Where a customer journey begins depends heavily on whether that customer is buying from an enterprise brand or a small business, and the difference is bigger than most marketers assume. A survey of 600 marketers broke down where journeys typically start by company size, and traditional search engines lead for enterprise brands while social media leads for SMBs. AI assistants and LLMs show up as a starting point for both groups, though still well behind search and social.

Essential Statistics

• 32% of enterprise journeys start with traditional search engines, the top starting point for that group.
• 35% of SMB journeys start with social media, the top starting point for that group.
• AI assistants and LLMs account for 13% of enterprise journey starts and 9% of SMB journey starts.
• Enterprise social media starts sit at 22%, compared to 23% for traditional search engines among SMBs.
• Marketplaces and online communities together account for only 6% of enterprise starts and 12% of SMB starts.

Key Takeaways

• Traditional search leading for enterprise brands while social leads for SMBs suggests these two segments may need meaningfully different channel priorities rather than one shared strategy.
• AI assistants and LLMs showing up as a real, if still secondary, starting point for both groups suggests this channel deserves ongoing attention even though it isn’t the dominant entry point yet.
• Enterprise and SMB customer journeys both showing search and social close in share, just in reversed order, suggests discovery is genuinely fragmenting rather than consolidating around one dominant channel.
• Marketplaces and online communities combining for a larger share of SMB starts than enterprise starts suggests smaller brands may be benefiting more from these grassroots discovery channels.
• This pattern suggests treating discovery data as a single blended number, rather than segmenting it by company size, likely obscures real differences worth acting on.

Actionable Insights

• Segment your own discovery and attribution data by company size or customer type if you serve both enterprise and SMB audiences, since this data suggests the starting point of the journey differs meaningfully between the two.
• Weight search engine optimization more heavily for enterprise-focused campaigns and social content more heavily for SMB-focused campaigns, based on which channel leads journey starts for each group in this data.
• Maintain a presence in AI assistant and LLM-driven discovery for both audiences, even though it isn’t the leading channel yet, since it already accounts for a real share of journey starts across both segments.
• If you sell primarily to SMBs, invest further in marketplace and community presence, since these channels account for a larger share of SMB journey starts than enterprise ones in this data.
• Revisit any customer journey mapping that treats all journeys as starting the same way. This data suggests company size alone significantly changes where that journey begins.

‘Enterprise buyers still start with search. Small businesses are starting with social. If your channel strategy treats both the same, you’re optimizing for the wrong starting line half the time.’ – Neil Patel