information that is not made fully clear or adaptable. Data sources still need to be set up and connected, including offline touchpoints. It can take months of work to fully set up and implement a data-driven model covering all marketing channels.

Fully Customized Attribution Modeling

Custom-built models are also data-driven, but can include as much complexity and adaptability as you’d like. They allow for full visibility and control of the combined data sets, rules and weighting in use. It allows the layering of many rules and granular data analysis so you can deeply understand and drive growth to a level that isn’t available any other way.

When to use it? - For larger media budgets where small adjustments see the $ results impacted by millions.

Limitations? - Fully customized attribution requires a specialist to implement because of the complicated algorithms and calculations, along specialized statistical software and coding. Like off-the-shelf data-driven solutions, it can take several months to fully implement.

Choosing Data and Models to Match Goals

For multichannel marketing across the customer lifecycle, marketers will have several different goals and KPIs, so there isn’t a one-size fits all when it comes to using attribution modeling. 

For example, marketing goals will vary by campaign, but also business lifecycle stage. As a business matures and can afford to allocate more budget in demand creation, longer payback periods become feasible in the name of sustainable growth.

For the most accurate results, several rules and weighting criteria may need to be layered together. This requires an understanding of how to choose the most appropriate combination for each goal or data set.

Here are examples of how different goals could affect the overall approach for assessing attribution against KPIs:

Brand Awareness - The main objective is to build familiarity rather than immediate conversions, so attribution models that consider upper-funnel touchpoints using a longer lookback window are most helpful.

‍ Conversion Rate Optimization - Last touch attribution can provide insights into the most influential touchpoints in driving conversions for any journey stage.

Customer Acquisition – With a focus on identifying marketing efforts that drive most new customers, attribution models that emphasize first touch and last touch before sale conversion are a good fit.

Customer Retention and CLV - Attribution models that consider multiple touchpoints over the customer lifecycle are best. Time-based attribution models such as linear or time-decay attribution can help identify touchpoints that contribute to CLV over time.

Cost Efficiency - Attribution modeling using cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-acquisition (CPA) data provides insights into the cost of acquiring customers through different channels.

Channel Optimization - Models like time-decay attribution or position-based attribution can help evaluate the effectiveness of various channels throughout the customer journey.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) - Attribution that uses revenue conversion data along with position-based or data-driven models are most suitable for calculating ROAS. These models can help isolate the impact of an advertising campaign against other touchpoints.

Customer Engagement - Attribution models fed with click data are most valuable. Models like engagement-based attribution or position-based attribution can help attribute credit to touchpoints that generate higher engagement levels.

Campaign or Event Success - Campaign-based attribution or event-based attribution allow marketers to filter conversion data specifically for the corresponding campaign (or event) identifier.

Demographic Targeting - Companies that target audience segments based on demographic data, such as geography, need to be able to filter customer event data for segment-based attribution.

Social Media Influence - Models using multi-touch attribution with social media weighting can help more accurately attribute conversions or engagements specifically to social channels.

Experimentation with attribution models will help you find the most suitable approach for each reporting use case.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Custom Attribution Models

A customized approach to attribution modeling allows hybrid data usage to give the most complete and accurate view of your marketing effectiveness. (Reminder - a hybrid approach combines multiple online and offline data sources, reducing the risk of misleading insights).

With customized approaches, you can get journey clarity at the individual level. For example, you could isolate a new customer to see that their first website visit was 9 months ago, and they were exposed to 37 ads across 5 platforms. You can also use heat map tools to confirm how channels work together in order to predict where prospects will go next, targeting content messaging accordingly.

Here are the 6 steps to create custom attribution reporting that will truly allow you to start optimizing your marketing investments:

Step 1 - Clearly Define Your Goals

Identify the specific objectives that your marketing efforts aim to achieve, such as increasing conversions, driving brand awareness, or improving customer retention. They can be different for each channel or audience segment. As discussed, these goals will guide the rule options for your attribution model.

For each goal, decide what you consider to be a conversion for the journey stages, and whether you will need to include post-view data in addition to post-click data. The type of conversion is important, so you’ll want to identify the conversion events to look at for each specific goal, including the lookback window that will be most relevant.

