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• B2B Customer Journey Map : A Quickfire Guide for Growth

  20 mai 2024, par Erin

  What is a company’s biggest asset ?

  Its product ? Its employees ? Its unique selling proposition ?

  More and more people are recognising it’s something else entirely : your customers.

  Without your customers, your business can’t exist.

  Nearly 77% of B2B buyers found the buying process too complicated.

  With more competition than ever, it’s crucial you provide the best possible experience for them.

  That’s where your customer journey comes in.

  If you’re in the B2B space, you need to know how to map out the journey.

  By building a B2B customer journey map, you’ll be able to analyse the weak spots in the customer journey so you can improve the experience (and generate more revenue).

  In this article, we break down the B2B customer journey stages, how to build a customer journey map and how Matomo can help you track your customer journey automatically.

  What is a B2B customer journey ?

  Every customer goes through a specific path within your business.

  At some point in time, they found out about you and eventually bought your products.

  

  A B2B customer journey is the collection of touchpoints your customer has with your business from start to finish.

  From discovery to purchase (and more), your customers go through a specific set of touches you can track. By analysing this journey, you can get a snapshot of your user experience.

  One way to track the customer journey is with a B2B customer journey map.

  It helps you to quickly see the different steps your customers take in their path with your business.

  With it, you can quickly identify weak spots and successes to improve the customer journey.

  5 stages of the B2B customer journey

  Every one of your customers is unique. Their specific needs and their journey.

  It’s all different.

  But, there are crucial steps they take through their journey as your customer.

  It’s the same path your entire customer base takes.

  Here are the five stages of the B2B customer journey (and why you should track them) :

  

  1. Awareness

  Awareness is the first stage that every B2B buyer goes through when they start their journey in B2B companies as a customer.

  At this stage, your target buyer understands they have a problem they need solving. They’re out, actively trying to solve this problem. 

  This is where you can stand out from the competition and give them a good first impression.

  Some helpful content you could create to do this is :

  • Blog posts
  • Social media posts
  • Ebooks
  • Whitepapers

  2. Consideration

  Next up, your buyer persona has an awareness of your company. But, now they’ve started narrowing down their options for potential businesses they’re interested in.

  They’ve selected yours as a potential business to hand their hard-earned cash over to, but they’re still making up their mind.

  At this point, you need to do what you can to clear up any objections and doubts in their mind and make them trust you.

  Some helpful content you could create here include :

  • Product demos by your sales team
  • Webinars
  • Case studies

  3. Conversion

  Next up, your target buyer has compared all their options and decided on you as the chosen product/company.

  This is where the purchase decision is made — when the B2B buyer actually signs or clicks “buy.”

  Here, you’ll want to provide more :

  • Case studies
  • Live demos
  • Customer service
  • Customer reviews/testimonials

  4. Loyalty

  Your B2B buyer is now a customer. But, not all customers return. The majority will slip away after the first purchase. If you want them to return, you need to fuel the relationship and nurture them even more.

  You’ll want to shift your efforts to nurturing the relationship with a post-purchase strategy where you build on that trust, seek customer feedback to prove high customer satisfaction and reward their loyalty.

  Some content you may want to create here includes :

  • Thank you emails
  • Follow-up emails
  • Follow-up calls
  • Product how-tos
  • Reward program
  • Surveys

  5. Advocacy

  The final stage of the B2B customer journey map is advocacy.

  This is the stage beyond loyalty where your customers aren’t just coming back for more ; they’re actively telling others about you.

  This is the cream of the crop when it comes to the B2B buyer stages, and it happens when you exceed customer expectations repeatedly.

  Your goal should be to eventually get all of your customers to this stage. Because then, they’re doing free marketing for you.

  This is only possible when a customer receives enough positive B2B customer experiences with your company where the value they’ve received far exceeds what they perceived they have given.

  Here are a few pieces of content you can create to fuel advocacy :

  • Surveys
  • Testimonial requests
  • Referral program

  Difference between B2C and B2B customer journeys

  Every person on earth who buys something enters the customer journey.

  But, not all customer journeys are created equal.

  This is especially true when you compare the B2C and B2B customer journeys.

  While there are similarities, the business-to-consumer (B2C) journey has clear differences compared to the business-to-business (B2B) journey.

  

  The most obvious difference between the two journeys is that B2B customer journeys are far more complex. 

