Mapping the digital customer journey in B2B
Today’s B2B sales strategy must be built around one undeniable truth: your customers are already moving through a B2B buyer journey long before they interact with your team.
According to Gartner,
💡 75% of B2B buyers prefer to buy without contact with a salesperson.
The digital customer journey refers to the full path a buyer takes online—from becoming aware of a problem to making a purchase (and becoming a repeat customer). In B2B, this involves 6-10 decision-makers, lengthy consideration cycles, and more than 10 digital touchpoints.
Gartner’s research shows that B2B buyers loop between stages. They're researching, comparing, validating, and talking to peers simultaneously, not sequentially. That’s why both sales and marketing must co-own many stages, especially evaluation and decision.
Buyers jump back and forth on the self-service digital customer journey
Journey mapping isn’t one-and-done
Your customer journey will evolve as:
You launch new features
You grow into new segments or geographies
Buyer expectations shift
Set a habit to revisit and refine your journey map at least every 6–12 months. Use it as a living document that aligns teams and drives better buyer experiences.
Customer journey phases and roles:
Awareness
B2B Buyer activity: Realise a need or challenge
B2B Marketing role: Create demand, raise brand awareness: blog, social media, SEO, advertisign, videos, event materials, PR and earned media, partner marketing, influencers
B2B Sales role: Provide insight via social selling, share thought leadership, and events
Consideration
B2B Buyer activity: Research vendors, compare options
B2B Marketing role: Offer comparisons, webinars, case studies, videos, email marketing and targeted campaigns
B2B Sales role: Engage if hand-raiser appears (e.g. demo request)
Evaluation
B2B Buyer activity: Validate fit, build internal consensus between 6-10 buying commitee members
B2B Marketing role: Enable sales with decision-maker content
B2B Sales role: Discovery calls, value selling, business case co-creation, demos, trialis, proof-of-concepts
Decision
B2B Buyer activity: Shortlist vendors, seek final reassurance
B2B Marketing role: Supply ROI proof, testimonials, competitive proof
B2B Sales role: Negotiate, close, manage stakeholders
Post-purchase
B2B Buyer activity: Onboard, assess value, expand
B2B Marketing role: Nurture via lifecycle content, upsell nudges
B2B Sales role: Drive expansion, renewals, referrals
How to map your Digital Customer Journey (step-by-step)
Even the most experienced B2B companies often lack full visibility into their entire digital customer journey, especially across complex sales cycles and fragmented data systems.
For early-stage startups, the challenge is even greater: the journey may not be fully formed yet, and assumptions about the customer experience may not reflect actual buyer behaviour.
Whether you’re just starting or scaling up, customer journey mapping helps you uncover what really happens between “first touch” and “closed-won” — and where friction points or blind spots may cost you deals.
Why it matters
✅ Aligns marketing, sales, and product teams around real buyer behaviour
✅ Reveals bottlenecks and content gaps in your funnel
✅ Improves lead qualification and velocity
✅ Enables targeted personalisation across channels
✅ Builds internal clarity to support scalable GTM processes
Customer journey mapping for early-stage companies:
Interview early users, prospects, and internal teams (Sales, Support, Success)
Also interview fellow start-up entrepreneurs & their experiences with the B2B customer journey
Follow your prospects’ conversations (LinkedIn, Reddit, X): what they say about their purchase experiences
Find benchmark information or data from a similar industry: ask what information AI has about your industry
Analyse website data: Observe how people arrive at your site, where they bounce, and what they ask
Analyse your sales processes: what information is available there about where & how you best reach your prospects
Create your first communication guide to guide prospects towards a sale:
Buyer Pain Points → Promises → Evidence → Calls to Action (CTAs)
Integrate content marketing, sales messages, and pitches around this framework.
Customer journey mapping for companies with traction:
Review CRM data, analyse conversion rates between journey stages (what works, what gets stuck): identify friction points and drop-off points
Analyse prospect feedback and message threads in CRM (their questions, objections, feedback on your products/services/positioning)
Run regular win/loss analysis and bring the insights into GTM
Conduct customer interviews: let customers tell you about their own customer journey and friction points
Ask:
Why did they start looking for this solution (their pain point/need)?
What steps did they take before reaching out?
What content helped?
What caused hesitation?
Who else did they consider and why? (competitor´s solutions and digital touch points)
Also interview internal customer-facing teams: sales, customer support
Audit all digital touchpoints:
Organic content and search, ads, email, social media, referrals, partnerships, etc.
Track user movement on your site
Identify content and UX drop-off points:
Where do buyers lose interest?
What would help them to stay on the journey?
Create accurate ICP and buyer personas and a map digital customer journey stages:
Create a journey map showing each step your buyers take and the assets and people they interact with.
Touchpoints, responsibilities between the teams, materials and content needed
Include emotions and questions at each stage (awareness → consideration → decision → post-sale).
Use this customer journey map as a living document that aligns teams and drives better buyer experiences. Remember to review & update it regularly.
Align marketing and sales processes and take control of the entire customer journey
Unify marketing and sales data and define common purchase funnel KPIs for marketing and sales:
Conversion rates between stages
Sales cycle length
Content impact on deals
Performance of different channels
Create ICP-oriented, targeted content across the entire purchase path so that the path guides the buyer towards the deal
✅ Growth Ahoy is happy to help with all of these, let's chat?