Attributing marketing activity to revenue is the ultimate aim – this will give you the most powerful information to improve ROI and drive growth.

Step 2 - Identify All Your Data Sources

Start with accurately and consistently collecting all the data you possibly can for all customer interactions across all your active channels and platforms. You’ll need to UTM tag every link that matters, and have tracking pixels installed for all active marketing platforms.

Here’s a quick checklist of data sources:

• Social media (organic)
• Paid media campaigns
• Email marketing
• CRM system and revenue data
• Customer feedback
• Call tracking
• Offline touchpoints
• Third-party data providers
• Self-reported attribution is most valuable when free text only.
• B2B buying decisions usually involve multiple people, so it’s better to track the customer journey at the account level instead by combining individual user data.

Step 3 - Bring in the Necessary Data Capabilities

Marketers need to have a deep understanding of marketing concepts and principles to be able to set up effective attribution models and make data-driven decisions.

You will need access to strong data analysis skills to be able to set up, manage and interpret the data for customized attribution models. Some technical knowledge is required to select, set up and configure attribution software tools, integrating them with existing data sources and systems. Knowledge of statistics is also necessary to understand, interpret and communicate the results of attribution models.

If in-house attribution data specialists are not in budget (or available), It can be more economical to use specialized data agencies to support you.

Step 4 - Chose + Activate Your Data Tools

Available resources are a big part of your consideration here. You’ll need to consider what is within means for your company in terms of ease of use, data integration capabilities and subscription cost.

There are 2 options here:

• Off-the-shelf attribution software

There are several software tools available that can help marketers combine marketing attribution data from different sources.

Tools with in-built machine learning and AI are better suited to help you analyze and weigh the contribution of different touchpoints and channels in your custom hybrid attribution model. This will give you more accurate insights.

Google Analytics (or Campaign Manager 360) are the best known off-the-shelf providers. However, data integration from other sources can be much more of a challenge with GA. Some other off-the-shelf options which offer better data integration capabilities include Northbeam, Wisely, Adobe Analytics and Improvado. 

However, the drawbacks are that you’re still handing over power to a platform that uses its own proprietary algorithms, not always allowing complete visibility or flexibility in how rules are applied or data is weighted.

• Build your own custom modeling

Depending on your resources, building custom modeling offers the greatest control and visibility of exactly how data is being weighted and analyzed for each scenario. 

If you’re doing this independently, you’ll need a data connector/warehouse solution to import and store your data from across your multichannel data sources. Custom coding and statistical tools can be utilized for advanced capabilities, allowing for layered algorithms and models tailored to any specific need or data set, including fully customized weighting criteria for data sets such as self-reported attribution.

The benefits over any other solution is the most accurate attribution possible, with completely granular insights depending on any criteria you’d like, allowing complete flexibility as variables such as channels, campaigns and customer or market dynamic shifts, and fully aligned for any goal you set.

With customized approaches, you can get journey clarity at the individual level. For example, you could isolate a new customer to see that their first website visit was 9 months ago, and they were exposed to 37 ads across 5 platforms. You can also use heat map tools to confirm how channels work together in order to predict where prospects will go next, targeting content messaging accordingly. 

Step 5 - Integrate Your Data Sources

Using your selected attribution tools, start collecting and integrating data from your multichannel sources.

This involves setting up data integrations between the attribution software and the data sources, whether through configuring API connections (recommended) or importing data files.

Automate the most relevant model-based analysis into dashboards, reporting on each of your specific marketing goals whether by revenue, channel, journey stage, customer segment, etc.

 Step 6 - Test and Iterate

Continuously test and refine your attribution model, adjusting the weights and methodologies as necessary. Monitor the performance of your model and make data-driven adjustments to improve its accuracy and effectiveness over time.

For example, data capture often relies on UTM tags, which requires links to be clicked before they are reported. This means some early-journey channels that rely on impressions rather than clicks (mainly social media and display advertising) will be underrepresented without qualitative self-reported data and weighting adjustments. Lift tests need to be run to help assess weighting criteria.

To test the influence of unclicked impressions, which is common for early-journey touchpoints and channels, you can use lift tests. Lift tests use test and control groups, only showing adverts to the test group. The difference in conversions between the two groups is known as lift, indicating the channel's real impact, and providing a helpful weighting metric. (Audience sample size and segment characteristics are important for statistically valid comparisons.)