  Not only are these two companies selling to different audiences, but they also have to deploy a completely different set of strategies to lead their customers down the path as far as they can go.

  While the journey structures are similar (from awareness to advocacy), there are differing motivating behaviours.

  Here’s a table showing the difference between B2C and B2B in the customer journey :

  Different Factors	B2B	B2C
  Target audience	Smaller, industry more important	Larger, general consumer
  Buyer	Multiple decision-makers	One decision-maker
  Buying decision	Based on needs of the organisation with multiple stakeholders	Based on an individual’s pain points
  Buying process	Multiple steps	Single step
  Customer retention	Organisational needs and ROI-based	Individual emotional factors
  Repeat sales driver	Deep relationship	Repetition, attention-based

  Step-by-step guide to building a B2B customer journey map

  Now that you’ve got a basic understanding of the typical B2B customer journey, it’s time to build out your map so you can create a visual representation of the journey.

  

  Here are six steps you need to take to craft an effective B2B customer journey map in your business :

  1. Identify your target audience (and different segments)

  The first step in customer journey mapping is to look at your target audience.

  You need to understand who they are and what different segments make up your audience.

  You need to look at the different roles each person plays within the journey.

  Unlike B2C, you’re not usually dealing with a single person. You likely have a few decision-makers you need to interact with to close a deal.

  The average B2B deal involves 6 to 10 people.

  Analyse the different roles and responsibilities of your audience.

  Figure out what requirements they need to onboard you. Understand each person’s level of influence in the buying decision.

  2. Determine your customers’ goals

  Now that you have a clear understanding of each person involved in the buying process, it’s time to analyse their unique needs and goals.

  Unlike B2C, which will include a single person with a single set of needs and goals, you have to look at several people through the decision-making process.

  What is every decision-maker’s goal ?

  An entry-level admin will have much different goals than a CEO.

  Understand each of their needs as it will be key to selling them and taking you to the next person in the chain of command.

  3. Lean on data and analytics

  Now it’s time to analyse your data.

  You don’t want to guess what will work on your B2B buyers. Instead, leverage data that proves what’s working (and what’s not).

  Analytics software like Matomo are crucial tools in your B2B customer journey toolkit.

  Matomo can help you make data-driven decisions to fuel customer acquisition and loyalty to help get more customers all the way to the advocacy stage.

  Using Matomo (which analyses and interprets different data sources) can give you a holistic view of what’s going on at each stage of the journey so you can reach your goals.

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  4. Draw out customer journey stages

  Now that you have your data-backed plan, it’s time for some customer journey mapping.

  You can do this on paper or use a diagram tool to create a visual B2B customer journey map.

  Here, you’ll draw out every single stage in your customer journey, including every single touchpoint from different decision-makers.

  5. Determine each customer touchpoint

  Once you’ve drawn up the customer journey stages, you’ll have a key list of B2B customer journey touchpoints to implement.

  Write down every single customer interaction possible on the journey through.

  This could be reading an email, a blog post or watching a video on your home page.

  It could be an advertisement, a phone call or a follow-up email.

  It could even be a live demo or video sales call (meeting).

  6. Identify your own goals

  Now that you’ve got your visual B2B customer journey mapping done, it’s time to go back to you and your company.

  What are your goals ?

  What are the end results you’re looking for here ?

  You’ve got your current map in place. Now, how would you like customers to go through this journey ?

  Where would you like them to end up ?

  Look back at your company’s primary objectives if you’re stuck here.

  If your company is looking to increase profit margins, then maybe you want to focus more on retention, so you’re spending less on acquisition (and leaning more on recurring revenue from existing customers).

  How to create a Matomo funnel to track your B2B customer journey

  If you want to start tracking and optimising your B2B customer journey, you need to have a good grasp on your funnel.

  The reality is that your customer journey is your funnel.

  They’re one and the same.

  Your customer journeys through your sales funnel.

  So, if you want to optimise it, then you need to see what’s going on at each stage of your funnel.

  

  With Matomo, you can map out your entire funnel and track key events like conversions.

  This allows you to identify where your site visitors are having problems, where they’re exiting and other obstacles they’re facing on their journey through.

  To start, you first define what events or touchpoints you want included. This could mean :

  • Landing on your website
  • Visiting a product page
  • Adding something to cart
  • Going to checkout
  • Clicking “buy”

  Then, at each stage, you’ll see conversion rates.

