Terms

Buyer's Journey

The buyer's journey is the process a potential customer goes through, from first realizing they have a problem to making a final purchase decision. This path typically consists of three stages—awareness, consideration, and decision—during which a buyer researches their problem, evaluates potential solutions, and finally chooses a provider.

Stages of the Buyer's Journey

Understanding these stages helps businesses tailor their marketing and sales efforts to meet the buyer's needs at each step. The journey is often visualized as a funnel, guiding a prospect from initial problem recognition to a final purchase.

  • Awareness: The buyer first recognizes they have a problem or an opportunity.
  • Research: They conduct research to better understand and frame their problem.
  • Consideration: They evaluate different categories of solutions to address the problem.
  • Decision: They compare specific vendors or products to make a final choice.
  • Purchase: The buyer commits to a solution and becomes a new customer.

Importance of the Buyer's Journey

Understanding the buyer's journey is crucial for modern sales and marketing. It allows you to empathize with prospects, providing the right information at the right time. This tailored approach builds trust, addresses objections effectively, and ultimately increases conversion rates by meeting buyers where they are in their decision-making process.

Buyer's Journey vs. Customer Journey

While often used interchangeably, the buyer's journey and customer journey represent distinct phases of the customer lifecycle.

  • Acquisition: The buyer's journey maps the pre-purchase path from awareness to decision, focusing on converting prospects into new customers. It's ideal for enterprises with long sales cycles or those prioritizing lead generation, helping to align sales and marketing efforts to acquire new business.
  • Retention: The customer journey begins post-purchase, covering onboarding, adoption, and advocacy to foster loyalty and maximize lifetime value. This framework is crucial for businesses with recurring revenue models, like SaaS companies, where reducing churn and encouraging repeat business is paramount.

How to Map the Buyer's Journey

This is how you can create a detailed map of your buyer's journey.

  1. Develop detailed buyer personas to understand your target audience's motivations and pain points.
  2. Interview customers, prospects, and your sales team to gather firsthand insights on the buying process.
  3. Identify the key touchpoints and questions buyers have during the awareness, consideration, and decision stages.
  4. Create and assign specific content, like blog posts or case studies, to support each stage.

Common Challenges in the Buyer's Journey

Buyers often face several hurdles that can complicate their path to making a purchase.

  • Overload: sifting through vast amounts of information to find what's credible.
  • Alignment: gaining consensus from multiple decision-makers, especially in B2B sales.
  • Trust: establishing confidence in a brand amid competing claims and solutions.

Frequently Asked Questions about Buyer's Journey

How does the buyer's journey differ for B2B vs. B2C?

B2B journeys are typically longer and involve more stakeholders, requiring consensus-building content. B2C journeys are often shorter and more emotional, driven by individual needs and focusing on brand trust and social proof.

Is the buyer's journey always linear?

No, the modern buyer's journey is rarely linear. Buyers often jump between stages, revisit previous steps, or conduct research in parallel. This non-linear path requires a flexible, multi-channel marketing approach.

How has the internet changed the buyer's journey?

The internet empowers buyers with instant access to information. They now conduct extensive independent research online through reviews and blogs before ever engaging with a sales representative, shifting power from the seller to the buyer.

Other terms

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Lead Enrichment Software

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Lead Enrichment Software

Rapport Building

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Rapport Building

Conversational Intelligence

Conversational intelligence (CI) is AI technology that analyzes customer conversations to find insights that help sales and support teams improve.

Conversational Intelligence

Deal Closing

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Deal Closing

Direct-to-Consumer

Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) is a business model where companies sell products directly to customers, bypassing traditional retail middlemen.

Direct-to-Consumer

Sales Funnel

Learn about sales funnel, including stages of a sales funnel, crafting an effective sales funnel, sales funnel vs. sales pipeline.

Sales Funnel

Field Sales Rep

A field sales representative, or outside sales rep, travels to meet prospects in person, selling products or services directly within their territory.

Field Sales Rep

B2B Intent Data Providers

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B2B Intent Data Providers

Payment Gateways

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Payment Gateways

ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a popular online tool that lets entrepreneurs easily build sales funnels to guide potential customers through the buying process.

ClickFunnels

Sales Key Performance Indicators

Learn about sales key performance indicators, including identifying crucial sales KPIs, & establishing effective sales KPI goals.

Sales Key Performance Indicators

Email Personalization

Email personalization uses subscriber data—like their name, interests, or past behavior—to create highly relevant and targeted email campaigns.

Email Personalization

Integration Testing

Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.

Integration Testing

Direct Sales

Direct sales involves selling products directly to consumers in a non-retail setting, such as at home, online, or person-to-person.

Direct Sales

Customer Relationship Management Hygiene

CRM hygiene involves regularly cleaning and updating your customer data to ensure your CRM system remains a powerful and reliable tool.

Customer Relationship Management Hygiene

WordPress

Learn about WordPress, including understanding WordPress features, benefits of using WordPress, comparing WordPress and other CMS, and essential WordPress plugins.

