For B2C companies, it’s easy to imagine an individual customer making a purchase based on a want or need. The clarity of this understanding enables sales and marketing staff to construct a path-to-purchase tailored to specific, targeted consumer segments.
For B2B companies, it can be a bit more challenging.
While the purpose of customer journey mapping for both B2C and B2B companies align conceptually, their differing “customer” types require differing strategies and processes.
As previously mentioned, the B2C customer is an individual buyer of goods or services whereas the B2B customer is a business or organization. Each are focused on a singular entity, however the B2B company must account for multiple individuals within their one customer.
Herein lies the challenge faced by B2B companies; one “customer” is made up of multiple individuals who have their own unique emotions, needs, and motivations. By overlooking this important concept, B2B companies may over-generalize their customer’s path-to-purchase yielding an ineffective journey map.
To side-step the pitfall of an over-generalized customer journey map, it’s important for B2B companies to create “customer personas” for the different types of people within their customer businesses. While B2C companies may also have developed multiple personas based on their different customer segments, they have the luxury of addressing one customer persona at a time. The B2C company must consider multiple personas at the same time to effectively address one customer, which makes things a bit more convoluted.
For B2B and B2C companies alike, the value of customer journey mapping cannot be overstated. Both companies must develop detailed customer personas, and as a result both companies will equip themselves with a valuable tool for understanding their respective customers.
To read more about the processes and benefits of customer journey mapping, CLICK HERE.
At MacKenzie Corporation, we’ve spent over 30 years refining our proven approach to customer journey mapping and customer persona development. If you want to better understand your customer and their path-to-purchase, we can show you the way. Give us a call or drop a line; we’re always excited to discuss how businesses of all shapes and sizes can benefit from knowing their customers on a deeper level.
