Knowing Buyer’s journey — An Important Aspect for Customer Acquisition

B2B customer acquisition can be tough. After all, it’s getting expensive with costs soaring by 50 percent, and the customers are easily distracted in a crowded market. Not to mention that in general, brands seem to be facing a trust crisis. More trust now has shifted to friends and family and company press releases, and ads are regarded with skepticism.

In the face of this daunting situation, it’s tempting for marketers to simply give up. Fortunately, smarter marketers know there is a better approach to the problem. The answer is the buyer’s journey. Intimately knowing the buyer’s journey is the key to customer acquisition, retention, and development.

The Buyer’s Journey Explained

Every buyer is pressing towards some destination. From first being aware of a problem nagging him to find a solution, the buyer is on a journey of searching for relief. Hopefully, it ends in bliss. The buyer’s journey consists of the entire process of the buyer being aware of his problem him finding a solution.

Why the Buyer’s Journey Is crucial

Every step of the buyer’s journey gives vital answers to crafting the right marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity to have a more nurturing relationship with the customer and be more sensitive to his needs.

Unlike traditional approaches, you are leaving nothing to chance, making sure to avoid costly mistakes. Above all, you will be giving buyers precisely what they want at each stage instead of making hard sales pitches that can turn off prospects.

You will be more like a partner to the buyer as they journey instead of forcing the customer’s hand. This approach will not only reward you with more B2B customer acquisitions, but you will retain them more easily.

How the Buyer’s Journey and Sales Funnel fit together

Every buyer’s journey typically goes through 5 distinct stages. Each of these stages calls for a marketing strategy specifically designed to fit the buyer persona. Moving from the first stage to the last corresponds to moving from the top part of the sales funnel to the bottom.

1. Awareness

At this stage, the buyer recognizes that he is faced with a problem requiring some action. This triggers the motivation to look for the solution.

At this point, the buyer has very little or no information about you or what you do. This information deficit calls for education, and it’s entirely up to you to reach out to the prospect to educate him.

Keep in mind that the customer may have two kinds of information needs. He may be aware of his problem but not about its solution. In this case, show the prospect how your product best solves the problem.

Alternatively, customers may be unaware that they have a need or problem. For this, you can offer content that informs the audience about the negative result if your product or service is not purchased or used.

The wrong path to follow for the awareness stage is selling! Skip the hard sell, pushy ads and go with the soft approach. One of the best approaches is content.

A Hubspot study showed that businesses that blog beat non-bloggers by 55 percent in winning more web traffic. The best content has the impact of educating, entertaining, and inspiring. This gives a strong chance of directing your prospect onto the next stages — the middle and lower parts of the funnel.

2. Research

Once buyers know of their pain points, the research stage sets in. A large section of the solution seekers — 70 percent — typically turn to Google as their first stop.

You can educate your leads while focusing on the solutions. Walk them through the criteria for making the best purchase. You can share analysis reports, ebooks, white papers, checklists, and product reviews with them.

Stand ready to answer questions, clear any confusion, and maximize your brand awareness.

Ensure that there is ready access to all the helpful resources on your site. You can also make use of marketing automation tools that gather prospect information and track content downloads. These steps are crucial for providing insights into your prospect’s needs and preferences.

This stage happens to be the lengthiest and needs careful handling. It’s easy to lose connection with the buyers so make sure to keep a relationship with the buyer. You can use email marketing to stay in touch.

3. Consideration

Here, the buyer has drilled down to a few products that he considers to be the most viable options. He evaluates these and appears to have more motivation to engage with the vendors.

As the buyer enters this stage, it signals growing interest. So it’s a good idea to use the marketing automatic tool to continuously qualify them and adjust the scores.

Since the prospect is nearing even closer to a purchase, it is critical to building relationships here.

The buyers are also making in-depth comparisons between the options. They will want to speak to the sales reps, make more detailed inquiries, seek more personalized attention, and look deeper into the product features.

It’s also your chance to give your lead a taste of what you have to offer. Run demos, provide case studies, provide free trials, FAQs, make vendor comparisons and share your pricing guides.

4. Decision

The buyer narrows down to a specific solution and is ready to commit himself. At this stage, he finds justification or reasons to support his purchase.

What runs through the minds of your prospects are issues like start-up costs, implementation, preparation, or how the solution fits their budget or needs.

Your task as a customer acquisition agency is to reinforce the decision. Smoothen the contract process by simplifying it. You can also arrange kick-off events, live training, and recorded webinars.

For any reason at this point, the customer may hold back or hesitate despite wanting to settle for your solution. They may question if your solution is the best value for money or if its features are the best. You need to provide extra assurances to validate the customer’s decision and remove any lingering doubts. You can offer free trials or live demos if your product is complex, which is typical of many B2B products. The experience of your existing customers is a powerful way to tout your products, so use some case studies and testimonials.

If the buyer goes ahead and buys, you have attained a crucial milestone of the journey by reaching or exceeding the customer’s expectations.

5. Retention

Now that you have bagged the sale resist the temptation of getting too comfortable and regarding that the journey is over.

Customer acquisition costs you more than customer retention. After working so hard to acquire your customers, retaining them makes sense so that your efforts don’t go to waste. Since you have already won their trust, it’s easier to retain them as returning customers by simply maintaining that trust.

You can conduct follow-up support with calls or emails. You can also recommend add-on products or upsells. You can also return the favor of buying your products by providing customers with loyalty schemes, discounts, or birthday gifts.

Attend promptly to feedback and address any concerns that they may raise. This is vital to preempt them to go to social media forums with grievances that may ruin your hard-earned online name. For products that need some setup, provide in-app messages, onboarding emails, or push notifications for additional support.

Conclusion

The buyer journey doesn’t have to be a mystery. Fortunately, there is some very solid science behind it. Once you set up the system it tends to run smoothly just like clockwork.

Failing to understand and walk with the customer as they go through his journey is a common blunder businesses make. By understanding the buyer journey and creating the right strategies, you are ensuring that you never miss a moment in dealing with the customer’s pain points.