B2B buying behaviors have changed significantly within the last three years. For SMB (small to mid-sized) B2B businesses the pandemic acted as a catalyst speeding up slow-growing trends and forcing all businesses to adapt quickly or risk being left behind. For B2B sales and marketing teams this meant adjusting customer journeys to match the 100% digital-first requirements as in-person meetings, events and more became a thing of the past.
Even though the pandemic’s influence has lessened, changed buyer trends have remained and are beginning to evolve. In 2019 your internal teams would have been rushing to set up digital forms that customers can complete, whereas now in 2022 your sales and marketing teams have more time to test out new strategies and methodologies to see which customer journey is the most successful.
Here are 3 key facts you need to know about changing B2B buying behaviors and how you can use them in your customer strategies.
1. 80% of businesses no longer rely on calendarized buying cycles to purchase software – Source
According to research, over half of B2B buyers now no longer wait for budget approvals or for the next time an update happens with their existing service provider, instead businesses have started buying solutions anytime they are needed. Buyers state that their central focus is to keep the business moving forward and legacy relationships are no longer paramount, especially when the need for new products or solutions suddenly arises.
For B2B businesses, this change in urgency and buyer focus means that your marketing and sales teams need to be able to adapt and target their tactics to address quicker and more direct buying decisions and evolve away from comparatively slower nurture campaigns. For these types of urgent buyers, quick and continual engagement is paramount, if you want to avoid losing their interest. For your internal teams, this means ensuring your sales and marketing teams are completely aligned, so that any customer engagement is responded to urgently, through automatic email responses (from both sales and marketing) intelligent lead scoring and next step recommendations.
2. 77% of B2B buyers said their latest online purchase was difficult – Source
B2B buying processes will always be more complex than B2C ones due to B2B buying groups usually having 6-10 decision makers. This process has been made all the more difficult as the preferred digital-first customer journey limits the level of interaction sellers now have with the larger buying group. Without in-person meetings it can be difficult to gauge what information is required to sway a specific buyer in the group and when.
To overcome this, B2B businesses have now begun exploring improved customer journeys that gradually provide informative content, catering to each potential decision maker throughout their buyer journey, all the way from exploration through marketing strategies to decision making with your sales teams.
This methodology is what Gartner calls Solution Exploration:
“Providing the right information to buyers at the right time, making the selling process much easier”
For this methodology to work well, all of your internal teams (sales and marketing) need to be using the same information on the same platform. This allows no room for duplicated content, errors or missing pieces in the buyer’s journey which could be the key components required for a sale to be authorized and completed.
3. Significant increase in the number of B2B buyers who use social media and online review sites as credible sources – source
In 2022, it’s been reported that there has been a significant rise in the number of buyers using social media and review sites as a key factor in their decision-making process. Researchers theorize that this sudden increase is due to the amount of information and options available to buyers when searching online, often leading to decision fatigue. To combat this, buyers are now using reviews and online recommendations as key components which can sway their decision and view of a business and its services.
B2b buying behaviors have changed. Even though the buying process is almost 100% digital now, buyers still like buying from people and this is where social media and reviews come in. As a buyer and seller in the B2B world, reviews and social media can be the most powerful tools available to you as they effortlessly combine together both the digital and personal aspects of the customer experience. Using social media to put faces and emotions together with your brand will go further than you might think as potential buyers get a greater feel for your brand and its employees. This is a key point in the evolving B2B buying process we are seeing within the industry, and it shouldn’t be overlooked.
Reviews, however, should be 100% customer influenced. In the digital-first world of B2B marketing and sales, reviews are a great way to establish trust and loyalty at the beginning of a customer journey, even before your sales teams have time to pitch!
What changing B2B buying trends have taught us is that customers are searching for quick, unified customer journeys that give them exactly what they want, 24/7/365, across a range of platforms including social media. Customers want to feel catered to and receive instant gratification when filling in a form or visiting a website and having that point of interest instantly addressed by the company through automatic responses that start or continue their customer journey then and there.
Customers no longer have time to wait around for your sales teams to get back to potential leads during the next working day. Instead, both sales and marketing need to provide unified journeys that are instant, personalized and progressive, covering every part of the journey from awareness to exploration and decision making.