Incrementality is a complementary metric to lift.

The Main Takeaways

Marketing attribution is critical to understand the impact of different touchpoints on customer behavior and conversions. 

While various simplistic attribution models exist, building customized data-driven models provides marketers with the greatest control and insight accuracy for their attribution analysis. This is essential to ramp up marketing spend with certainty of generating the required revenue results.

Custom data-driven attribution models offer several advantages over on-platform and Google Analytics reporting:

1. Report Against Goals - Marketers can tailor custom models to their specific business goals, customer behavior patterns, and available data sources. This level of customization enables a more accurate reflection of the complexities of the customer journey and the unique dynamics of the market.

‍ 2. Understand Touchpoint Influence Across Whole Journeys - Custom data-driven models empower marketers to attribute credit to touchpoints based on their true contribution to conversions, rather than relying on predefined rules or assumptions. And by integrating multiple (hybrid) data sources that include online and offline interactions, marketers can operate with a significant competitive advantage to drive growth forwards.

‍ 3. Allow Flexibility For Refinement - Custom models also provide the flexibility to adapt and refine the attribution process as the business evolves. You can more easily incorporate new data sources, update algorithms, and fine-tune attribution rules to ensure the model remains aligned with changing market dynamics and marketing activities.

Implementing a custom data-driven attribution model requires robust data integration and advanced analytical capabilities. However, the benefits of improved accuracy, granular insights, and informed decision-making make the investment worthwhile, potentially adding millions of dollars of additional annual growth. Particularly where larger advertising budgets are involved. 

By leveraging the power of custom attribution modeling, marketers can achieve industry-leading business outcomes.

If you need any support scoping, setting up or managing your attribution analytics, the team at Half Past Nine are here to help. We live and breathe marketing data! Just reach out.

‍ What To Read Next:

The new era of personalization explained; a guide to building profitable customer journeys with digital intent signals.

• Marketing Data Visualization To Fully Leverage Your Sources of Truth  
• Switching to First-Party Data: It’s Time to Stop ‘Renting’ and Start Owning Customer Data  

The Ultimate Attribution Playbook in 2023

Imagine a future where paid media actually adds real and welcomed value in people’s lives.

Where the information someone needs appears at exactly the right time to help them find what they want. Or while they’re browsing, learn about something that they weren’t aware could solve a pressing need. 

And in the process, brands spend less money putting content in front of people who don’t want or need it, radically driving up the profitability of media spend to deliver maximized revenue growth. 

This future is possible, even without third-party cookies. It will be built on a mindset shift, where the rigid parameters of the sales funnel are no longer paramount, and dynamic customer journeys become the north star. 

Where as marketers, we can cater to real people who don’t behave in linear ways, with empathetic understanding of what their goals might be and providing real value when it’s wanted.

If your goal is to improve customer engagement and fuel new revenue growth, this article is for you. Let’s explore how to build highly profitable customer journeys using digital intent signals.

Building Personalized Customer Journey Architecture

 Our job as marketers is to get the right touchpoints and messaging in the right place to progress our prospects from first introduction to converted and loyal customers.

 The basics of the customer journey remain the same under the tried-and-true framework of Awareness > Interest > Consideration > Decision > Retention > Advocacy.

 The 3 journey stages for customer acquisition are:

• Early Journey (creating awareness)
• Mid Journey (nurturing interest and consideration)
• Late journey (prompting action)

However, customers can move through buying stages in very different timelines. They may regularly loop back to previous stages, with pauses in-between. In our digital era, journeys can be incredibly fragmented across devices and platforms, and many journeys are completely unique. 

The typical customer journey today is actually a 3-dimensional process that can shift in any direction, rather than a straight line from A to B. They can resemble pyramids, diamonds, or even hourglasses, rather than a linear funnel.

A linear sales-funnel philosophy fits with the old approach of the stereotypical sales-led company. It’s not that a sales-led approach isn’t right for any business - but an overemphasis on sales goals can cause counterproductive tactics. For example, immediately jumping to harassing prospects with unwanted phone calls or emails, or running a generic sales ad to the widest audience possible and having to pay above average CPM/CPC due to poor engagement.