  For example, if only 3% of your visitors go from landing on your website to the product page, you likely have an issue between your homepage (and other pages) and your product pages.

  Or, if you can get people to add to cart, but you rarely get people going to checkout, there’s likely a problem to fix on your add-to-cart page.

  By leveraging Matomo’s funnels feature, you get to see your entire customer journey (and where people are falling off) so you understand what you need to optimise to grow your business.

  If you’re ready to start building and optimising your customer journey today, then try Matomo for free for 21 days.

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• How to Use Analytics & Reports for Marketing, Sales & More

  28 septembre 2023, par Erin — Analytics Tips

  By now, most professionals know they should be using analytics and reports to make better business decisions. Blogs and thought leaders talk about it all the time. But most sources don’t tell you how to use analytics and reports. So marketers, salespeople and others either skim whatever reports they come across or give up on making data-driven decisions entirely. 

  But it doesn’t have to be this way.

  In this article, we’ll cover what analytics and reports are, how they differ and give you examples of each. Then, we’ll explain how clean data comes into play and how marketing, sales, and user experience teams can use reports and analytics to uncover actionable insights.

  What’s the difference between analytics & reports ? 

  Many people speak of reports and analytics as if the terms are interchangeable, but they have two distinct meanings.

  A report is a collection of data presented in one place. By tracking key metrics and providing numbers, reports tell you what is happening in your business. Analytics is the study of data and the process of generating insights from data. Both rely on data and are essential for understanding and improving your business results.

  

  A science experiment is a helpful analogy for how reporting and analytics work together. To conduct an experiment, scientists collect data and results and compile a report of what happened. But the process doesn’t stop there. After generating a data report, scientists analyse the data and try to understand the why behind the results.

  In a business context, you collect and organise data in reports. With analytics, you then use those reports and their data to draw conclusions about what works and what doesn’t.

  Reports examples 

  Reports are a valuable tool for just about any part of your business, from sales to finance to human resources. For example, your finance team might collect data about spending and use it to create a report. It might show how much you spend on employee compensation, real estate, raw materials and shipping.

  On the other hand, your marketing team might benefit from a report on lead sources. This would mean collecting data on where your sales leads come from (social media, email, organic search, etc.). You could collect and present lead source data over time for a more in-depth report. This shows which sources are becoming more effective over time. With advanced tools, you can create detailed, custom reports that include multiple factors, such as time, geographical location and device type.

  

  Analytics examples 

  Because analytics requires looking at and drawing insights from data and reports to collect and present data, analytics often begins by studying reports. 

  In our example of a report on lead sources, an analytics professional might study the report and notice that webinars are an important source of leads. To better understand this, they might look closely at the number of leads acquired compared to how often webinars occur. If they notice that the number of webinar leads has been growing, they might conclude that the business should invest in more webinars to generate more leads. This is just one kind of insight analytics can provide.

  For another example, your human resources team might study a report on employee retention. After analysing the data, they could discover valuable insights, such as which teams have the highest turnover rate. Further analysis might help them uncover why certain teams fail to keep employees and what they can do to solve the problem.

  The importance of clean data 

  Both analytics and reporting rely on data, so it’s essential your data is clean. Clean data means you’ve audited your data, removed inaccuracies and duplicate entries, and corrected mislabelled data or errors. Basically, you want to ensure that each piece of information you’re using for reports and analytics is accurate and organised correctly.

  If your data isn’t clean and accurate, neither will your reports be. And making business decisions based on bad data can come at a considerable cost. Inaccurate data might lead you to invest in a channel that appears more valuable than it actually is. Or it could cause you to overlook opportunities for growth. Moreover, poor data maintenance and the poor insight it provides will lead your team to have less trust in your reports and analytics team.

  The simplest way to maintain clean data is to be meticulous when inputting or transferring data. This can be as simple as ensuring that your sales team fills in every field of an account record. When you need to import or transfer data from other sources, you need to perform quality assurance (QA) checks to make sure data is appropriately labelled and organised. 

  Another way to maintain clean data is by avoiding cookies. Most web visitors reject cookie consent banners. When this happens, analysts and marketers don’t get data on these visitors and only see the percentage of users who accept tracking. This means they decide on a smaller sample size, leading to poor or inaccurate data. These banners also create a poor user experience and annoy web visitors.

