How to conduct effective B2B customer research

Key takeaways: Benefits of customer market research can include identifying unmet needs, informing product development, optimizing the selling process, improving satisfaction, and building loyalty. This article explains the different types of customer market research throughout this article. They include: segmentations, personas, buyer journey, and customer satisfaction research.

Why B2B customer market research matters

Effective customer market research in B2B should show you how to acquire and consistently satisfy clients throughout their journey or experiences with your company.  This data proves invaluable to both complex and niche markets alike, and help businesses to define customer personas and behaviors,

Meeting customers’ needs increases the chances that they will spend more, stay loyal, and recommend your business to other prospects, directly or indirectly.

In contrast, when customers become dissatisfied, they seek alternatives elsewhere. You might assume these customers can simply be replaced with new ones, but this approach is significantly more costly and resource-intensive.

Research data from HubSpot shows that retaining existing customers is up to 25 times more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.

The challenge is compounded by steadily increasing customer acquisition costs (CAC). In a five-year period, CAC has risen by approximately 60%, with B2B sectors experiencing even higher acquisition costs than B2C markets, according to market research reports from Profitwell.

Insights from B2B market research help you to retain clients and gain new ones more efficiently. Data-led recommendations show where to allocate efforts and resources for the biggest impact.

B2B market research should involve interviewing and/or surveying a representative sample of your customer base, then analyzing the responses in context.

It should be tailored to address your specific challenges and inform your business strategy, by answering B2B market research questions as precisely as possible.

Broadly speaking, core goals and benefits of customer market research can include:

• Identifying unmet customer needs
• Informing product development
• Optimizing the selling process
• Improving customer satisfaction
• Building trust and loyalty

Challenges of B2B customer market research

However, getting the insights you need is not always straightforward. Before starting a B2B customer market research project, it’s important to have a strong plan in place for:

• Speaking to the right customers
• Asking them the right questions
• Analyzing the implications of their answers

One of the complexities of conducting customer market research with a B2B audience is identifying the right decision-maker profile to focus on.

In contrast to B2C, where the purchaser is often also the end-user, the B2B buying process regularly involves several stakeholders, sometimes spread across different departments. The final decision approver may not be the customer who uses your product or service, for example if they work in procurement.

Moreover, many senior B2B decision-makers are challenging to get hold of for market research purposes. They are tricky to incentivize and time-poor, sometimes with gatekeepers protecting their calendar for the highest priorities.

An experienced B2B market research consultancy will know how to secure interviews with a robust number of customers. For more details, read our guide – what is B2B research?

After securing their valuable time, it’s crucial to use it wisely.  Professional qualitative interviewers or quantitative questionnaire writers know how to get as much relevant information out of respondents in the allotted time.

But they should also have B2B experience with a strong understanding of niche-specific challenges associated with the industry in question. For example, sustainability considerations in architecture, engineering and construction.

We’ll explain the different types of B2B customer market research throughout this article – they include:

• Segmentation market research
• Buyer persona market research
• Customer journey market research
• Customer satisfaction market research

#1 Segmentation market research

There are several different B2B market segmentation types. Typically, they often include some of the following criteria:

• Organization type – e.g. sector, size, revenue, and location
• Decision-maker type – e.g. seniority and department
• Needs and attitudes – e.g. priorities, pain points, purchase needs, values, traits
• Behavior – e.g. buying habits or previous product purchases

But the Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework can also be very valuable and relative to the above factors, it’s too often overlooked. That runs the risk of defining the target audience too narrowly.

JTBD expands your strategic perspective beyond traditional marketing efforts and product development approaches.

Rather than limiting focus to current customer behaviors and purchasing patterns, examining the fundamental ‘job’ that customers need to accomplish can reveal unexplored market opportunities. Success lies in understanding desired outcomes rather than fixating on specific product features.

Each business faces unique circumstances when addressing their ‘jobs’ – whether it’s varying levels of complexity, distinct challenges, or different degrees of sophistication in their existing solutions. You can use the JTBD framework to segment your target market or ideal customer profile (ICP).

#2 Buyer persona market research

Building multiple buyer personas helps decode the distinct groups within your target audience. While market segmentation classifies existing customers using demographic and quantitative metrics, buyer personas delve deeper by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative research elements to create comprehensive customer profiles.

Segmentation relies on statistical data to categorize market groups, while buyer personas combine this data with qualitative research to paint a more complete picture.

This approach offers more targeted and effective marketing strategies. Quantitative research provides the statistical foundation, while qualitative research – interviews, online focus groups, and so on – reveals the underlying motivations and behaviors that drive purchasing decisions.

By understanding these nuanced differences between customer groups, you can create more personalized marketing messages and offerings for each distinct persona.

It’s common to include some or all of the following in a B2B buyer persona:

• Profile – job title, years in role, department, seniority
• Purchase criteria – ranking the hierarchy of factors they consider when buying
• Pain points – frustrations and challenges
• Influence – are they the sole decider or only an influencer? Who else is involved?
• Information sources – which channels should you use for sales and marketing strategies?
• Comms preferences – what’s the best way to engage them?
• Jobs-to-be-done

You’ll likely have some of this information already, while primary B2B market research can fill in the gaps.

