How to build a Customer Journey to create demand and generate leads

We need to understand that potential customers can be in different stages of a Customer Journey and their path is not identical.

Some of them might book a discovery call 10 minutes after browsing your website while others may need way more research.

For a B2B company it is difficult to influence the way they are moving from one stage to another, but what they can influence is the marketing touchpoints.

These are crucial to stay top of mind, create demand for your solution, and when they enter the “buying mode” to see your company as the place to go.

After endless iterations and tests, I found these 6 stages are the best to consider:

1. Problem Unaware

“No problem, we are all good”.

2. Problem Identification

“Oh, this is pretty bad”.

3. Solutions Aware

“We understand what the solutions are”.

4. Solution Exploration

“Let’s see how this type of solution can help us”.

5. Vendor Aware

“We know {Company} can help us”.

6. Vendor Selection

“We want to work with {Company}”.

Do you understand now why I said you can’t influence the way they are moving from one stage to another but you can influence the marketing touchpoints?

Someone can go from Problem Identification to Vendor Selection in 15 minutes. In the meantime, someone may need 30 days for the same process.

But regarding the timeline, you can have certain marketing touchpoints at any stage, whether they are moving in hours or weeks.

Now, for each of the 6 stages above, I research and define the following 3 categories:

– Actions

“What do potential customers do?”

– Needs & Pains

“What does the potential customer want to achieve and avoid?”

– Marketing touchpoints

“What marketing tactic do they interact with?”

Note: I also have another 3 categories: Customer feeling, Opportunities, and Best fit customer segments. In this article I’ll focus on the 3 from above because they are more important.

We have the stages and we have the categories. Now it’s time to mix these, research, and define the Customer Journey.

I’ll show you an example below for Problem Unaware and Problem Identification:

1. Problem Unaware

We have someone thinking about launching a fitness app (actions).

They are looking to build the app as soon as possible (need), but they don’t want to cost them a lot of money (pain).

You can create LinkedIn organic posts, experiment with LinkedIn Ads, try warm outreach, and different content campaigns (marketing touchpoints).

2. Problem Identification

They start reading long-form content across the web and research the process of building an app (actions).

They want to understand how they can do it (need), but they start being worried they can’t do it on their own (pain).

You can create LinkedIn long-form content, launch a lead magnet, or create relevant content on your website (marketing touchpoints).

Now, go through all 6 stages and define the actions, needs, pains, and marketing touchpoints for your ICP.

Because as I said, you can’t influence the journey (and you don’t have to), but you can influence their next decision through the marketing touchpoints.

Consider that a sales process doesn’t start when they book a call with your team, a sales process starts when they first find you.

It’s your job to fill the gap from “identification to intent” through content and different marketing touchpoints.

That’s how you create demand for your solution and make potential customers not even consider other competitors.