That’s why the most successful approach to fueling revenue growth is a dynamic and responsive customer journey framework, rather than a funnel approach. 

It allows for the individual to engage with relevant content while on their own unique path, maximizing the number of conversion routes and potentials at any one point in time. 

Naturally, the simplicity (or complexity) of a typical journey will vary greatly by the value and importance of the purchase being made. 

For ecommerce brands, a customer could leap from awareness to an impulse purchase in the space of 5 minutes in the right circumstances. Or a B2B sale could take many months from initial touchpoint. (Learn more about the B2B customer journey and buying process .)

 Regardless of journey timeframes, marketers building any type of customer journey architecture will still need to understand:

• What are the common challenges, needs, goals, and desires of each audience segment?
• What channels and platforms have best reach for the target audience at the specific journey stages?
• What corresponding messages will work best for each journey stage and platform?
• How do cross-channel and platform touchpoints work together to facilitate complete journeys for each segment?

Learning to Read Behavioral “Tells”

How can brands really get to grip with personalization across platforms?

Firstly by recognizing that the old way of building a sales funnel - assuming everyone who enters it will behave the same way - doesn’t reflect reality. We can’t assume that all people in a target market will be relevant leads, use the same platforms, automatically be ready to consider buying after showing interest, or that their consideration process will always follow the same path.

It’s the equivalent of walking up to a colleague in the middle of a phone call and expecting them to answer your question immediately. Or approaching someone perusing the vegan section of a store to offer them a promotional ham sample, then continuing to follow them around after they’ve said “No thank you”.

The need for observation, active listening and empathy applies as much to marketing and sales activity as it does anywhere else in life. 

That’s where intent data comes in. Intent data is the marketers means of observing what people are doing, before we “decide” if and how to approach them. 

Using intent data to target users will outperform targeting by demographics alone. Users who show intent are typically closer to making a buying decision, making them high-quality leads. By targeting these users, businesses can increase the likelihood of conversions to generate quicker and higher ROI.

 And the more digital and mobile customers have become, the more helpful intent data they generate for us. Of course, it still depends on a brand’s ability to manage and analyze the data… But with a solid data strategy, brands can tap into intent data to engineer hockey-stick moments of sustainable growth.

Introducing Digital Intent Signals

Just like in life offline, the key is to observe people’s “body language” within their digital world, building a picture of what might be happening for them in the moment. 

We call these digital actions “intent signals”. 

Being able to read them allows us to connect with only the most relevant people, using tailored messages that are most likely to resonate in that particular moment.

The majority of buyer journeys start with some type of intent. Although…, your ideal prospects might not always start out directly looking for your type of solution or product.

For example, a person Googles healthy meal recipes. Their goal is to improve their nutrition and lose weight. They aren’t looking for complete nutrition shakes. But if we were to reach the user with content highlighting the quick and easy benefits of complete nutrition shakes to improve health and lose weight, we’re far more likely to capture their attention and create intent to buy. 

These types of people with relevant but indirect intent may represent a large portion of your serviceable/addressable market.

Demand is much easier to create with the right message that talks to a pressing goal, at the exact time a person has that goal front of mind. It’s always the goal we need to understand and talk to.

And to be clear, intent signals aren’t KPIs or “vanity metrics”. We use intent signals to deduce intent, and then target or exclude people accordingly. Intent signals should actively inform real-time content targeting when used correctly.

Types of Digital Intent Signals 

The intent signals we can gather spans internal and external sources. It crosses organic and paid content, to owned and third-party platforms. ‍

• First-party Data – CRM, website, app and email data (learn more about first-party data )
• Second-party Data – Audience interaction on non-owned channels (E.g. Facebook)
• Third-party Data – Data Companies (E.g. Nielsen)

Some signals can be very overt. Especially at late journey stages, such as filling out a contact form or adding an item to the basket. Whereas other signals are less obvious, like running a Google search to learn about a related topic, or following a competitor’s social media account.

The type of intent signal can give you clues about a person's journey stage to build real-time customer segments. It’s helpful to identify which intent signals feature most prominently at each stage of your brand’s customer journey paths.

Split targeted signals up according to the campaign goals they fit with, whether that's demand capture (late journey) or demand creation (early journey) campaign goals.

