The Buyer’s Journey Stages: A How-To Guide
By focusing on the Buyer’s Journey’s stages, B2B companies can overcome one of the biggest challenges they face: generating qualified leads. When you establish an approach to each stage of the Buyer’s Journey, you are able to speak directly to prospective clients’ pain points and build a relationship to solve them. If you aren’t using the Buyer’s Journey that your clients experience on the path to purchase, then it’s time to start!
Introduction to the Buyer’s Journey
The Buyer’s Journey is the process that potential buyers (i.e. clients) go through on their way to purchasing a product or service. This encompasses everything from the first experience of a pain point to researching solutions to determining a vendor. Most companies loosely define the Buyer’s Journey in three main stages: awareness, consideration, and decision*. We dive into these stages below.
*Sound familiar to the marketing funnel or sales funnel? They are very similar, but the Buyer’s Journey is focused more from the client’s perspective rather than the marketing/sales perspective. They’re really two sides of the same coin and should be used together.
Why is the Buyer’s Journey important?
Establishing a relationship with your potential clients before they reach the decision phase increases the likelihood of a purchase. In fact, 67% of B2B marketers say they see at least a 10% increase in sales opportunities through lead nurturing, with 15% seeing opportunities increase by 30% or more. (DemandGen Report). You can use the Buyer’s Journey stages as a guide for nurturing your leads.
By producing readily-available content for each stage of Buyer’s Journey, you’ll also meet your clients where they are, namely, online. Studies have shown that 45% of B2B buyers are using more sources to research and evaluate purchases and 41% are conducting a more detailed analysis of ROI before they make a purchasing decision. In fact, a 2015 study by Google showed that 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process, and we know that percentage has only increased since then.
This focus on internet research means more and more potential clients are conducting research on their own before they even speak to someone at your company. By creating content to help them at each phase in their research, you position your company as the expert who can truly solve their problem. By contrast, if the client has been working with a competitor throughout their research phases, they’ll view them as an expert and trust their opinions more, which is not where you want to be positioned.
It’s more important than ever for B2B companies to focus on the buyer’s journey and how they can help their audience at each stage.
Buyer’s Journey Stages
Each stage of the buyer’s journey requires a different approach and an intimate understanding of the challenge your clients face and how they try to solve that challenge. Create content that speaks directly to what they’re experiencing at each stage.
Awareness
The awareness phase is when a customer first recognizes that there is a problem or an opportunity for improvement. They’ll begin conducting research to learn more about the challenge at a higher level. In this phase, they’re focused on discovering the symptoms of their challenge and developing a definition of what they’re facing.
Here you need to focus on providing valuable educational pieces that can help them better understand their challenge. Blog posts are a popular content choice at this phase because it’s easy for customers to use in their research and aligns with an inbound strategy for attracting clients. Create a list of questions customers ask at this phase and develop content that answers those questions. You can use keyword trends for ideas to get started.
Buyers in this stage most likely have not considered purchasing a solution around their challenge, which means you don’t want them to book a sales call just yet. Instead, provide enough helpful information that they can understand their problem.
Customer actions: Awareness of a problem/opportunity; conducting high level research to learn about and define challenge
Content to create: Educational blog posts, videos (How-tos & Q&As), educational social posts, industry reports, white papers, email sequences
Consideration
In the consideration phase of the Buyer’s Journey, buyers understand their challenge, but they haven’t identified the best approach to resolving it. Throughout this phase, they begin searching for different approaches and methodologies they can use to achieve their goal.
To meet buyers in this stage, it’s important to create content that can help them determine their best path forward. Creating content that compares different approaches or methodologies is a great way to help them with their decision. You can do this with blog posts, webinars, or videos that help them determine their options.
Buyers at this stage still haven’t committed to purchasing a solution--they might be considering doing it themselves. This means that it’s important to not be too salesy in any content you create. While your approach might be the best, it could be out of their budget or more than they need for the size of their business. Acknowledging this in your content positions you as a more objective expert and allows them to make the best decision for their particular situation.
Customer actions: Researching potential approaches and methodologies; understanding their options
Content to create: Ebooks/downloadable guides, comparison videos, blog posts, webinars, demo videos, podcasts
Decision
By this point, buyers have an understanding of their problem and they know the approach they want to take, they just have to figure out who will help them execute. This stage is very important for your sales team because if they are engaging with you at this point, it means that you align with their desired approach. This is where you really showcase what you can do to help them choose you.
For content, you’ll want to make sure you have solid case studies on hand and possible proposal content depending on the size of the project. Some companies will decide to go to a competitive RFP or RFI at this point, which means you’ll need to be able to clearly articulate why your solution is the best for their specific situation. Ideally in this stage you’ll highlight how you’ve helped similar companies in the past and showcase your results.
Customer actions: Evaluating different vendors; comparing solutions; releasing RFPs; sales calls
Content to create: Case studies, use cases, blog posts, testimonials, customer success stories, compelling sales page (detailing what you offer), spec sheets, product overviews, proposal content
Bonus: Advocacy
Many companies focus on the Buyer’s Journey up through the purchase. It’s important to remember that existing customers can continue to engage with you for multiple solutions, and you want to ensure their experience with you is top notch.
At this phase, you should focus on providing content to make their project a success and to advocate for your business to other prospective customers.
Customer actions: Implementation of solution, promoting positive experience to other potential clients
Content to create: Quick start guides, referral programs, insider access to new product/service releases, ongoing education
How to apply the Buyer’s Journey to your business
Now that you know the different buyer’s journey stages, it’s time to apply them to your business. Below are three key steps to get started.
Define your personas.
If you don’t already have clearly defined buyer personas, it’s time to create them! Develop personas for each solution that you’re offering. Outline their pain points, their goals, their challenges. Clearly show what they experience when they discover a challenge and how they think throughout their buying journey.
Outline questions at each stage.
With each persona, write down a list of questions that they ask at each stage. Use past sales calls, email inquiries, Google search trends, etc. to determine exactly what they’re wondering and how you can help.
Create content for each phase.
Once you have the questions documented, it’s easy to begin creating content that answers those questions. You can take the pillar approach where you have one large piece of content that links out to all of the other pieces on a certain topic. You might also consider using email as a way to share educational content. It depends on those buyer’s personas and what content they are most likely to engage with.
Once you’ve completed these three steps, you’re well on your way to implementing a well-defined approach to your buyer’s journey.
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