Are you getting everything you want from your B2B e-commerce? Below, you can see the projected growth of the B2B e-commerce market in the US and, likely, the rest of the developed nations show a similar profile of high growth. If your business isn’t getting your fair share in this growth, here are 6 strategies for boosting B2B e-commerce sales today.
There are several reasons for this growth, including increased investment in digital marketing and more business owners being familiar with the benefits of online sales. However, one area where many businesses are still failing is maximizing their e-commerce performance. In this post we’ll discuss 6 strategies that will help you with boosting B2B e-commerce sales for your brand:
Boosting B2B e-commerce sales for your brand
1. Understand your target market
The first step to boosting B2B e-commerce sales is understanding your target market. The more knowledge you possess about your market, the better prepared you are to develop content that directly resonates with them and supports them in making well-informed choices. Knowing your market means not only identifying the industries where you might sell products (likely based on NIAC code) and sales volume, which reflect old-time segmentation variables for B2B businesses, but knowing your market in-depth by understanding their pain points, where they seek information, and organizational structure.
The best way to get started with this process is by using Google Analytics or another analytics tool on your website (if one isn’t already built into your platform). This allows you to see where traffic is coming from and how long people are staying on each page of your site, among other useful information about who’s visiting and what they’re doing when they do so:
- Where are my visitors coming from?
- How long do they spend browsing before making a purchase?
- Which pages are getting the most engagement (and why)?
Armed with this information, you can make informed decisions to aid in boosting B2B e-commerce sales along existing channels with similar prospects.
However, that’s not enough. A good listening post on social media allows you to gain an understanding of your customers’ pain points and business culture to aid in developing more strategic marketing copy to reach them.
Below, you can see some of the B2B e-commerce trends that can help you in reaching your target market, in conjunction with a better understanding of their characteristics.
2. Leverage content marketing
Content marketing is a strategic approach that emphasizes the creation and dissemination of valuable, pertinent, and consistent content with the aim of attracting and retaining a clearly-defined audience. The ultimate goal is to encourage profitable customer engagement and drive desired actions. With B2B marketers becoming increasingly astute in their content creation and distribution tactics, they are seeking methods to streamline their processes without compromising the effectiveness of their campaigns.
For example: Instead of creating one piece of original content every month (or quarter), you could publish three pieces per week but each piece would be shorter in length because you’re publishing more often! Implementing this approach can lead to increased consumption of content from you by your readers, ultimately improving brand recall. By consistently providing fresh, relevant, and valuable material, your audience is more likely to remember you over time (e.g., “I read about this company recently”), trust you, and view you as an expert in the field.
You may even find yourself getting additional coverage because people outside industry circles were interested enough in what was being published during those first few weeks/months after launch but weren’t able to keep up with everything else going on as well…It might take some trial-and-error before finding what works best within these parameters but once mastered will indeed prove beneficial over time!
3. Optimize the user experience
The user experience (UX) refers to the activities focused on enhancing customer satisfaction with your brand. It involves the improvement of usability, accessibility, and overall enjoyment experienced during interactions between users and your products or services. UX design aims to build an efficient interface that is user-friendly – a design that enables users to effortlessly navigate through your website or application. To take your user experience to the next level, consider incorporating custom e-commerce web development, tailoring every aspect of your online platform to align seamlessly with your customers’ needs and preferences.
In order to improve your company’s conversion rates, you must start by focusing on improving your website’s UX. This means taking steps like adding videos and images on different pages of your site; creating a mobile-friendly version of your e-commerce platform; making sure all forms are easy to fill out; providing clear call-to-action buttons next to each product listing so customers know exactly what they’re supposed to do next after they’ve found something they want to buy (this might be adding it into the cart). However, if these and the following tasks seem too long and arduous for you, you can utilize the services of op WooCommerce Development Companies that will ease your efforts and improve your results: https://gettrusted.io/services/ecommerce-development/woocommerce/
4. Personalize the buying journey
The first step to personalizing the buying journey is to understand it. Where do your customers go when they want to buy something? How do they research their options, make a decision and ultimately purchase? To answer these questions, you need data specifically customer journey mapping. This process involves analyzing where each customer falls in their purchasing cycle by looking at what content they consume, how long they spend on each page, and which offers resonate most with them. The result is a visual representation of how different types of buyers move through each stage of their buying cycle and where there are opportunities for improvement (e.g., more calls to action).
Once you have this information, it’s time to put together an actionable plan that will help guide your content strategy moving forward so that every piece of content supports one another along every step of their path towards making a purchase decision (or upgrading from the free trial). For example:
- Personalized emails sent at key points during someone’s path through various stages should provide valuable insight into which messages resonate best with this specific type of buyer vs others based on previous interactions with him/her;
Image courtesy of Constant Contact - Personalized product recommendations could be tailored based on past purchases or browsing history;
- Discounts offered could vary depending upon whether someone has been using freemium versions until now (and therefore might be willing) vs those who’ve paid the full price all along;
5. Strengthen your customer support
- Provide a way for customers to contact you.
- Engage with your customers on social media.
- Create an FAQ page that answers questions about your products and services, including how-to videos if appropriate.
- Offer phone support and email or live chat options, so that people can reach out if they have questions or need help with their orders. You can also use an online chat tool like Olark or Intercom (or one of its competitors) if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of maintaining a call center full-time; these allow you to engage directly with visitors without having them leave their browser window open all day long!
6. Analyze and optimize performance
Analyzing and optimizing performance is the best way to improve your B2B e-commerce sales. For this purpose, there are various tools available to assist you::
- A CRM (customer relationship management) tool allows you to track customer activities and behaviors, which will help you better understand them as individual customers or groups of similar customers. By attaining this level of understanding, you will be empowered to make more informed decisions regarding how to serve your audience effectively in the future.
- Web analytics software monitors website traffic in order to determine what content drives conversions, where visitors are coming from, how long they stay on each page, and so forth all of which gives insight into what works well on the site so that further improvements can be made accordingly.
- Marketing automation software automates tasks such as email marketing campaigns by sending out emails based on certain triggers such as when someone visits a specific page on your website; if they don’t respond after X number of days then follow up with another email containing different content/messages until they do respond or until Y number days have passed by – whichever comes first!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many ways you might use for boosting B2B e-commerce websites and increase sales. But the most important thing is to always keep testing new ideas and keep track of what works well for your business. In case something is unsuccessful, do not hesitate to experiment with an alternative approach!
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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.