For example, if a website visitor is behaving like a user that typically converts after another couple of weeks, you can target them with the right tone of nurturing content accordingly. But if you were targeting someone showing an interest in a competitor that hadn’t been included in your campaigns previously, you could show them content that introduces your brand with the comparative benefits of your brand/product/solution over the competitors. 

Here are the most common intent signals that can be tracked:

Content Engagement:

• Reading or viewing content related to specific products or services.
• Downloading or sharing content.
• Commenting on or liking blog posts or social media content.
• Subscribing to a blog, newsletter, or YouTube channel.

Search Behavior:

• Searching relevant keywords.
• Searching for reviews or comparisons related to a product or service.
• Searching for the brand name or specific products.

Social Media Engagement:

• Following or liking a brand's social media pages.
• Engaging with posts by liking, commenting, or sharing.
• Mentioning the brand in posts or comments.
• Clicking on social media ads or sponsored content

Ad Interaction:

• Clicking on digital ads.
• Video ads watch time.
• Clicking on retargeting ads

Event Participation:

• Registering for webinars or online events.
• Participating in trade shows or conferences.
• Engaging in live Q&A sessions or forums.

Website Interactions:

• Traffic source
• Visiting a website multiple times (yours or competitors).
• Spending a significant amount of time on the site or on specific pages.
• Checking product pages or service descriptions.
• Downloading content such as ebooks, whitepapers, or product brochures.
• Returning to the website after a period of inactivity.
• Using online tools, calculators, or configurators.
• Completing quizzes or self-assessments.

App Interactions:

• App downloads.
• App usage patterns and content engagement.
• Search queries.
• Abandoned carts.
• Registration or subscription.
• User reviews and ratings.

Shopping Behavior:

• Adding items to a shopping cart or wishlist.
• Repeatedly viewing a specific product or service.
• Starting but not completing a purchase process.
• Checking the availability or location of a product.

Email Engagement:

• Opening marketing emails.
• Clicking on email links.
• Responding to surveys or filling out forms.
• Forwarding emails.

Customer Support Interaction:

• Contacting sales.
• Using live chat or chatbots.
• Requesting a demo, quote, or more information.

How to Use Digital Intent Signals to Inform Customer Journey Architecture

The process for incorporating intent signals into real-time, personalized media targeting requires the following steps:

Data Collection and Analysis

The first step is to collect data on your audience’s behavior across your channels, including offline touchpoints where possible.

This data needs to be analyzed to identify patterns and understand what specific actions might indicate a user's intent to purchase or engage further. What are the main actions taken within journeys, and what conversion goals can help you qualify people at each stage?

Data tools such as connectors and warehouses will help you merge data from multichannel sources for more holistic understanding and analytical power, whether historical or predictive.

A note here on data collection. User tracking and targeting across multiple advertising platforms can be achieved through more than one method. This means that what a user does on one platform can be used to target them appropriately with relevant content on another platform via:

• ‍ ‍ First-party Data - Advertisers can import their customer segments into an advertising platform using Customer Match targeting. This matches identifying information that customers have shared with the advertiser, such as an email address, to target specific ads to those customers, and also other people that behave like them (look-alike audiences). This allows advertisers to narrow in on the highest intent/value customers.
• Cross-device Targeting - Also known as people-based marketing, this approach uses Device IDs or User IDs to anonymize user data while still allowing people to be targeted individually (without cookies), so advertisers can track and target a user across multiple devices. Pixels are used for this type of targeting.

A combination of these data collection methods will give brands the most precise targeting power and best results. 

Segmentation ‍

Once you've identified key intent signals and conversion goals, you can segment your audience based on their behavior.

For instance, users who have abandoned their shopping carts might be in one segment, while users who have spent a significant amount of time on product pages might be in another.

Personalization

‍ Each segment will have different needs and will be at different stages of the customer journey.

Create personalized paid and organic content for each segment, addressing their specific goals or challenges, guiding them towards the next step in their journey with defined conversion goals for qualifying. Content that matches keywords and the audience’s language directly performs best.

Leverage Media Technology + Automation Tools ‍

There are a number of built in AI and automation tools within the bigger ad platforms for marketers to take advantage of.