WordPress

Sales Kickoff

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Sales Kickoff

Data Privacy

Data privacy is an individual's right to control their personal information, including how it's collected, processed, stored, and shared.

Data Privacy

Self-Service SaaS Model

Learn about self-service SaaS model, including benefits of the self-service model, & key features of a successful self-service SaaS.

Self-Service SaaS Model

Sales Enablement Platform

Learn about sales enablement platform, including key features of sales enablement platforms, & selecting the right sales enablement platform.

Sales Enablement Platform

Sales Acceleration

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Sales Acceleration

Channel Marketing

Channel marketing is a strategy where a company sells its products or services through third-party partners, like resellers or affiliates.

Channel Marketing

AppExchange

AppExchange is Salesforce's cloud marketplace, offering a vast ecosystem of apps and expert services to extend Salesforce functionality.

AppExchange

Quality Assurance

Learn about QA, including understanding QA in outbound sales, benefits of implementing QA, best practices for QA, and tools for effective QA.

Quality Assurance

Lead Conversion

Lead conversion is the process of turning a prospect into a customer by getting them to complete a desired action, such as making a purchase.

Lead Conversion

Ballpark

Learn about ballpark, including estimating with ballpark figures, understanding ballpark estimates in sales, & ballpark estimates vs. precise quotes.

Ballpark

CRM Integration

CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.

CRM Integration

Sales Training

Learn about sales training, including benefits of sales training, essential components of effective sales training, & sales training vs. sales coaching.

Sales Training

Net Promoter Score

Learn about net promoter score, including calculating your net promoter score, improving your net promoter score, & net promoter score: pros and cons.

Net Promoter Score

Sales Demonstration

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Sales Demonstration

Virtual Private Cloud

Learn about virtual private cloud, including benefits of using virtual private cloud, & setting up your virtual private cloud.

Virtual Private Cloud

On-premise CRM

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On-premise CRM

Mobile Optimization

Learn about mobile optimization, including understanding its importance, best practices, common mistakes, & future trends.

Mobile Optimization

Psychographics

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Psychographics

Salesforce Object Query Language

Learn about salesforce object query language (SOQL), including its definition, key features, syntax, best practices, and examples of querying data in salesforce.

Salesforce Object Query Language

Account

An account is a company or organization that you're targeting for sales. It can be a prospective, current, or even a past customer.

Account

Open Rate

Learn about open rate, including maximizing your open rate, factors influencing open rates, & open rate vs. click-through rate.

Open Rate

Marketing Mix

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Marketing Mix

Dark Social

Dark social is the sharing of content through private channels like messaging apps or email. This traffic is hard to track as it lacks referral data.

Dark Social

User Experience

Learn about user experience, including principles of user experience design, & enhancing user experience: best practices.

User Experience

Churn

Churn, also known as customer attrition, is the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a given period.

Churn

Buying Signal

A buying signal is any action from a prospect that indicates they are interested in making a purchase, helping sales teams prioritize leads.

Buying Signal

Inbound Sales

Inbound sales attracts interested prospects who've engaged with your brand, letting sales reps connect with warm leads instead of cold outreach.

Inbound Sales

Contact Data

Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.

Contact Data

Direct Mail

Direct mail is a marketing method where businesses send physical promotional materials directly to potential customers' mailboxes.

Direct Mail

Dialer

A dialer is software that automatically dials phone numbers for agents, boosting call efficiency and connecting them to live prospects faster.

Dialer

Inside Sales Metrics

Inside sales metrics are quantifiable measures used to track the performance, activities, and effectiveness of an internal sales team.

Inside Sales Metrics

Time on Site

Learn about time on site, including the importance of time on site, benefits of monitoring time on site, & strategies to improve time on site.

Time on Site

Buyer’s Remorse

Buyer’s remorse is the sense of regret or anxiety that can arise after making a purchase, often questioning if it was the right decision.

Buyer’s Remorse

Customer Relationship Management Systems

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a tool that centralizes customer data to help manage interactions and nurture relationships.

Customer Relationship Management Systems

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is a service model where data is stored on remote servers and accessed from the internet, rather than on a local drive.

Cloud Storage

Data Appending

Data appending is the process of adding new data fields to your existing database records to enrich and complete your information.

Data Appending

Sales Dashboard

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Sales Dashboard

B2B Demand Generation

Learn about B2B demand generation, including strategies for effective B2B demand generation, & key components of a demand generation program.

B2B Demand Generation

Target Account List

Learn about target account list, including building your target account list, key benefits of a target account list, & strategies for prioritizing accounts.

Target Account List

B2B Sales

Learn about B2B sales, including key strategies for B2B success, types of B2B sales models, & B2B vs. B2C sales: understanding the differences.

B2B Sales

Website Visitor Tracking

Learn about website visitor tracking, including benefits of website visitor tracking, key metrics to monitor, & implementing visitor tracking ethically.

Website Visitor Tracking

RESTful API

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RESTful API

Marketing Qualified Opportunity

Learn about marketing qualified opportunity, including identifying marketing qualified opportunities, & key elements of successful identification.

