Gaining momentum is a new trend: large B2B companies are entering the e-commerce market. And it is not surprising, because there is quite a promising source of development: you can sell more, more often and at a lower cost.
E-commerce in B2B is when sales of goods or services for another business are much more frequent than sales directly to regular buyers. With regard to customer behavior in B2B is almost the same as that of customers in B2C. However, the biggest and most important difference in B2B is that people are interested in your services because it is their job.
The market does not stand still, to be aware of the latest events, you must constantly possess information. Check out the latest e-commerce trends in this article.
eCommerce B2B Plan For Everybody
Why do you need to make a plan? In order to start the project successfully, any nuance should be analyzed. It is worth paying attention to the fact that the plan will be individual for each company. First, it will depend on the specifics of your niche, the target audience, and the goals of your company. Secondly, the plan will vary from your project budget. However, we want to provide you with basic and important points, regardless of the specifics of your project!
1. Analysis: Target Audience and Needs
A clear understanding of the motives, aspirations, and goals of your customers is key to a successful sale and a deal!
B2B clients can be segmented by the following criteria:
- by business size: small, medium or large.
- by type of organization: budget or commercial.
It should be noted that the b2b sphere is considered more stable and demand fluctuations are not so noticeable in it. In the b2b sector, it is easy to assess the capacity of the market, as well as the size of the target audience: information about who the target audience is in the public domain.
Understanding your target audience should be your starting point in e-commerce. The target audience is the foundation on which your company is built. If at this stage a mistake is done, then everything falls.
Understanding the needs of your target audience, and the values of the company that “cover” these needs, you can write the chain “customer need – company value”. Otherwise, there is no reason to offer a product/service that does not meet your target audience needs.
2. Adapt the Product/Service to the Needs of Your Potential Customers
The consumer wants to choose a product that is most suitable for him. But in the sphere of b2b, the main interception vector is associated with a change in the supply of goods (or services) in order to maximize the needs of the target group. In order for the interception through product adaptation to be successful, it is necessary to clearly understand what is important for the consumer and what he is willing to pay for. The implementation of this approach allows you to find interesting solutions that are associated with the choice of the format of the commercial offer.Once more, who will be interested in your product service, if it does not suit anyone?
3. Developing Online Presence On the Market
In modern business conditions, a site is not just a business card. This is what represents you in the digital market, shows your experience and intentions.
Consider that in today’s conditions it is necessary to foresee the multilingual nature of your site. Make sure to take into account the cost of translation services, one of the most popular ones is The Word Point.
Note that your site is the first tool which will your potential customers interact with. By the way, most companies first look at sites before they decide to cooperate or purchase. Once you have set up your site, you can proceed to promotion in social networks, create a blog or even develop your mobile application. Get inspiration from innovative companies, analyze their actions, and how they could stay afloat.
4. Content Strategy: Choice and Development
It is impossible to compete without a strategy. Content strategy should be your guide to attracting new users to your site with the help of useful content. Based on the needs of the target audience, determine the type of content that suits them best, for example, video tutorials or stories of your company, and start promoting these materials in search engines.
5. Advertising Campaign Development
Advertising requires both a clear planning strategy and budget. Today, under the conditions of b2b, many companies are faced with the need to approach their business goals as if each of them is a person who has a story that they want to tell. And the audience is not just potential buyers. It will not be superfluous to provide a multilingual advertising campaign. Emphasizing the emotional reason for buying your products will be the main focus of your ads.
6. Collecting and Maintenance Customer Base
Retaining loyal customers is not new to anyone. But delaying the expansion of the customer base is not the best option in terms of B2B. To do this, try to carefully look at your existing customers. Try to understand how they spend their time and how to make a purchasing decision.
Most B2B clients seek a solution to the problem online. This means that they access search engines. There is a stereotype that organic search results (search engine optimization) are much more effective than paid ones. The whole point is that organic search results have become so competitive that often moving them to a higher position costs no less than for paid ones. The most reasonable option here is to start from gathering subscribers and then gradually turn them into your customers.
7. Existing Customers: Relationship Building
When the market is growing slowly, then you cannot worry much about retaining customers and reducing revenue. But in mature and highly competitive markets, it is impossible to remain a successful company without a clear customer retention strategy.
Regular collection and analysis of feedback is the foundation on which B2B loyalty management strategies are built. It makes no sense to plan initiatives that are aimed at retaining customers if the company does not understand what is going wrong, what kind of bottlenecks hinder the growth of purchases and what the customer’s employees think about the company.
8. Continuous Analysis of Indicators
Now it is necessary to set priorities to fit into the limitations of reality and budgets. You need to find out the indicators of efficiency, payback, costs, and other economic figures. It is very promising to hire a business analyst who can understand how to optimize all processes and find the best software solution for this.
Make sure to take all these points into account and come up with your own ideas regarding b2b business plan development. All the companies are so individual that it is almost impossible to develop the e-commerce plan template that will fit everyone!