I'm looking for tips and advice on building an effective buyer journey: Do you have any insights on how to effectively map and orchestrate a learning->buying cycle, considering a B2B Saas Product?

Great question! You actually squeezed 3 topics in here, which are all inter-related and important to buyer journey maps. In my experience, I start with segmenting my audience (total addressable market by country, company, vertical/industry, etc), identifying personas within my target audience (buyer/user), mapping the journeys for each persona, and then testing which content formats/channels work best. This means if I'm selling to Enterprises vs. mid-sized companies, IT vs. Finance buyers, I should understand the different journeys, budgets, and decision making processes and plan my content accordingly. Be choosy about where to focus! 

I would test and measure content starting from the top of the funnel for awareness (paid ads, SEO, partnerships, brand campaigns, podcast, etc.) - is your brand a consideration for your category? Move to the middle to drive consideration (web, case studies, white papers, demos, etc.) - is there preference for your brand vs. competitors or alternative offerings? And finally, bottom of the funnel to close the purchase (talk to sales, referrals, trial, etc.) - are you the right choice to meet their needs? Content at each of these stages has a different intent and measurement for success. The more specifically your content addresses a specific buyer's problem with the right level of information, the more likely you are to convert them to the next stage! 

From a research perspective, I've found a few research frameworks to be helpful for journey maps: jobs to be done, diary/desk studies, and 1:1 interviews. That's why getting the right person from the beginning is important, and meet with as many as you can until trends become apparent.

Best of luck!

I'd first understand the personas you are targeting-what problems do they have, how do they like to consume materials and find answers to their problems. You can have multiple personas, but for your home page, I'd stick to just one clear message that describes what problem you solve for your target persona. This is a good resource I've stumbled upon recently - Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. 

Using SEO optimization, digital advertising and sales outbounding, you can focus on other personas and direct them to landing pages and content that is specific for them. 

In thinking throught the learning to buying cycle, again, it goes back to the persona. Is this a well known solution to a problem? If so, then content could be more focused on why you are the best company to solve their problem and how you do it with social proof and other content that demonstrates your authority on the topic. If the solution is not well known, or the problem is not well understood, then you'll need to do more educating on why this is a problem they need to solve or what they should look for in a solution to the problem. 

My advice is to understand your ideal customer profile. Who are your best customers? Why did they buy? What problems were they facing? What caused them to search for a solution? Why was your solution chosen? Who are the users and buyers in these accounts?

In order to understand your ideal distribution strategy, you have to know your ICP extremely well. Your company growth strategy will also play a role... product-led (PLG) with a freemium or trial product or sales-led (SLG) with sales locked demo. 

If you're in a sales-led organization, all content should be TOFU or MOFU aimed at your buyer persona. Rarely will you have good performing BOFU. All CTAs are gearing towards talking with sales and getting a demo. 

If you're in a product-led organization, your content will likely be focused more on BOFU (especially in early days) because you're trying to attract users. All CTAs will be geared towards creating an account or signing up for a trial. 

Social channels work great for both PLG and SLG, but mostly with PLG. Thought-leadership content across events and podcasts typcially do better with SLG. 

Qualitative feedback via real-time customer interviews will yeild you the best results for identifying where your target audience is. 

As for segmenting and personalizing - yes 100%! That's why it's so key to know your ICP and segments that do really well for you. If you can narrow down company size, company industry, and user/buyer persona then you'll be golden!