Setting campaign goals and conversion goals allow platforms like Google and Meta to automatically optimize targeting to achieve them. Dynamic ads can use AI and machine learning to improve their targeting and optimize ad copy tailored exactly to user search terms. And machine learning already drives real-time programmatic buying, where advertising inventory is bought and sold via an instantaneous auction.

There are various independent solutions that can be used for paid media targeting, such Blueshift and 6sense, including intent data for account-based marketing (ABM) needs.

Testing and Optimization

‍ It's important to continually split test and optimize your campaign creatives and targeting based on performance.

Look at which intent signals are most predictive of conversion, and which types of content are most effective for each segment. Use this information to refine your targeting and personalization strategies. How you use attribution modeling is also a crucial part of your media optimization process.

Recognizing and leveraging customer intent signals in the creation of personalized customer journeys is not just a valuable strategy - it's a business imperative for advertisers seeking to drive revenue growth. 

As the advertising landscape becomes increasingly digital and competitive, the brands that will rise to the top are those that truly understand their customers, meeting them where they are and providing what they need at every stage of the journey. By harnessing the power of customer intent signals, marketers can enhance customer experiences, build stronger relationships, and ultimately, achieve sustainable revenue growth. 

This shift towards a more customer-centric approach rooted in data insights is not just the future of advertising; it is the present. 

If your team needs support gathering, analyzing and incorporating intent signal data into your media strategy, Half Past Nine would love nothing more than to help you realize their transformative power on your bottom line. It’s what we get out of bed for! Just get in touch.

What to Read Next

• Flipping Your Brand Into a Media Company: Content Marketing That Fuels Growth  
• Upgrade Your Online Advertising Strategy: The Best Advertising Platforms in 2023  
• Does AI Copywriting Work? We Tested ChatGPT Against 6 of The Best AI Writing Softwares So You Don't Have To  

B2B Buyer's Journey Explained

When a B2B company sits down to put together a content strategy, they typically build it in the name of all mighty thought leadership and brand awareness. And this is where they go wrong. Instead of focusing on being recognized as an authority in their field, they could be far better off focusing on helping their customers make a purchase.

Gartner has a nice framework to help you do just that – enable your customers to buy.

Before we start mapping content to each stage of a buyer's journey, let's first define what's so special about B2B buyers and how they differ from their B2C counterparts. 

How do B2B buyers differ from B2C buyers?

B2b buying group involves 6 to 10 decision-makers.

First of all, when you say a B2B buyer, you most likely talk about an entire group of people. It can involve six to 10 decision-makers, unlike in B2C, where the buyer is often an individual. All of these people gather information independently, which makes your content planning pretty difficult because you want to attract different buyer personas.

B2B buyers need time to make a decision

It takes B2B buyers a really long time to make a decision. After all, they need to agree on it with all the decision-makers involved. This means you shouldn't expect B2B buyers to convert immediately. Instead, you need to focus on creating valuable content that helps you develop relationships with B2B buyers and lead them from one step to another as they are trying to complete their buying journey.

B2B deal sizes are large

Finally, in B2B the deal sizes are large. Because the market of buyers ready to pay a lot of money is narrow, your content strategy needs to be well-targeted. You want to make sure the leads you attract are the right fit for your business. Going viral on social media, for example, might work great in attracting B2C buyers, but it's not going to be effective in generating B2B leads.

Now when we've figured what differentiates B2B buyers, we can say it out loud: It's pretty hard to generate B2B leads.

But you know what, B2B buyers are having a hard time trying to make a purchase as well!

B2B buyers want to buy...but it's complicated

Gartner calculated: 77% of B2B buyers feel that making a purchase is very complicated. They called it “time-consuming” and even “painful.”

This is because the market of technologies, products, suppliers, and services is pretty large and getting even bigger. Buyers have a lot of doubts when it comes to making a decision. And the problem is, B2B marketers are not making it any easier for buyers to make a purchase.

So what can we do to solve this problem?

Simple – we need to create content that helps B2B buyers to buy. Gartner calls it " buyer enablement ."

Gartner's B2B buying journey

Gartner has a nice framework that can help you visualize the B2B buying journey and plan your content according to specific B2B buying jobs that customers must complete to arrive at a purchase.

Let's take a look at this framework.