  Matomo can be configured to run cookieless — which, in most countries, means you don’t need to have an annoying cookie consent screen on your site. This way, you can get more accurate data and create a better user experience.

  Marketing analytics and reports 

  Analytics and reporting help you measure and improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. They help you learn what’s working and what you should invest more time and money into. And bolstering the effectiveness of your marketing will create more opportunities for sales.

  

  One common area where marketing teams use analytics and reports is to understand and improve their keyword rankings and search engine optimization. They use web analytics platforms like Matomo to report on how their website performs for specific keywords. Insights from these reports are then used to inform changes to the website and the development of new content.

  As we mentioned above, marketing teams often use reports on lead sources to understand how their prospects and customers are learning about the brand. They might analyse their lead sources to better understand their audience. 

  For example, if your company finds that you receive a lot of leads from LinkedIn, you might decide to study the content you post there and how it differs from other platforms. You could apply a similar content approach to other channels to see if it increases lead generation. You can then study reporting on how lead source data changes after you change content strategies. This is one example of how analysing a report can lead to marketing experimentation. 

  Email and paid advertising are also marketing channels that can be optimised with reports and analysis. By studying the data around what emails and ads your audience clicks on, you can draw insights into what topics and messaging resonate with your customers.

  

  Marketing teams often use A/B testing to learn about audience preferences. In an A/B test, you can test two landing page versions, such as two different types of call-to-action (CTA) buttons. Matomo will generate a report showing how many people clicked each version. From those results, you may draw an insight into the design your audience prefers.

  Sales analytics and reports 

  Sales analytics and reports are used to help teams close more deals and sell more efficiently. They also help businesses understand their revenue, set goals, and optimise sales processes. And understanding your sales and revenue allows you to plan for the future.

  One of the keys to building a successful sales strategy and team is understanding your sales cycle. That’s why it’s so important for companies to analyse their lead and sales data. For business-to-business (B2B) companies in particular, the sales cycle can be a long process. But you can use reporting and analytics to learn about the stages of the buying cycle, including how long they take and how many leads proceed to the next step.

  Analysing lead and customer data also allows you to gain insights into who your customers are. With detailed account records, you can track where your customers are, what industries they come from, what their role is and how much they spend. While you can use reports to gather customer data, you also have to use analysis and qualitative information in order to build buyer personas. 

  

  Many sales teams use past individual and business performance to understand revenue trends. For instance, you might study historical data reports to learn how seasonality affects your revenue. If you dive deeper, you might find that seasonal trends may depend on the country where your customers live. 

  

  Conversely, it’s also important to analyse what internal variables are affecting revenue. You can use revenue reports to identify your top-performing sales associates. You can then try to expand and replicate that success. While sales is a field often driven by personal relationships and conversations, many types of reports allow you to learn about and improve the process.

  Website and user behaviour analytics and reports 

  More and more, businesses view their websites as an experience and user behaviour as an important part of their business. And just like sales and marketing, reporting and analytics help you better understand and optimise your web experience. 

  Many web and user behaviour metrics, like traffic source, have important implications for marketing. For example, page traffic and user flows can provide valuable insights into what your customers are interested in. This can then drive future content development and marketing campaigns.

  

  You can also learn about how your users navigate and use your website. A robust web analytics tool, like Matomo, can supply user session recordings and visitor tracking. For example, you could study which pages a particular user visits. But Matomo also has a feature called Transitions that provides visual reports showing where a particular page’s traffic comes from and where visitors tend to go afterward. 

  

  As you consider why people might be leaving your website, site performance is another important area for reporting. Most users are accustomed to near-instantaneous web experiences, so it’s worth monitoring your page load time and looking out for backend delays. In today’s world, your website experience is part of what you’re selling to customers. Don’t miss out on opportunities to impress and delight them.

  Dive into your data

  Reporting and analytics can seem like mysterious buzzwords we’re all supposed to understand already. But, like anything else, they require definitions and meaningful examples. When you dig into the topic, though, the applications for reporting and analytics are endless.

  Use these examples to identify how you can use analytics and reports in your role and department to achieve better results, whether that means higher quality leads, bigger deal size or a better user experience.

  To see how Matomo can collect accurate and reliable data and turn it into in-depth analytics and reports, start a free 21-day trial. No credit card required.