#3 Customer journey market research

Mapping and understanding the B2B buyer journey provides insights to:

• Find pain points in the customer journey and fix them
• Allocate your marcomms budget to the areas that most need it
• Help sales reps to anticipate customer needs more accurately
• Help product developers build solutions for unmet needs
• Cut any unnecessary costs e.g. for under-used channels

Here is a simple diagram to represent a hypothetical – but linear – buyer journey.

But the B2B purchasing process rarely follows a straightforward path. Instead of moving sequentially from one stage to the next, buyers often circle back to previous stages multiple times before reaching a final decision.

Various factors can alter the journey’s duration and complexity. For instance, repeat purchases typically involve fewer stakeholders and move more quickly through the decision-making process, as buyers are already familiar with the product or service.

Barriers to change – internal resistance, lack of time or conviction, etc. – can return buyers to the status quo at any time.

Building on the previous diagram, the new blue arrows show some more of the complexity involved in the customer journey:

But this is still a simplistic visualization. A strong B2B customer journey market research project should explore the different stages in granular detail, covering all the key touchpoints in a much more detailed map.

B2B market research should analyze:

• The importance of each stage in the customer journey
• The ideal performance from your business at each stage
• Your current performance at each stage
• Actions you should continue to do
• New or improved actions required to improve performance 

It should identify how to better influence customers at key stages of their journey, for instance, by optimizing your marcomms channels and messages to their needs.

#4 Customer satisfaction market research

Finally, a B2B customer satisfaction market research study can show you:

• How to keep customers and maintain sales
• How to win new customers, increasing revenues
• How to improve customer loyalty, reducing acquisition costs
• What customers’ unmet needs and wants are
• Where your business needs to improve
• How you perform against competitor benchmarks

Below are some of the main customer satisfaction metrics to consider using – but there’s an important caveat, which we’ll explain afterwards: 

1. Overall customer satisfaction score (CSAT): e.g. On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is extremely satisfied and 1 is extremely dissatisfied, how satisfied are you with [company/service]?
2. Net promoter score (NPS): e.g. How likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend or colleague?
3. Customer effort score (CES): e.g. How easy was it for you to sign up for our free trial today?
4. Customer churn analysis: e.g. What was the main reason why you decided to cancel your subscription?
5. Five-star rating: e.g. Please rate the service you received today: ☆☆☆☆☆
6. Bespoke metrics based on your industry: e.g. How many times do you use our product each week, on average?

While the first three quantitative data metrics are popular in customer satisfaction surveys, basing your strategic planning around these is a limited approach.

For example, since there are different types of loyalty in B2B industries, NPS questions are not as useful as for B2C sales, in our experience.

Typically in B2B, it’s more useful to base a study around one of the above approaches, e.g. a bespoke metric, then explore customers’ reasons for their scores in detail.

Best practices for B2B customer market research

#1 Track customer insights over time

Customer behavior evolves as their needs and attitudes change – for instance, due to market trends or industry trends beyond their control.

To keep your insights up-to-date and accurate, consider refreshing the results at set intervals. This is particularly important for perception tracking studies.

The frequency of customer market research in B2B markets differs significantly from B2C approaches. While consumer brands might conduct monthly or quarterly perception surveys, such frequent assessment cycles aren’t typically practical or necessary in B2B contexts.

Several factors influence this difference. B2B companies generally have a smaller customer base, making frequent large-scale surveys statistically less meaningful.

Additionally, senior decision-makers are less likely to participate in recurring market research initiatives. The extended nature of B2B sales cycles also means that customer perceptions evolve more gradually.

Furthermore, implementing meaningful improvements to B2B customer experience requires substantial time and organizational change. Conducting marketing research at longer intervals — typically 12 to 18 months apart – gives you time to properly implement changes and measure their true impact on customer satisfaction.

#2 Include international markets to explore cultural factors

International business strategies require careful market-specific adaptation, as customer needs and preferences can differ dramatically across regions. A standardized approach often falls short when applied across multiple countries.

There are many cultural differences between and within countries. If you overlook too many of these differences, it will significantly impact the results.

Factors to consider in international B2B market research include:

• Picking appropriate fieldwork dates and times
• Localizing the research materials
• Using native moderators for interviews

Budget permitting, try to include all your key markets in a B2B market research project.

#3 Ask about competitors’ customer perceptions too

Your customer experience may be strong, but if competitors offer an even better one, you’ll need to make improvements to keep up with them.

Consider running some competitive intelligence market research to find out from prospects what other brands are doing that you’re not.

Prioritize your biggest competitors, but don’t completely overlook smaller ones – they may be growing and set to become more of a threat in the future. Innovative startups have achieved a 17% growth rate since early 2022, outpacing larger established companies, according to Maxio Institute data reported in Digital Commerce 360.