Marketing Qualified Opportunity

Account-Based Analytics

Account-Based Analytics measures engagement and impact across target accounts, not just individual leads, to guide B2B sales and marketing efforts.

Account-Based Analytics

Sales Coach

Learn about sales coach, including qualities of an effective sales coach, the importance of sales coaching, & sales coaching vs. sales managing.

Sales Coach

Nurture Campaign

Learn about nurture campaign, including key elements of a nurture campaign, & steps to launching a successful nurture campaign.

Nurture Campaign

Sales Compensation

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Sales Compensation

Internal signals

Internal signals are data points from your own systems, like website visits or product usage, that indicate a customer's buying intent.

Internal signals

Qualified Lead

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Qualified Lead

API

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.

API

Contact Discovery

Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.

Contact Discovery

InMail Messages

LinkedIn InMail messages are a premium feature that lets you directly message any LinkedIn member, even if you're not connected to them.

InMail Messages

Sales Intelligence

Learn about sales intelligence, including key benefits of sales intelligence, harnessing data for sales success, & sales intelligence tools comparison.

Sales Intelligence

Lightning Components

Lightning Components is a UI framework for building dynamic web apps for mobile and desktop devices on the Salesforce Lightning Platform.

Lightning Components

SEM

Learn about SEM, including how it works, benefits, strategies, measuring success, and tips to maximize your search engine marketing efforts.

SEM

Enterprise

An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.

Enterprise

Digital Rights Management

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is technology that controls access to copyrighted digital content, restricting its use, modification, and distribution.

Digital Rights Management

Business Continuity

Learn about business continuity, including understanding key components, steps to ensure continuity, common challenges, & best practices.

Business Continuity

Sales Territory Management

Learn about sales territory management, including strategies for effective territory management, & key benefits of optimizing territories.

Sales Territory Management

Robotic Process Automation

Learn about robotic process automation, including benefits of robotic process automation, & implementing RPA in outbound sales.

Robotic Process Automation

Enterprise Resource Planning

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.

Enterprise Resource Planning

BAB Formula

Learn about BAB formula, including implementing BAB in sales strategies, crafting an effective BAB pitch, & comparing BAB with other sales frameworks.

BAB Formula

Sales Enablement Content

Learn about sales enablement content, including crafting compelling sales enablement content, & essential components of effective sales content.

Sales Enablement Content

Lead Qualification Process

The lead qualification process is how you determine which prospects are most likely to become customers by evaluating them against specific criteria.

Lead Qualification Process

Targeted Marketing

Learn about targeted marketing, including benefits of targeted marketing, key strategies for effective targeting, & targeted marketing vs. mass marketing.

Targeted Marketing

Dark Funnel

The Dark Funnel describes customer buying activities that are untrackable by companies, such as private chats and word-of-mouth referrals.

Dark Funnel

Below the Line

Learn about below the line, including key strategies for below the line marketing, & distinguishing above and below the line tactics.

Below the Line

Payment Processors

Learn about payment processors, & including I understand your requirements. Here are four headings that you could use for your article:.

Payment Processors

Hybrid Sales Model

A hybrid sales model blends traditional and digital sales methods to engage customers across multiple channels and buying preferences.

Hybrid Sales Model

Prospecting

Learn about prospecting, including strategies for effective prospecting, key principles of successful prospecting, prospecting vs. lead generation.

Prospecting

Single Page Applications

Learn about single page applications, including benefits of single page applications, key features of SPAs, how to build SPAs, & common mistakes in SPAs.

Single Page Applications

Brand Equity

Learn about brand equity, including understanding its importance, building strong brand equity, measuring brand equity, & real-world applications.

Brand Equity

Marketing Attribution Model

Learn about marketing attribution model, including types of marketing attribution models, & key benefits of attribution modeling.

Marketing Attribution Model

Needs Assessment

Learn about needs assessment, including steps for conducting needs assessment, key components of needs assessment, & needs assessment vs. demand analysis.

Needs Assessment

Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn rate is the percentage of subscribers or customers who cancel their service with a company during a given time frame.

Customer Churn Rate

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.

Knowledge Base

Custom Metadata Types

Custom Metadata Types store application configurations as metadata. This makes them easily deployable between different Salesforce environments.

Custom Metadata Types

Marketing Analytics

Learn about marketing analytics, including key benefits of marketing analytics, & strategies for effective marketing analytics.

Marketing Analytics

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Progressive Web Apps

Learn about progressive web apps, including how to develop a PWA, benefits of progressive web apps, PWAs vs native apps, & essential PWA features.

Progressive Web Apps

Marketing Metrics

Learn about marketing metrics, including understanding marketing metrics, keys to effective marketing measurement, & marketing metrics vs. sales metrics.

Marketing Metrics

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.

Lead Generation

Personalization in Sales

Learn about personalization in sales, including strategies for effective personalization, & key benefits of sales personalization.

Personalization in Sales

Digital Sales Room

A Digital Sales Room is a private online space where sellers share all relevant content with buyers to streamline the sales cycle.

Digital Sales Room