Top 3 B2B eCommerce Marketing Strategies to Drive Sales

B2B eCommerce is said to be a complex sales channel as compared to B2C. But, it is also true that B2B eCommerce is more profitable and is growing rapidly over the last few years, resulting in increased competition between the industry players.

According to Statista, B2B sales are estimated to reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2021, up from $889 billion in the year 2017. Seeing the increasing potential of the B2B market, everyone wants to enjoy the benefits that come with it and one way to grab them all is by investing in effective B2B marketing strategies.

If you are also a B2B eCommerce business owner looking for such profitable marketing techniques, you have come to the right place. In this article, we will talk about three effective B2B eCommerce marketing strategies that will help you increase traffic, bring leads, and get repeat customers on your website for increasing your B2B sales. So, let’s get started.

1. Use Inbound Marketing

As a B2B eCommerce business, inbound marketing will help you attract traffic towards your products and encourage the buyers to purchase without irritating them with back-to-back cold calls and messages. But, you will have to make a strong inbound marketing strategy to reap its full benefits.

If done right, inbound marketing provides many benefits for B2B businesses including increased brand visibility, credibility, more qualified leads, and high revenues. Here are some inbound marketing methods that you can use to increase your B2B eCommerce sales:

Search Engine Optimization: The first thing that you need to ensure is that your online store is easy to find for your customers on search engines. This is crucial because 47% of B2B buyers search their queries on the web to gather information for making an informed decision.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others use algorithms to rank online stores in the SERPs and you need to implement SEO strategies to optimize your online store as per these set of rules. So, if you don’t have an SEO expert to help you, it is high time you should hire one to start getting leads from your online store.

Blogging: Though blogging is a part of SEO only, this B2 B eCommerce marketing strategy can not just help you attract but also convert website visitors into loyal customers. B2B buyers consume a lot of information before making a purchase and you can provide them with this information through blogs.

Informational blogs increase a visitor’s trust in your business and result in more purchases for B2B websites. But, when writing blogs for eCommerce, make sure to add clear calls to actions for products on your website. You can also consider creating shopping guides or product manuals for featured products on your website to educate your audience about the benefits of that particular product.

User-Generated Content: Product rating and reviews are of utmost importance for eCommerce businesses. Before buying a product online, customers like to know the experiences of others. Moreover, adding the ratings and reviews section to your website provides three key benefits:

• It attracts visitors to the online store
• Positive reviews increase their confidence and trust in products
• It helps improve the online visibility of the store by improving search engine rankings

Thus, if you don’t yet have a ratings and review section on your website, consider adding it today. It is a small change but can affect your website’s conversions and sales immensely.

Premium Content: Along with blogs and videos, if you leverage the power of gated content on your website, it will help in more ways than one. Along with increasing sales, this type of content will help you build a database of qualified leads who are actually interested in buying your products and are trying to accumulate information about the same. Ebooks, webinars, whitepapers, and case studies are especially valuable for B2B customers and serve as an incredibly powerful lead generation tool.

2. Optimize Customer Experience (CX)

Investing in improving the customer experience of an online store is a great B2B eCommerce marketing strategy. The efficiency of the purchasing process is one of the top three KPIs for B2B customers based on which they make decisions. So, let’s quickly review how you can set up an experience that B2B buyers are looking for.

Provide Personalization: B2B customers indeed make decisions on the behalf of a business. But, they are humans and you need to hit their emotions to make deals happen. Showing your B2B buyers that you care or listen to their needs and understand them well, will go a long way in creating long-lasting and meaningful relations with them, resulting in increased sales.

This includes sending personalized suggestions or messages with the help of various personalization techniques, for example:

• Use product recommendation engines to upsell
• Build an email list and invest in personalized email marketing
• Provide extended loyalty programs

Make Information Accessible: Allow your B2B buyers to rapidly get what they require when they require it. This implies providing an online channel with a pool of information that is accessible 24/7. B2B buyers do a lot of research before making a purchase decision and you need to provide them with all the necessary data. They prefer accessing product information, delivery details, and stock accessibility on the web and you need to provide all of that in an organized manner.

Optimize Your Business Processes: In order to increase sales, you must optimize your business processes. Streamline your processes by connecting all your systems, including your ERP, eCommerce platform, PIM system, delivery providers, and others. Make sure the technological solutions you use synchronize perfectly with each other to deliver a flawless CX.

Adopt New Technologies: There are several technologies that B2B eCommerce businesses can use to deliver a seamless customer experience, including, voice commerce, PWAs, live search, chatbots, and others. To stay one step ahead of your competitors, you need to stay in line with the latest trends and technologies that users are getting to experience.

3. Leverage Loyalty Programs

A loyalty program is one of the most effective B2B eCommerce marketing strategies. B2B buyers, as well as sellers, want to build long-term partnerships. One most successful way of establishing this kind of relationship is by providing a loyalty program for your buyers.

But, you need to craft these offers very carefully. You need to make sure that no loss happens to your business and at the same time, your customers feel satisfied. Also, keep in mind that it is a long-term offer and changing its terms and conditions, again and again, can harm the reputation of your business.

Here are a few examples of the loyalty programs that you can leverage:

• Incentive Programs: These types of programs are used to get repeat customers on your website. These programs compel your B2B buyers to spend more to get more incentives and benefits.
• Referral Program: These types of programs are used to bring new customers to your website. Businesses provide discounts or bonuses to customers who bring in new leads.

The Crux

The B2B eCommerce market is all set to experience immense growth in the years to come. Thus, if you want to capitalize on the opportunity and set new benchmarks for the B2B industry, leverage the above-mentioned B2B eCommerce marketing strategies and position your brand higher in the market to avail maximum benefits.