As the business methods have changed over the decade, B2B buyers also now desire customer experience, just like B2C customers. This directly means they seek better customer experience, quick transactional procedure, and committed fulfillment of the order. Here are a few strategies you should implement for your B2B E-commerce business.
Table of Contents
1. Create a Strong Online and Offline Presence:
This is a no-brainer. You are setting up an E-commerce business, which means your website needs to be to the point in all aspects. The interface needs to be easy to access and user experience impeccable. There is no room for error, as you can only create an impression once.
When we talk about offline presence, it means traditional methods of marketing and creating a brand image by being present in trade shows and setting up a trade show booth rental to directly interact with the potential customers. While an online presence is a must, face-to-face interactions will help you gather more customer data and help in creating a personalized experience for them.
2. Offer Personalized Business Experience:
Customers like to engage with businesses that understand their needs deeply. Learn more about what your target customers expect and create a business plan to focus on using this knowledge to your advantage by offering them a personalized experience. This will increase your return to investment (ROI) value. This strategy will also ensure repeat customers, which is what any business should aim for.
3. Target Organic and Paid Traffic:
If you have planned to just create a website and assume customers will magically appear, well, you really are living in a dreamland. It will take years for your business to be a success, if at all, by implementing this strategy. This is a known fact that you have to make an investment to get paid traffic along with organic initially to create a buzz. Also, if you can create an impactful online presence, the ROI will be much higher than the investment in paid traffic.
4. Make Use of Social Media:
E-commerce websites and social media platforms go hand in hand. If you are trying to create an online presence, you have to target online customers, and what better place than the social media platforms. If you can create the right content there and invest in advertising it properly, you will get valuable traction from such platforms.
4. Hire an Efficient IT Team:
You cannot build an E-commerce business without hiring a talented team of IT people. Only they understand and can handle the backend where product information is added. We will not get into too many technicalities, but if you have built up a plan to start this business, you must already know why you cannot leave any loose threads here.
5. Add Use Friendly Search Bar on the Website:
This is obvious, but we have seen many sites ignoring such an important design element. Adding a search bar is much needed on any e-commerce website. Not just that, the filters you select should be such that clients can easily find their requirements and filter them out based on specific categories. This will save time and energy for visitors and decrease the chances of a high bounce back rate.
6. Seek Your Client’s Feedback:
You may find your site perfect and unable to see the loopholes, but your customers can figure that out easily. Always get their feedback to understand the receiving end’s perspective and accordingly make changes to your business model.
7. Start Small:
You may be eager to build a large empire, but Roam was not built in a day, as the saying goes. This is the reality when it comes to any business. Doing too much too soon can divert your focus from your main business, and also, it becomes tough to manage a large-scale business initially. Start small and focus on specific products. Once that model is stable, you can always expand the business areas gradually.
8. Run a Test Launch:
Remember, the first impression can really make or break your business hence do not launch your business for everyone initially. Instead, test it on a small group of targeted customers to see their reaction and get valuable feedback. Once this model works successfully, you can re-launch the business for all your customers.
9. Prioritize SEO:
An online business and search engine optimization (SEO) go hand in hand. It is common sense that you need to rank in the first few pages of the Google search engine results page (SERP) for new customers to even give your business a chance. Hence create effective SEO strategies to nail this right.
10. Focus on Content Marketing:
Content marketing is the bread and butter of your business, as it is how you can push yourself ahead on the SEO front. Adding valuable content for your users rather than just aiming to increase your website ranking will take you a long way ahead.
11. Keep an Eye on Analytics:
Setting up an e-commerce website is just one side of the coin. The other side is to monitor the analytics to figure out which page works and which does not. The one with a high bounce rate needs to be reevaluated, and the page that brings in high ROI should be studied carefully to understand the plus points that can be implemented to the low-rated pages.
12. Meet Customer Goals:
You can be excellent on the digital front, but what really impresses customers is keeping up your delivery promise. Transportation of the product is a huge part of any E-commerce business, which needs to be planned seriously. Remember, your customers have their own goals to achieve to cater to their B2C business. Delivery delays of a fleet of transport vehicles due to congestion or roadblock are common reasons for product delivery delays. Taking the help of Route Optimization will make sure you get orders to customers faster than ever, with fewer routes.
13. Extend Customer Relationship:
Your customer relation should not be limited to product delivery but continue that bond even after that. Be prompt to reply to their queries and stay in touch. Remember, a business can only be successful if you can grab hold of repeated customers.
The Bottom Line:
With such a huge competition out there, customers are not just looking for a well-designed website but also a personal connection they can form with a brand and continue doing business based on that trust. A lot of factors go into building a successful B2B E-commerce business. Still, the most important of all is to engage with the customers, answer their queries, meet their expectations, and resolve issues quickly, which is a sure-shot way to build a successful business.
