B2B Customer Journey Mapping: Supporting Renewable Energy Brands to Communicate Better Online

Customers find you at many touchpoints online - some first-hand and intentional, some second-hand or passive, and yet all must align to your brand’s vision, values and add value for these prospects at each stage of their buying journey. 

But, as B2B marketing strategy specialists, we know that in B2B - this is rarely the case. 

B2B marketing stats show that while B2C brands score between 65% and 80%, the B2B customer experience index sits woefully below 50% - and an incredible 81% of business buyers believe they’d make better decisions if B2B advertising did a better job of engaging them. 

So, last year, we embarked on a project to discover what was going on. 

The result was a methodology to map the online customer journey of any B2B business, but we were interested in three sectors in particular - our agency specialisms: aerospace technology and renewables. 

The results of our B2B customer journey mapping revealed that perhaps one of the most important business sectors - renewable energy - had a lot of work to do when it came to marketing. 

Given that this sector is at the forefront of the green energy transition, it seems vital that they get better control of their messaging and speak more clearly to their prospects. 

You can download the whitepaper for a deeper dive into our conclusions, but in this article we spotlight renewable energy as a sector and showcase the top-performing renewable energy company we reviewed.

Read on for what is working, and what isn’t - and for actionable advice for your renewable energy company's marketing strategy. 

B2B Customer Journey Mapping Analysis: how we got to work 

We assessed the digital touchpoints of a company’s website and socials, looking at various metrics within these interfaces.  

To ensure we could create fair comparisons for analysis and for rating these companies, we created a clear methodology to follow. 

1. We broke the analysis into the five stages of the customer journey - from where and how a prospect discovers you, to how they consider selecting your product or service, through to converting them into a sale, retaining their loyalty, and encouraging them to champion your company.
2. We evaluated 22 important factors across these phases and created criteria from marketing philosophies to score each out of 10
3. We totalled each company’s score to enable ready comparison within sectors, between others and against industry averages. 

This is a breakdown of what we looked for in each phase, and the points available for each phase, and metric. 

Discovery  (70 points) - Social & SEO

Consideration (60 points) - Blogs, email, marketing automation, social

Convert (50 points)  - Call to actions, options to speak with the company, response times, chat bot

Retention (40 points) - Customer resources, customer tools (portals), loyalty, customer support systems

Champion (30 points) - Testimonials, reviews, use of review scheme online

The Findings - A Summary Across companies 

We analysed 15 companies, five from each sector - renewables, technology and aerospace. 

The average score across all 15 companies was 120 - or 54%.

• Only 6 companies achieved over 55% 
• 4 of the brands only achieved 25%  of the available scores, even though they are companies turning over billions 
• All of the businesses in the Top 5 had a strong vision and purpose - this not only powered their marketing, but gave momentum to their whole business 
• Only one of the 15 companies analysed achieved an A grade (85% or over)

And in renewables: no company scored higher than a C. 

Let’s look in more detail at the questions we asked and the results we recorded for our top renewables performer, the energy-producer, Drax. 

Case Study of the B2B Customer Journey in a Renewable Energy Company’s Marketing

Sector: Renewable energy

Name: Drax UK

About: Drax operates a generation portfolio of sustainable biomass, hydro-electric and pumped hydro storage assets across four sites in England and Scotland. It is the UK's largest source of renewable electricity.

Overall score: 132/220 - C Rating 

Summary: 

Drax does a lot of things well: some extremely well. With some small tweaks to their B2B marketing, they could easily improve the power and reach of their messaging, leading to more conversions - but other renewable energy companies can definitely learn from aspects of their approach.

Let’s dive in - starting with a look at their performance in the discovery phase of their B2B online marketing. 

Drax Could Improve Discovery in their Customer Journey

Drax’ Discovery Score: 43/70

It’s thought 70% of a B2B buyer's sales journey happens through independent research online. Prospects typically discover you through your website and social channels.

Drax’s performance in the discovery phases is a tale of two halves: the UX of their website is very strong (scoring full marks, in fact), but their social channels could be working harder for them. 

What is working in their customer journey  

Their site is clean, clear, with a fantastic flow through the home page, linking to important content for the user, brilliant navigation and helpful CTA's (Calls to Action) to help the customer navigate to key information. 

The sign-up for the newsletter is front and centre, not tucked away in the corner or on an obscure page, but given great priority above the footer on each page: they’re clearly a company that’s got things to say and they want you to hear them. 

This confidence in their messaging, and willingness to articulate it is also seen in the consideration phase - here they scored almost full marks with frequency and quality of their blogs, emails and articles. 

This is excellent practice.  Overall, it's a lovely website and they have excellent content on it.

How their customer journey could level up

The social channels while having merit, but could be improved. 

In social posting analysis we look at the type and frequency of posting - as well as post quality - to see how brands are appealing to different aspects of a buyer’s decision making process as they search a feed. 

We reviewed two months’ of Drax’ posting between March and April 2023 and found this mix of post types and frequency:

Company & Type of Post | Talent (8) | Brand (5) | Collab (0) | Editorial (6) | Product (3) | Total (32) | Ave per week (4) |

As you can see, the weighting across content types is toward talent with over 50% of their posts being ‘talent’ in the form of recruitment posts. 

The brand could score higher here with more creative innovation to excite or engage the audience. For example, although the posts are nicely branded, the feed includes only one video per month and a few links out to articles. No polls, webinars, carousels, or infographics etc appeared in our analysis window. 

Drax is one of the biggest energy companies in the UK, with thousands of employees, but none comment or interact on their feed. 

It would be relatively simple to rectify this, and also use social channels to create a renewable energy community interaction with wider industry thought leaders or build out webinars or groups to drive online community engagement for new prospects - but not only them. 

Your current client base needs engagement too. 

Research shows brands with the strongest omnichannel (multi channel) customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, in comparison to 33% of companies with weak strategies. In short don’t assume you have loyal customers simply because they bought from you once - earn their loyalty and here’s why:

“A strong brand community increases customer loyalty, lowers marketing costs, authenticates brand meaning and yields an influx of ideas to grow the business. When you help people belong, the benefits are irrefutable.” Mark Schaefer

Conclusions

1. Creating vibrant social channels FOR people, prospects and customers is vital. 

• Product posts should be the least frequent post type, instead incorporate posts amplifying talent and brand values.  
• Bring others into your ecosystem through partner posts, events or insights that add value to your community. 
• Be creative! Innovate your messaging with animations, videos, or carousel posts to create a point of difference to your competitors and ensure your feed is a must-visit in your audience’s scroll. 

2. Create valuable higher-ticket content for your clients and those in the consideration phase

• When asked in a survey about what "customer loyalty" means, 74% of respondents said it's about feeling appreciated and understood rather than receiving special offers. 
• Support your current client base, retain their interest and validate your industry expertise through blogs, newsletters, emails, whitepapers or even gated resources or tools. 
  
  

Why should B2B customer journey mapping matter to me?

• Very few brands communicate a strong vision, is your company one of them? 
• Is your online presence consistent, cohesive and unified?
• Are you seeing enough marketing-qualified leads?

Creating consistent, value-driven and human-centric journeys across all the ways customers can find you online is vital to creating a genuine brand experience that develops trust, and delivers sales.  

We can tell you how your customer journey stacks up against the competition, using our comprehensive customer journey mapping methodology - and experience as a specialist B2B marketing agency.

Get in touch for more information on your own B2B customer journey audit: andy@wearewildtribe.com 

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