The Buyer Journey Gap Map is a strategic diagnostic tool designed to help you identify where your marketing and sales content is failing to support a potential customer.
The core philosophy here is that in high-value B2B deals, buyers do about 70% of their research “in the dark” before they ever talk to your sales team. If you don’t have the right “Signal Assets” (content) to answer their specific questions at each stage, you lose the deal before you even know it exists.
Breakdown of the Map
The tool forces you to look at the sale from the buyer’s perspective rather than your own internal milestones.
- Buying Stage: Where is the customer mentally? (From “I have a problem” to “I need to convince my boss”).
- The Question: The literal thought in the buyer’s head.
- Signal Asset: What content do you currently have that answers that question?
- The Gap: What is missing or outdated that is causing the buyer to get “stuck”?
Excel Template & Example
To put this into Excel, set up your columns as shown below. I’ve expanded the example into a Cybersecurity SaaS context to show you how to fill it out.
Example: Selling an Enterprise Cloud Security Platform
| Buying Stage | The Question the Buyer is Asking | Our “Signal” Asset (Existing) | Status (Color Code) | The Gap (Action Plan) |
| Awareness | “Why are our AWS costs spiking while performance is dropping?” | None | RED | Write a blog: “3 Performance Killers in AWS Environments.” |
| Education | “Should we build our own monitoring tool or buy a 3rd party platform?” | 2023 eBook (General) | YELLOW | Build a “Build vs. Buy” TCO Calculator for 2026. |
| Evaluation | “How does [Your Product] handle GDPR compliance compared to [Competitor]?” | None | RED | Create a side-by-side Compliance Comparison Matrix. |
| Justification | “How do I justify this $150k spend to the Board of Directors?” | General Testimonials | YELLOW | Create a 1-page “Executive Summary” deck focused on Risk Mitigation. |
Why this works:
Most companies have plenty of “Awareness” content (blogs, social media) but suffer from a “Sea of Red” in the Evaluation and Justification phases. By filling these gaps, you provide the buyer with the “ammunition” they need to sell your product internally to their own committee.
Set Green for “Great,” Yellow for “Needs Update,” and Red for “Missing/None.”