Job 1: Identify a problem

At this early stage, the buyer realizes they have a problem. They are thinking: 

We need to do something.

Job 2: Explore solutions

What solutions are out there to solve our problem?

Job 3: Define requirements

What exactly do we need the product to do?

Job 4: Select suppliers

Does this company offer what we need? 

Job 5: Validate 

We think we know the right answer, but we need to be sure.

Job 6: Create consensus

We need to get everyone on board.

These buying jobs don’t happen sequentially, so you don’t need to think linearly when you’re trying to map your content ideas to this buying journey. 

Now, let's look at how you can use this framework to plan content. 

How to map content to the Gartner's B2B buying journey

Let’s say you work for a Magento development agency that wants to attract B2B retailers to their website. Here’s what your reader’s path may look like: 

Identify the problem 

In this first stage of the buying journey, your reader starts to experience a problem: 

My customers want to buy online but I don’t have an e-commerce store. 

At this stage, the reader might be interested in researching business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce transactions and B2B e-commerce trends . They’ll also probably want to know what other companies do when they’re in the same situation. Has everybody else in the B2B industry already adopted e-commerce? 

Explore solutions 

After realizing they should be online (where their customers are) your reader is thinking:

I need an e-commerce solution that will work with my existing business processes and systems and will fit my buyers’ complex organizational structures.

The reader’s challenge at this stage is to find a B2B e-commerce platform that can easily integrate into their business processes. They might start searching for and comparing B2B e-commerce platforms . 

Select a supplier 

Once the reader has chosen a platform, they can move straight to selecting a supplier and searching for a B2B e-commerce agency —or a Magento developer, for instance, if they’ve decided to build their website using Magento. In the latter case, the supplier will be a software development vendor.

Define requirements

This stage can happen before selecting a supplier when the reader is evaluating B2B e-commerce platforms and trying to choose the one that best fits their needs.

When your reader is finally at the validation stage, they need details about the supplier to be convinced they’re making the right choice. At this stage, you should offer customer success stories , client testimonials , and other content created for bottom-of-the-funnel prospects, or prospects who are very close to converting.

Watch it on YouTube

Gartner's B2B buying journey is awesome, and you can use it for your content marketing projects. But it's not the only right way to build your content strategy. 

Check out my blog post where I talk about how to map your content to five stages of awareness , another great framework for planning content that turns readers into leads.

Before you go, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel where I talk about content marketing or copywriting every single week.

In content marketing, the last thing you want to do is waste your time producing content that doesn't bring any results. In this blog post, I'll show you how to apply McKinsey's problem-solving technique to explore the problems in your content strategy so that you can stop wasting time on stuff that doesn't work.

There is a big difference between content that simply accumulates information and content that's about something. A key message is a core idea that you want your audience to hear and remember. Let's learn how to develop it!

Follow me to get better at writing

Great writing comes before anything else! Subscribe to get useful supplies to fuel your writing. 

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Trains Moscow to Elektrostal: Times, Prices and Tickets

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Moscow to Elektrostal by train

The journey from Moscow to Elektrostal by train is 32.44 mi and takes 2 hr 7 min. There are 71 connections per day, with the first departure at 12:15 AM and the last at 11:46 PM. It is possible to travel from Moscow to Elektrostal by train for as little as or as much as . The best price for this journey is .

Get from Moscow to Elektrostal with Virail

Virail's search tool will provide you with the options you need when you want to go from Moscow to Elektrostal. All you need to do is enter the dates of your planned journey, and let us take care of everything else. Our engine does the hard work, searching through thousands of routes offered by our trusted travel partners to show you options for traveling by train, bus, plane, or carpool. You can filter the results to suit your needs. There are a number of filtering options, including price, one-way or round trip, departure or arrival time, duration of journey, or number of connections. Soon you'll find the best choice for your journey. When you're ready, Virail will transfer you to the provider's website to complete the booking. No matter where you're going, get there with Virail.

How can I find the cheapest train tickets to get from Moscow to Elektrostal?

