The B2B customer journey can take up to 12 months, involving numerous touchpoints between a prospect company and a brand before a purchase decision is made.
Recent data suggests that, on average, a B2B customer engages in approximately 60 touchpoints prior to finalizing a deal. However, this number can vary significantly: up to 100 touchpoints for high-value deals in complex industries!
These nuances underscore the importance of understanding your reality and optimizing touchpoints to enhance lead generation, improve lead quality and have a more efficient B2B customer journey.
Keep reading for a comprehensive analysis of the nuances in B2B customer journey touchpoints, what is the reality for main business models and strategies that will make you close more deals in no time.
Table of Contents
What Are The Main B2B Customer Journey Touchpoints
Touchpoints are any instances where a prospect interacts with your brand, directly or indirectly. These moments can happen across multiple channels and formats, shaping the buyer’s journey by influencing how they perceive, engage with, and evaluate your offering.
The B2B customer journey can be generally broken into three key phases: awareness, consideration, and decision. In the awareness phase, prospects are often unaware of specific solutions but actively researching ways to solve their challenges.
The consideration phase moves prospects closer to evaluating your solution as a viable option. Finally, the decision phase is where prospects weigh their options and decide whether your solution aligns with their goals.
Below is a breakdown of the main touchpoints for each phase of the customer journey and why they matter:
Phase | Touchpoints | Why They Matter |
Awareness | Digital ads, blog articles, SEO landing pages, social media, webinars | Establish brand visibility and position your business as a potential solution to the buyer’s challenges. Builds trust and initial engagement. |
Consideration | Case studies, comparison guides, whitepapers, explainer videos, nurturing emails | Educates prospects on your product’s value while addressing their pain points. Helps differentiate your offering and overcome common objections. |
Decision | Sales calls, personalized product demos, ROI calculators, free trials | Focuses on delivering specific value tailored to the buyer’s business. These touchpoints reduce uncertainty and create confidence in the purchasing decision. |
Some Key Variations in B2B Touchpoints
Although a generic division of the B2B customer journey facilitates visualization, the impact of each phase touchpoints can significantly vary due to the external factors such as:
Complexity of decision-making:
- Industries like manufacturing and finance involve complex decision-making processes with multiple stakeholders, extending the number of touchpoints specially in the consideration phase.
- Retail, by contrast, often focuses on more standardized solutions, requiring fewer interactions on consideration, but more focus in the decision phase.
Product-specific needs:
- Industries with high technical requirements (e.g., manufacturing) require more touchpoints for product validation, such as technical demos, site visits, or regulatory testing.
- Retail and professional services often focus on operational fit, reducing the need for lengthy evaluations.
Persona-based preferences
- C-suite executives: These decision-makers focus on the big picture. They are more likely to engage with high-level touchpoints that highlight ROI, scalability, and strategic alignment, such as executive reports and ROI-focused case studies.
- Mid-level managers: Tasked with day-to-day implementation, these individuals value practical insights. They are more inclined to engage with hands-on touchpoints like product demos, free trials, and webinars.
- Procurement teams: Focused on cost-efficiency and compliance, these personas pay close attention to touchpoints that provide transparent pricing, competitor comparisons, and contract flexibility.
How Industry Influences the Number of Touchpoints
While factors like deal size and company maturity also play a role, the industry itself has a great influence in the length and depth of the customer journey. Here’s a brief overview of how each industry’s complexity influences the number of touchpoints to close a deal.
SaaS
SaaS deals often involve a high number of touchpoints, typically ranging from 50 to 80, depending on the product’s complexity and pricing. SaaS buyers tend to evaluate multiple solutions before committing, leading to prolonged research and consideration phases.
With heavy reliance on product trials, technical documentation, and ongoing support touchpoints, this industry demands repeated engagement at every stage of the funnel. For enterprise-level SaaS, where integrations and security are critical, the number of touchpoints can exceed 90.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing buyers often require extensive evaluation due to the high stakes of their investments, such as production machinery or process optimization software. Deals in this sector often involve 50 or more touchpoints, driven by the need for detailed product specifications, compliance assurances, and lifecycle cost analysis.
Large-scale deals may also necessitate on-site visits, which can increase the overall number of interactions.
Finance
In finance, regulatory compliance and risk management significantly increase the number of required touchpoints, typically ranging from 40 to 60. Financial institutions demand detailed documentation, rigorous security testing, and compliance audits throughout the consideration phase.
Complex approval processes, involving multiple layers of stakeholders (e.g., legal, compliance, IT), further lengthen the journey.
Professional Services
Professional services buyers generally engage with 20–40 touchpoints, as their focus is on customized, consultative solutions. These buyers often prefer fewer but higher-quality interactions that demonstrate alignment with their unique challenges.
However, when dealing with larger firms or international clients, the number of touchpoints can increase due to the need for more personalized proposals and in-depth discovery sessions.
Other Factors that Influence the Number of Touchpoints
While industry plays a significant role in determining the number of touchpoints required to close a deal, other critical factors also shape this metric.
Familiarity with the brand
The level of brand recognition significantly impacts how many touchpoints are needed. Prospects who are already familiar with your brand or have interacted with it in the past typically require fewer touchpoints to convert. For example, inactive customers or past clients may need only a few well-timed interactions to re-engage.
On the other hand, cold prospects—those unfamiliar with your brand—require more touchpoints to establish trust, educate them about your value proposition, and convince them to take the next step.
Timing also matters: a prospect actively in the buying window will naturally need fewer interactions compared to one who isn’t ready to purchase, as the latter requires additional nurturing to build awareness and interest.
Deal size
The size and value of the deal have a direct correlation with the number of touchpoints required. Larger deals, often involving higher levels of financial commitment, require more interactions to justify the investment.
These touchpoints may include multiple demos, stakeholder meetings, and detailed ROI analyses to address potential concerns. Conversely, smaller deals often have shorter sales cycles and fewer interactions, as the risk and complexity are relatively lower.
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Buying group size
In B2B sales, it’s rare for one person to make a purchase decision independently. Gartner’s research shows that the average B2B buying group involves 6 to 10 stakeholders, each with unique priorities and concerns.
As the buying group size increases, so does the number of touchpoints required to engage, educate, and align all decision-makers. These interactions often involve tailored content for different personas, such as technical specifications for IT leaders or cost-benefit analyses for procurement teams.
Number of vendors evaluated
When prospects evaluate multiple vendors, the number of touchpoints naturally increases. Companies competing for the same deal must work harder to differentiate themselves by offering more personalized and high-value interactions.
Additionally, when buyers are comparing solutions, they often seek detailed information, including product comparisons, testimonials, and third-party validation, adding to the total number of touchpoints needed.
How Pathmonk Optimizes B2B Touchpoints Conversion Potential
Pathmonk addresses a critical challenge in B2B marketing: the ability to nurture and convert leads throughout a prolonged, complex sales cycle. By keeping visitors engaged with personalized content across different channels and touchpoints, it helps maintain their interest and moves them steadily towards the ultimate goal: closing the deal.
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While Real Check Stubs was successful in attracting significant website traffic, they faced a common B2B challenge: low conversion rates. Many users would browse the site and interact with its features but drop off before completing a purchase. Identifying the specific reasons behind these drop-offs proved difficult without actionable data and insights into user behavior.
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