The number of brands competing for consumers has increased in almost every industry, and buyers enjoy an ever-growing selection of products and services. Consequently, their expectations are rising as well.
And not just regarding the products.
During the buying process, potential customers demand more and deeper information than ever before. This characterization applies equally for B2C and B2B customers, so both should be treated similarly and provided with personal, relevant content during their customer journeys.
And while B2B companies may think themselves customer-centric, quite often they are actually account-focused. What should be a customer journey, then, is still frequently treated as just customer relationship management.
The customer journey
There are many touchpoints between the potential buyer who progresses through different stages and the seller, from awareness to consideration to purchase. This path is called customer journey. It starts at the first contact with a company and, ideally, progresses all the way to a purchase and beyond.
Marketing automation
The secret to creating successful customer journeys, even with a very small marketing team or a huge audience to address, is the use of a marketing automation tool such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing.
Dynamics 365 Marketing is part of Microsoft’s suite of cloud business apps and can be used as a standalone solution or combined with other Dynamics modules. We recommend connecting Dynamics 365 Marketing with Dynamics 365 Sales. Based on the same platform, they share records and thus make alignment between the two departments easier.
But let’s focus on the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Marketing: The app supports automated, multi-step, multi-channel customer journeys. On these journeys prospects and customers follow an individual path according to their interaction with a company’s content, for example through social media or landing pages.