The shopping experience of today is a far cry from what it used to be until just a decade ago. From groceries to complex business software, people are increasingly turning to digital shopping. And where B2C businesses were the first to give their customers a taste of the many benefits of full-fledged e-commerce experience, B2B companies are yet to embrace digital in its full capacity.
However, in light of changing customer expectations and mobile-first mindsets, going digital is the need of the hour. To aid B2B marketing teams, Salesforce offers a powerful B2B Commerce platform; by capitalizing on key opportunities using the Salesforce B2B Commerce Solution, B2B marketing teams can effortlessly improve customer experience, thereby increasing customer acquisition and retention.
Promising Growth Areas for B2B Marketing Teams
For B2B marketing teams, boosting marketing productivity means working on the following key areas –
1. Conversion Tracking
For any ecommerce merchant, be it B2C or B2B, customer conversion rate is perhaps the number one metric to track for scaling growth. However, the two differ in that B2B ecommerce is far more complex with diverse products and services purchased on a daily basis.
As such, a customer may begin an online purchase only to finish the same with a sales representative because they needed some assistance. Moreover, the conversion may not simply mean when someone converts from a guest checkout to a registered customer; it may also mean catalogue downloads, completing of online forms, response to a specific CTA, etc.
To see ultra-high conversion rates, B2B companies need to take into account a number of factors – easy product and information availability, smooth checkout process especially for repeat buyers, multiple payment options, affordable shipping costs, etc.
To this end, a proper conversion tracking tool like Google Analytics becomes a mandate; without an adequate conversion tracking system in place, marketers face challenges like double-tracking, cross-domain tracking, and duplicate content.
2. Personalization
Be it virtual shopping or otherwise, the modern customer wants ‘personalization’ to be the standard. It is as true in the case of B2B ecommerce as it is for B2C, as most B2B customers are millennials. Customers do not just want to purchase products from your brand; they want to establish a meaningful relationship based on trust. And perhaps, the best way to do so is to deliver a customer experience that is unique to each individual customer.
However, many B2B businesses fail to deliver self-servicing functionalities and personalized recommendations, content, and pricing to their customers, disrupting the sales cycle. Also, the inability to leverage structured content such as product catalogues has hindered B2B businesses from providing their customers with the most relevant search results.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Organic search is still the key driver of traffic, more powerful than social media. According to a survey conducted by Google, B2B customers perform 12 organic searches on average before zeroing in or engaging further with a specific brand. So, if your website is not visible in those searches, your brand will lose out on potential customers, and even one such customer lost is one too many!
Moreover, research by CEB Global revealed that 77% of B2B buyers downright refused to even speak to a salesperson unless they’ve conducted their own research online.
And though B2B marketers are well-aware of the importance of SEO, many hesitate because of time or budget constraints and most importantly, not knowing where to start.
Moreover, a well-optimized site is one that is also mobile responsive. After all, more Google searches are performed on mobile devices than any other device, as revealed through a study conducted by Google. And since search results for many B2B terms are not crowded yet, proper SEO-optimization and mobile-friendly user experience is the need of the hour to drive conversion and revenue.
4. Abandoned Cart Tracking
No marketing campaign can be deemed successful unless it drives high sales. Unfortunately, for B2B marketing teams, customers often abandon shopping carts instead of completing the transaction.
However, is there a silver lining? Yes! There are vital lessons to be learned – such behavior helps businesses in finding out why a customer may likely abandon a cart half-way to purchase, after which they can address pain-points accordingly. Of the many reasons, the most strange yet common is B2B customers filling up their ecommerce cart only to abandon it ‘intentionally.’ Why? To get product details and pricing information after which they make internal purchases using widely accepted payment modes such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
Moreover, other reasons for such abandonment include complex checkout process, not being able to view their order total at all times, lack of preferred payment modes, and many even abandon due to lengthy onboarding process.
Improving product discovery practices, making product and pricing details readily available, and offering a streamlined checkout process with multiple payment options all become imperative to persuade the customer to complete a purchase.
How Salesforce B2B Commerce Can Help Marketing Teams?
If you are looking for an ecommerce platform that is seamless, intelligent, holistic, and easy-to-navigate, do not look beyond Salesforce. The Salesforce B2B Commerce platform offers a horde of useful tools for your marketing team, empowering them to deliver a unified and personalized buying experience.
Get to know the various helpful tools Salesforce B2B Commerce has to offer:
1. Tools for Easy Product Discovery
With Salesforce B2B Commerce, your marketing team can offer each customer a relevant and personalized buying experience. For example – customers can be recommended relevant products that are related to their current purchase at the time of checkout for cross-sell and upsell opportunities; they can be sent personalized promotional emails based on their previous purchases or abandoned cart as well as online behavior, search bars can be made to align with a customer’s search intent based on important keywords, products can be categorized for a more organized structure, etc.
Such practices persuade the buyer to click the ‘Add to Cart’ button because they meet the buyer at the right time with the right solution. Moreover, your marketing team gets to easily map a customer’s journey, which further helps in removing hurdles to higher sales.
2. Tools for Successful Pricing Strategies
Incorrect pricing strategies can have disastrous consequences; set the price too high, and you risk losing customers; set it too low, and you leave revenue on the table. The Salesforce B2B Commerce Solution offers tools that will help you devise optimal pricing strategies.
With the help of the segmentation, you can set product pricing that is customer-specific or is specific to a certain product type, volume, order size, etc.
This ensures you do not overcharge and instead charge and under the optimal level. Moreover, to increase customer retention, you can offer exclusive entitlements in the form of free lifetime access to premium content or free shipping or a said% of discount, in exchange for a one-time fee.
The platform also allows you to send personalized promotional offers and discounts to encourage customers to make repeat purchases.
3. Tools for Streamlining Order Processes
Your first-time buyers may put up with a complex and comprehensive order process – product selection to purchase; however, your repeat customers will not. And since B2B ecommerce involves more repeat purchases, it becomes imperative to deliver a streamlined order process. The Salesforce B2B Commerce platform offers tools such as Rapid Reorder, Order Lists, Quick Order, and more to this end.
Rapid Reorder helps customers make repeat purchases of regular-use items at the single click of a button. With Order Templates or Lists, customers can create multiple lists of frequently purchased items so that for subsequent purchases, and they can simply make a repeat order through the saved list. Furthermore, Quick Order enables your customers to easily search for their desired products via SKU, name, quantity, etc.
Order portals relieve your marketing team by enabling customers to manage their own accounts, set purchasing limits, and place orders.
4. Tools for a Smooth Checkout Experience
Nothing could be worse than having a customer complete most of the buying journey, only to abandon the cart at the time of checkout due to a complex and tiresome checkout process. Salesforce B2B Commerce platform helps you deliver a smooth checkout experience using tools such as multi-step checkout, split shipments, different modes of payment, etc. Since the B2B checkout process is indeed really complicated, the split-checkout system works as opposed to a single page checkout.
On the other hand, the split shipment functionality enables you to provide your customers with shipping of separate products to separate locations and on separate delivery dates without placing multiple orders. And finally, B2B-friendly multi-payment options like Credit Card, purchase order, Automated Clearing House (ACH), etc. ensure that customers not only complete their transactions but do so with ease.
Source: salesforce b2b commerce platform
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