The New Buyer Journey – Post Purchase

The C-suite has just announced its business strategy and plans for 2024. The senior marketing and sales management teams are anxiously looking at each other. They were expecting an ambitious growth strategy and higher targets, but not this ambitious!

The conversation turns to how the different business teams are going to deliver. Sales want more and better leads from marketing. They know that using intent data will help improve the quality of leads passed to sales by identifying which businesses seem to be in buying mode.

Intent data will also enable more effective lead nurturing. But that will require content that reflects the needs of each member at each stage of the now non-linear buyer journey.

Marketing will also have to fill in some holes in their content inventory. More and better thought leadership is required, as are guides to power the lower stages of the buyer journey.

However, the volumes of leads required by sales to deliver the new strategy can’t be provided solely from the company’s website, emails, search, and social channels.

Specialist lead generation providers can provide you with high-quality leads at scale that match buyer criteria and provide intent data.  

Sales and marketing may also need to revisit their ABM list of target accounts. Are there some outliers that might benefit from their tech or services? Or can intent data identify businesses that are in-market for their products, but they’ve not considered before?

However, the company must address another critical issue that will impact reaching those targets. Retention.

For B2B SaaS brands to compete with their peers, their retention rate must be at least 80%.  The average for IT software and services is 77%, but it drops to 67% for manufacturing. So, how do you go about replacing those lost customers?

If you had 500 clients and lost a quarter of them, you’re looking for another 128 clients just to stand still.

Depending on which study you believe and what industry you’re in, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. So, wouldn’t it be prudent to put a retention strategy in place?

So, let’s return to the new B2B buyer journey to see what impact the post-purchase journey can have on retention and driving new sales, often without you realizing it. We’ll also explain why marketing is key to the journey’s pre- and post-purchase stages.

The New B2B Buyer Journey – Post-Purchase Stages.

Experience

The post-sales teams responsible for setup and implementation, as well as managing accounts—resolving customer issues, processing renewals, and upselling, will also need support from marketing.

At the first stage of the post-purchase journey, the focus is to onboard your new client successfully.  Marketing will need to work closely with your customer success teams to provide content for training workshops, checklists, tutorials, frameworks, and guides that will help clients get up to speed.

With a large client base, providing face-to-face training or support may be challenging. One solution is to build a self-guided online learning platform. Adobe’s Experience League provides tutorials for all their technology. But ensure you give each user a defined learning journey to help them get the most out of your technology and services.

Optimise

Here, your customer is starting to explore how easy it is to refine and optimize the technology. At this stage, they will also want to know if they are realising the value of our investment. And ultimately, have they made the right decision?

The more you can do to help your customer realize their business goals, the better the more confident they’ll be that they’ve bought the right solution for their business.

Developing comprehensive best practice guides, playbooks, and expert tips will help customers optimize the technology and ensure they are delivering or exceeding their goals and expectations. But also providing a consistent flow of thought-leadership content will help the buyer and their teams feel like they’ve made the right buying decision.

Loyalty

Equally, if the first two stages of the post-purchase journey have been successful, they will likely not only be happy to renew the contract at the end of the term but also upgrade the service.

If you’ve built high levels of trust, they may come to you first with any challenges they face in the business rather than looking at one of your competitors. Supplying them with a stream of high-quality thought leadership that highlights challenges and solutions businesses like them are experiencing can act as the trigger to drive engagement.

Advocacy

You know when you’ve succeeded when your client starts talking about your partnership in public or recommends your services to others without being asked. Moreover, you’re the first company they call when they move companies. This sort of advocacy is earned, not bought.

When new customers start looking for a technology partner, it’s your customers’ testimonials, case studies, reviews, mentions in articles, or at a conference or event that will influence the decisions of future buyers.

The Influence Loop

They may have noticed a loop that encircles the whole buyer journey. The Influence Loop. This reflects the non-linearity of the modern buyer journey. The buyer committee, typically 6-10 people, may start their journey in different places and jump from one part of the journey to another.

Buyers aren’t just using review sites like G2, Trustpilot, and Gartner Peer Insights to check out what buyers think of your products and services. But they’re just as likely to contact their peer networks for advice.

The Wall Street Journal indicated from a recent survey that In the Fortune 500 companies in the US, CMOs stayed in their jobs an average of 51 months, down from 54 the year prior. By comparison, the average tenure of all C-suite officers in the new study was 53 months. That’s a lot of very senior people moving jobs at least every four and a quarter years and taking that knowledge and experience with them. And there’s plenty of experience for their peers to rely on.

Action Points: Navigating the Post-Purchase Stage of the New B2B Buyer Journey

1. Collaborative Onboarding: Ensure marketing collaborates closely with customer success teams. Equip them with content for training workshops, online learning platforms, checklists, tutorials, frameworks, and guides tailored to the client’s needs.
2. Invest in Digital Learning: Consider developing a self-guided online learning platform akin to Adobe’s Experience League, ensuring each user has a clear, beneficial learning path.
3. Empower Optimization: Develop comprehensive best practice guides, playbooks, and expert tips. This content should empower customers to refine and optimize the technology, ensuring they realize the full value of their investment.
4. Consistent Thought Leadership: Regularly provide high-quality thought leadership content. This reinforces the customer’s buying decision and positions your brand as a trusted industry authority.
5. Nurture Loyalty: If the initial post-purchase stages are successful, build trust to ensure contract renewals and potential upgrades. Offer solutions and insights into their challenges, positioning your brand as their go-to resource.
6. Encourage Advocacy: Aim for organic advocacy. When clients publicly praise or recommend your partnership, it’s a testament to your brand’s value. Facilitate this by showcasing customer testimonials and case studies and encouraging mentions in articles or events.
7. Leverage the Influence Loop: Recognize the non-linear nature of the modern buyer journey. Different members of the buying committee may start their journey at different stages. Ensure your content and engagement strategies cater to this diverse audience.
8. Harness Peer Reviews: Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews. Positive reviews can significantly influence potential buyers.
9. Network with the Movers: Given the frequent movement of C-suite officers, it’s crucial to maintain relationships even when they transition to new roles. Their experience and advocacy can open doors to new opportunities.
10. Retention Strategy: Given the high cost of acquiring new customers compared to retaining existing ones, it’s imperative to have a robust retention strategy. This not only ensures consistent revenue but also fosters brand loyalty.

In conclusion, the post-purchase stage of the B2B buyer journey is as crucial, if not more so, than the initial stages. By focusing on these action points, marketers can ensure they meet and exceed the ambitious growth strategies set by their C-suite, driving unparalleled success.