4 Easy Steps To Create A Data-Driven B2B Customer Journey Map

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Customer Journey Map

In this day and age, companies need to evolve their business models quite frequently. In this ever-changing environment, businesses need to create data-driven customer journey maps helping them steer their changing business models effectively. 

Converting a prospect into a loyal customer is becoming more complex and challenging with each passing day. And, in the B2B businesses, the already challenging market, are now getting exposed to a ton of alternatives for all services/products. Businesses need to have a customer-centric approach to ensure profitability and growth. 

Data-driven customer journey maps come in handy in this situation. They help you set the foundation for all your efforts and help you optimize your approach for results. 

In this guide, we will explore what these customer journey maps are and how they impact B2B customers. We will also share four easy steps with you to help you create a customer journey map for your B2B business. 

Customer Journey Map

The Customer Journey Map 

A customer journey map refers to a concept map that identifies and outlines the interactions of your customers with your business. It helps you understand and analyze the customer touchpoints for your business – and in the strategic context, will help you refine your processes to optimize the customer experience. 

Creating a customer journey map will let you dive deeper into the mindset of the consumer and understand the pain points in more depth. It will enable you to have a clearer understanding of the needs and wants of your target audience. Doing so will not only increase your chances of becoming the most relevant customer choice – but it will also enable you to pivot to a more sustainable model. 

The customer journey maps will also bring your organization together to work on shared values and principles – which is challenging for new startups.

The B2B Customer Journey Map 

The B2B customer journey map is different from the normal one. In the B2B market, your customers are either big corporations or small startups. In both cases, the buying process is slow, and the customer is more rational. According to research, the average sales cycle for B2B purchases may last as long as four months! 

In addition to being slow, the B2B customer is more thoughtful and rational due to the higher number of stakeholders. Because of these reasons, 65% of your customers in the B2B space are not likely to convert

The complex and fragile nature of the B2B customer journey increases the importance of having a rock-solid strategy to understand your customer before any marketing effort. Creating a data-driven customer journey map helps you get the most out of your B2B customers. 

customer journey map

4 Easy Steps To Create A Data-Driven Customer Journey Map 

We have outlined an easy, 4-step process for you to create a data-driven customer journey map for your business. Let’s dive a bit deeper into these steps: 

Define Clear Objectives

The first and foremost step in creating a data-driven customer journey map is to ensure that you have set clear objectives for it. Ask yourself a few questions – what will it accomplish for my business? What is the purpose of creating this customer journey map? 

Your customer journey map will outline your customers’ interactions with your business. But, what you do with that information is more decisive. Are you just creating the map to understand your customers’ mindset and create better marketing campaigns? Or do you want to improve the customer experience by finding flaws and rectifying them on the map? 

Setting the objective first will help you have a structured approach to the data collection when creating the customer journey map. 

Create Buyer Personas

Once you have set the objectives, it is now time to dive into the actual process of creating a map. And it all starts with the buyer persona. 

A buyer persona is a fictional character created to depict your ideal customer. Businesses can have multiple personas, and for each buyer persona, the marketing strategy will also be different. 

To create a buyer persona, you should start collecting as much data as possible about your customers. After collecting the data, analyze and segment it to come up with one or a few ideal customers/personas that reflect your audience. 

customer journey map

Identify And Specify The Touchpoints

After the personas, identify the customer touchpoints and interactions. Using the first-hand data you have through tools like Google Analytics, specify the customer touchpoints. What tools and channels do customers use to interact with your business? Write all the platforms and services your business is available on and interact with the customers. 

Now, create a roadmap of an ideal customer. What steps does a prospect need to take to become a customer? There are typically three stages, awareness, consideration, and decision. The awareness stage means when the customer knows what the problem is and what are the possible solutions. The consideration stage is when the customer evaluates alternatives to go with one of them. And the decision stage refers to the customer making the purchase decision.

At every stage; what are the main places/platforms your customers hang out on? Identify those. These will help you map the journey from a prospect to a customer – including all the touchpoints and interactions. 

Continue Improving

Lastly, the key to the success of every strategy is continuous improvement. When you have created the customer journey map for your business, don’t just sit tight and see how it goes. Keep testing and improving your customer journey maps to get better results. 

You must be wondering – what’s next? If you have created your Customer Journey Map, it’s now time to utilize it to maximize your revenue. It will be wise to consult an expert B2B marketing agency for that matter. Fantom is offering a free consultation call to discuss your strategies.

 

 

 

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