Buyer Journey: 10 B2B Statistics You Need To Know In 2020

B2B market is changing very quickly. Mainly because the consumers in that market are changing themselves. The buyer’s journey in this segment is way more complex and we can no longer understand it as a linear flow, but as a web made of many touch points instead.

This high complexity is due to the fact that B2B customer isn’t, usually, one individual person but rather a group of several people who provide their inputs and have decision power over the purchase process. For that reason, the decision-making process tends to become longer and more difficult. It’s not just a matter of choosing between “buying” or “not buying”, but going through the following steps:

• Identifying a problem/need;
• Finding a solution;
• Selecting the providers;
• Validating the choice;
• Obtaining a consensus within the organization.

Given these challenges, it’s crucial to know deeply our market and our buyer personas, so that we can implement effective strategies in each of their buyer journey’s stages. Therefore, we highlight 10 statistics about B2B segment that every marketer and manager should know in 2020:

1. When B2B customers are in a consideration stage, most of the time they spend is researching online (27%), compared to just 17% of the time spent in meetings with potential suppliers.
2. 77% of B2B customers said their last purchase was complex or difficult.
3. 61% of B2B customers rely on peers’ opinions and online reviews to make their purchase decision.
4. 4 in 10 B2B companies believe they’ll have a full vision of their customers in the next few years.
5. 50% of B2B organizations have the omnichannel experience as a priority for the next years.
6. One third of the companies declare they want to make better use of data to sell and to better serve their clients across the buyer’s journey.
7. Nowadays, B2B groups of buyers are more diverse than ever. 75% of those consumers agree that their purchases involve people from different teams, locations and job functions.
8. 80% of consumers are using their phones in many touch points of their buyer’s journey.
9. More than half of the purchase decisions are completed before submitting an order or a request.
10. The average conversion rate for a B2B customer in the wholesale market is 10%, compared to 3% in the B2C segment.

Since linear and uniform sales funnels seem to have come to an end, the great challenge for 2020 is about creating unique and individualized experiences, with the goal of impacting all types of buyer personas ate all stages of their buyer’s journeys at the same time. This flexibility will be a critical factor to the effectiveness and success of your company’s actions.

Does your company operate in B2B market? We can help you identify your buyer personas and think strategically about the best tactics to impact them on their different stages.