One of the things that I find very helpful as a learner (and when I'm teaching others) is to make comparisons, or "translations" between new vs known products. In this case, I often try and use Marketo Engage as the anchor point.
Adobe Journey Optimizer B2B Edition has a functionality to create buying group stages in what is called the stage model. The most similar translation to that in Marketo would be the lifecycle model and lifecycle stages. Below are some similarities and differences in their use cases.
Like a Marketo Engage lifecycle model, AJO B2B buying group stages are designed to track the progression of opportunities converted to customers - but in this case it tracks the progression of the buying groups as a whole, rather than only individual person records. You can use this feature to track buying group progression and identify the next best actions for buying group members to compliment your existing strategy. Though it is not a requirement to build and launch a journey, it is helpful to have established and recommended for better tracking, reporting and insights to guide your decision making. It also gives you more options to leverage when building out your journey (more on that below).
Just like a lifecycle model in Marketo, buying group stages can help you identify where there are bottlenecks (i.e. slower than expected times moving from Stage A to Stage B). It can also give you the opportunity to set KPIs for your team in terms of both volume of leads moved through a stage and time spent moving to the next stage. You can also set a stage for "Recycled" leads whose action(s) pull them into that stage and they are put into a group for a re-engagement or win back journey or Marketo program.
The overall steps to creating the buying group stages within a stage model in AJO B2B are to:
1) Create the model
2) Define the stages
3) Configure workflow and transition rules
4) Publish
Once published, you can use your model within your journeys to take an action, split the path or listen for an event using the stages as criteria.
Here are some "gotcha's" to be aware of:
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You can only create ONE stage model per instance of AJO B2B at this time - be sure that you collaborate with your team on the build and get sign off from all stakeholders before publishing!
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When you create the model, it is automatically set to Draft status and cannot be deleted or renamed
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When the model is published (Live), it cannot be modified further
In summary, you can liken the AJO B2B buying group stage model to a Marketo Engage lifecycle in many ways, with the key differentiator being that AJO B2B's model helps with actions and insights within a journey at both an account and person level.
So next time you go on a journey (no pun intended), consider taking an AJO B2B buying group stage model along the way and see how you could draw parallels to Marketo Engage to more quickly become acquainted with this helpful feature.
Happy journey building!
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