Prices will vary when you travel from Moscow to Elektrostal. On average, though, you'll pay about for a train ticket. You can find train tickets for prices as low as , but it may require some flexibility with your travel plans. If you're looking for a low price, you may need to prepare to spend more time in transit. You can also often find cheaper train tickets at particular times of day, or on certain days of the week. Of course, ticket prices often change during the year, too; expect to pay more in peak season. For the lowest prices, it's usually best to make your reservation in advance. Be careful, though, as many providers do not offer refunds or exchanges on their cheapest train tickets. Unfortunately, no price was found for your trip from Moscow to Elektrostal. Selecting a new departure or arrival city, without dramatically changing your itinerary could help you find price results. Prices will vary when you travel from Moscow to Elektrostal. On average, though, you'll pay about for a train ticket. If you're looking for a low price, you may need to prepare to spend more time in transit. You can also often find cheaper train tickets at particular times of day, or on certain days of the week. Of course, ticket prices often change during the year, too; expect to pay more in peak season. For the lowest prices, it's usually best to make your reservation in advance. Be careful, though, as many providers do not offer refunds or exchanges on their cheapest train tickets.

How long does it take to get from Moscow to Elektrostal by train?

The journey between Moscow and Elektrostal by train is approximately 32.44 mi. It will take you more or less 2 hr 7 min to complete this journey. This average figure does not take into account any delays that might arise on your route in exceptional circumstances. If you are planning to make a connection or operating on a tight schedule, give yourself plenty of time. The distance between Moscow and Elektrostal is around 32.44 mi. Depending on the exact route and provider you travel with, your journey time can vary. On average, this journey will take approximately 2 hr 7 min. However, the fastest routes between Moscow and Elektrostal take 1 hr 3 min. If a fast journey is a priority for you when traveling, look out for express services that may get you there faster. Some flexibility may be necessary when booking. Often, these services only leave at particular times of day - or even on certain days of the week. You may also find a faster journey by taking an indirect route and connecting in another station along the way.

How many journeys from Moscow to Elektrostal are there every day?

On average, there are 71 daily departures from Moscow to Elektrostal. However, there may be more or less on different days. Providers' timetables can change on certain days of the week or public holidays, and many also vary at particular times of year. Some providers change their schedules during the summer season, for example. At very busy times, there may be up to departures each day. The providers that travel along this route include , and each operates according to their own specific schedules. As a traveler, you may prefer a direct journey, or you may not mind making changes and connections. If you have heavy suitcases, a direct journey could be best; otherwise, you might be able to save money and enjoy more flexibility by making a change along the way. Every day, there are an average of 18 departures from Moscow which travel directly to Elektrostal. There are 53 journeys with one change or more. Unfortunately, no connection was found for your trip from Moscow to Elektrostal. Selecting a new departure or arrival city, without dramatically changing your itinerary could help you find connections.

Book in advance and save

If you're looking for the best deal for your trip from Moscow to Elektrostal, booking train tickets in advance is a great way to save money, but keep in mind that advance tickets are usually not available until 3 months before your travel date.

Stay flexible with your travel time and explore off-peak journeys

Planning your trips around off-peak travel times not only means that you'll be able to avoid the crowds, but can also end up saving you money. Being flexible with your schedule and considering alternative routes or times will significantly impact the amount of money you spend on getting from Moscow to Elektrostal.

Always check special offers

Checking on the latest deals can help save a lot of money, making it worth taking the time to browse and compare prices. So make sure you get the best deal on your ticket and take advantage of special fares for children, youth and seniors as well as discounts for groups.

Unlock the potential of slower trains or connecting trains

If you're planning a trip with some flexible time, why not opt for the scenic route? Taking slower trains or connecting trains that make more stops may save you money on your ticket – definitely worth considering if it fits in your schedule.

Best time to book cheap train tickets from Moscow to Elektrostal

The cheapest Moscow - Elektrostal train tickets can be found for as low as $35.01 if you’re lucky, or $54.00 on average. The most expensive ticket can cost as much as $77.49.

Find the best day to travel to Elektrostal by train

When travelling to Elektrostal by train, if you want to avoid crowds you can check how frequently our customers are travelling in the next 30-days using the graph below. On average, the peak hours to travel are between 6:30am and 9am in the morning, or between 4pm and 7pm in the evening. Please keep this in mind when travelling to your point of departure as you may need some extra time to arrive, particularly in big cities!

Moscow to Elektrostal CO2 Emissions by Train

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