MSM FULL-FUNNEL CONVERSION GLOSSARY
What is the B2B Buying Journey?
The B2B buying journey is the sequence a buyer moves through before and during a purchase decision, from scanning their environment, to exploring a problem, to hunting for a supplier, to buying.
THE SHORT ANSWER
The Definition
The B2B buying journey is the sequence a buyer moves through before and during a purchase decision, from scanning their environment, to exploring a problem, to hunting for a supplier, to buying.
Why It Matters Commercially
Most marketing addresses buyers who are already looking, which is the shortest and most competitive part of the process. Understanding the earlier stages tells you what to publish for people who don't yet know they need you, which is where preference gets formed and price sensitivity gets decided.
How It's Measured
There isn't a formula. What matters is being able to say, for each active opportunity, which stage the buyer is in and what evidence tells you that.
Who Owns It
Marketing owns the early stages, because that's where the buyer is forming views without contact. Sales owns the last one. Both need to understand the whole sequence, or marketing produces content for people already decided and sales meets buyers whose minds were made up weeks ago.
HOW IT WORKS
Your sales process describes what you do. The buying journey describes what the buyer does, and it starts long before they contact you. Four stages, in order:
- Scanning. They aren't looking for a supplier. They're absorbing information about their industry and their problems in the background. They may not have named the problem yet.
- Exploring. Something has prompted them to look into a specific issue. They're reading, asking peers, working out whether it's worth doing anything about. Still no supplier in mind.
- Hunting. They've decided to act and are now looking for who can help. This is the stage most businesses market to, and by the time it starts a shortlist is often already forming from what they absorbed earlier.
- Buying. They're comparing specific options, checking credibility and negotiating. Your sales process is meaningful here and largely invisible before it.
Why it changes what you publish
Most marketing addresses Hunting. Service pages, pricing, case studies, all aimed at someone already looking for a supplier. That content is necessary and it arrives late.
The people in Scanning and Exploring are forming views about who understands their problem, and they're doing it without your involvement unless you've published something useful. By the time they reach Hunting, they aren't evaluating from a blank sheet. They're checking whether the people they already trust can do the work.
This is also why ROAS figures mislead in B2B. The article read during Exploring gets no credit for the enquiry that arrives four months later.
The buying journey versus the sales funnel
The sales funnel is your model of your own activity. The buying journey is the buyer's, and it exists whether you map it or not. The funnel starts at enquiry. The journey started months earlier.
Businesses that only manage the funnel are managing the last quarter of the process and competing on price at the end of it.
The buying journey versus customer journey mapping
Closely related and worth separating. Customer journey mapping plots the buyer's experience against your internal handovers, mostly from first contact onwards. The buying journey covers the part before that, where the buyer is forming opinions without touching your business at all.
Map both and the gaps become obvious, particularly the gap between what a buyer needs in Exploring and what most businesses publish.
We work through this in our full funnel audit, and there's more in what full funnel marketing means.
WHAT THIS LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE
A manufacturing firm gets 15 enquiries a month and nearly all arrive at the Hunting stage, comparing three suppliers on price. Margins are under constant pressure.
Reviewing their content, everything on the website addresses what they sell. Nothing addresses the problems their buyers are working through months earlier.
Publishing material aimed at Exploring changed the shape of the enquiries rather than the number. More arrived already believing the firm understood the problem, and fewer opened with a request for a price comparison. Same volume, different conversation.
IS THIS COSTING YOU REVENUE RIGHT NOW?
Look at your own marketing against these:
- Does anything you publish address a problem rather than a service?
- Do enquiries usually arrive already comparing you on price?
- Can you name the trigger that makes your buyers start looking?
- Do you know how long your buyers typically take from first awareness to enquiry?
- Is your attribution window longer than that period?
- Would someone in the early stages find anything useful on your website?
Two or more problems here and you're only visible at the point where the decision is nearly made.
SEE WHAT YOUR COMPETITORS ARE DOING THAT YOU AREN'T
We'll analyse two of your competitors against your own site and show you where they're winning conversions you should be getting.
WHAT WE SEE IN THE FIELD
Ask most businesses where their marketing sits and it's nearly all aimed at Hunting. Service pages, pricing, testimonials. Useful content, aimed at people who have already decided to buy something.
The competitive advantage sits earlier. If you're the business that helped someone understand their problem while they were Exploring, you're on the shortlist before the shortlist exists. That's slower work and it's the reason some businesses never seem to compete on price.
Reviewed by Ian Wilson, MSM.
Frequently Asked
KEEP EXPLORING
FIND OUT WHERE YOUR MARKETING AND SALES ARE LOSING CONVERSIONS
Book your 45 minute dicovery call where we will discuss and examine your customer journey from attention and website behaviour through lead quality, handover, CRM, pipeline, follow up and close, then tells you what to fix first.