B2B AND B2C CUSTOMER JOURNEY

While the general steps to customer journey mapping remain the same.
There are a few elements that you should keep in mind based on whether you are a B2B company or a B2C company.

1. Sales Cycle

the sales cycle is a lot different to on the B2C side most purchases are often impulsive depending on the price tag.
But on the B2B side sales processes are usually longer weeks or even months because it's usually decision by committee despite the differences B2B marketers can shorten the sales cycle how by paying closer attention to the customer journey and the customer experience analytics market research.
And insights all critical for your B2B buyers to understand your brand before the next sale.

2. Level Of Involvement

Generally speaking B2B requires a much higher level of involvement due to the higher number of stakeholders and multiple personas involved as well as the lengthier cycles and niche target markets.
Whereas B2C is typically low involvement due to short cycles a single persona. And a wider target market this of course has its exceptions.
For instance a B2B company that sells office supplies could be considered low involvement. And a BBC company that sells a complex product like a mortgage would be considered high involvement.


 3. Duration of Journey 

With B2B, It's normal for a buying cycle to last up to three months and on the customer side. It'll most likely involve at least six different people on the vendor side.
There are also many individuals that influence the buying experience in comparison a B2C cycle could last as little as a few minutes and often includes just one persona.


4. Persona

As mentioned before B2B companies must consider multiple personas for one journey map and they often vary from each other.
When it comes to the unique business needs and behaviours, B2C has a much easier in the sense that the journey typically features one persona.
But instead of their business needs they focus more on personal characteristics like hobbies or favourite sports that will influence their purchasing behaviour.

 5. Monitory Value

Relationships can last years or decades which tends to make these relationships be of higher monetary value. So losing even just one customer can put revenue at risk this is why,
When it comes to B2B mapping you should start with the most influential journey in persona. This is not to say the B2C customers are not valuable.
However, the value per customer is still considered lower due to the larger target market and in comparison smaller purchase value.

6. Feedback

When it comes to  collecting feedback across the journey map.
If you're a B2B company, Your feedback program will require a high level of customisation due to the multiple personas within one journey meaning don't send different personas the same surveys of the same touch points reach them where and when it matters the most based on their unique needs.
Whereas for B2C because the journey map features just one persona the customer feedback process can be less customized.
But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be strategic with how you collect feedback.

 For example our B2C customer be sellers a vineyard in Napa Valley found through customer journey mapping that some wine club members tend to drop out of the program within a certain amount of time after signing up.

B2B AND B2C CONTENT IN E-COMMERCE

We have clients that are strictly B2B strictly B2C and some that do both. And we often find ourselves writing a piece of content for them.
Because again we've done our homework we've done our keyword research and we see that individuals are searching for this and there's really good opportunity for us to rank and drive some organic traffic through this content.

 And the client comes back and says oh well that's really B2C targeted and my primary customer base is B2B.

1. Difference In Content ?

There should be no difference in the content right the content should still be informative to both the supplier which will most likely be more educated in the in the matter.
And the consumer who's really looking for that information really the only thing that changes here are your calls to action.
If you are a B2B company and strictly B2B your call to actions that live within this content that's being created is now gonna determine whether it's B2B focused or B2C right.

 So if I land on a page that is you know it's a B2B company but they're answering all my questions so now I'm familiar with the brand. I just can't purchase for them directly that's fine.
However, you know if you do both then yeah of course you want to have both call to actions for both B2B and B2C that's really the difference.
But at the end of the day I can continue creating that B2B focused content which it's in reality, the reason why you can't just focus on that is because you won't get the visibility you won't get the traffic.
The search volume just isn't there the majority of the search volume is gonna come from those more uneducated searches that are gonna come from the end-user from the consumer.

 You need to be able to provide content that goes from top to bottom that covers every single area of focus you want to be ultimately the authority figure within your industry. And you want to be the number one brand within your industry regardless of whether you sell direct to consumer or business to business.
So that when you do B2C or some of these newcomers come out to the page they're not feeling totally lost either. It's a balance of the two really and also it's not just the end user of the product.

 But we're also are these companies are also using Google just like we do they want a good user experience when they're on the website they want to also be engaged with information about your products whether in bullet point form or in video form.
So really B2B B2C, You're still trying to capture someone's attention on your website and that's gonna be done through good content marketing and good content.

2. Authority of Content 

You know the content does not need to be specifically targeted or oriented to your primary customer base you know by no means.
But it can't be just that you cannot create this really extensive informative high-level content that not everybody's gonna understand. And again that is not gonna help you increase your visibility that is not gonna help you increase your brand.

  So you need both content that will appeal directly to your customer base which in this case may be other businesses.
But you also want content that is now gonna help you increase your brand awareness and increase your authority within that industry.
And that's by creating content that goes after the direct to consumer market that's about it.
Again if your B2B just B2B or just B2C or both you need content that is spread throughout the entire industry.


STRATEGIES FOR B2B AND B2C MARKETING


• Business To Business Sales

B2B sale is short for business-to-business sales it refers to an activity where a business is selling its products or services equals creating value to another business.
It is distinct from B2C or business to consumer sales which mean sales to individuals rather than businesses.

• B2B Process

Business-to-business B2B or in some countries B2B refers to a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another this typically occurs when a business sourcing materials for their production process.
For example of food manufacturer purchasing salt.

• Business To Consumer Sales

Business-to-consumer B2C is business or transactions conducted directly between a company and consumers who are the end-users of its products or services a business to consumer.
As a business model differs significantly from the business-to-business model which refers to commerce between two or more businesses.

• Measure Marketing ROI

The best way to measure marketing ROI is with marketing attribution the whole role of attribution in the marketing stack is to connect marketing efforts to revenue marketing attribution measures performance often starting at the channel level and tells you how much of the revenue should be attributed to each marketing channel with that information you can input your marketing spend and calculate your marketing ROI.

• Metrics To Use For Measuring Marketing Performance

Revenue, In today's data-driven era of marketing it's more important than ever for marketers to prove their value to the organizations in terms of revenue driven.
That said it's important to have visibility into your impact on the entire pipeline funnel.
That means measuring how many leads you've driven how many of those leads turned into opportunities and then finally how many of those opportunities turned into Revenue.

• Best Attribution Model

The best attribution model is different from company to company. if you're a small company with a short sales cycle.
The best attribution model may be a single touch model that is easy to implement and is relatively inexpensive or even free but for most companies that have sales teams.

 For example B2B companies and invest in multiple marketing channels a w-shaped attribution model is recommended.
It accounts for the whole customer journey from the very first touch to opportunity creation and puts extra emphasis on the key lead transitions.

• Switching Single-Touch Or Last-Touch Click To Attribution

Single touch attribution is typically sufficient for companies that have short sales cycles.
For example most B2C companies that don't use very many different marketing channels, So don't spend very much on marketing.
However, Marketing team is spending thousands of dollars every month on paid media or when you are using multiple marketing channels or have sales cycle that lasts weeks or longer multi-touch attribution becomes really powerful and necessary.

• Importance of First-Touch

The anonymous first touches the visitors first-ever time visiting your website often these first visits do not conclude in the visitor filling out a form and therefore are not tracked by marketing automation software this first anonymous touch.
However, Is a big deal the marketing effort that broke through the clutter and got the visitor to go to your website for the first time deserves credit a good attribution solution will give the first anonymous touch the credit it deserves.