• Sales people can start to focus on selling instead of being glorified order takers (especially for companies that have large catalogs)
• Operational costs are reduced by lowering call volume in customer service centers
• Increased frequency and size of transactions

B2B organizations are starting to get pressure from their customers to rethink their online channel.  Most of this pressure is being built by the fact that your customers have expectations online as a result of their personal buying experiences.  We all know that businesses use the web to research products and services, but they also have expectations as a result of recent experiences buying something from a retail store online or using social media for personal reasons.  If you are considering creating an eCommerce site for your B2B company, here is a place to start:

• How will you get your customers to actually use the site (Customer adoption) – crazy as it seems, most B2B companies get their biggest ROI from having their customers actually use the site.
• What tools beyond simple navigate, search, and shopping carts will strengthen and deepen your relationships with your customers
  • Quick Order
  • Previous order and product searches
  • Open A/R – from all of your channels
  • Ability to pay all open A/R online
• Consider public access to your catalog (SEO will love you for it) – even if you make the user login to see “their” price
• Don’t under estimate the value of a unique customer experience built with your customers needs in mind.  BTW – that means actually talking to customers not just the sales staff
• Create a model by which to measure the success of your site – you have to measure this channel, so start off by picking something to measure against.  For example – % decreased customer service calls, % customer adoption or increase in transaction size.  And please – give it time.

No related posts.

Partnering
We are working with the companies traditional agency of record, as they have no true interactive marketing capabilities.  This has been an excellent process, of which I would like to dedicate another post to.

Research
Together with the traditional agency, we did quite a bit of customer research, talking to prospective customers, conducting online surveys, and talking to editors of trade magazines.  Through the research we found that the customers of this new product had some significant challenges in front of them.

• the economy is affecting their business tremendously especially with the slow down of new residential and renovations
• green and energy efficient is on everyone’s minds, but most don’t know how to take advantage of it
• because of the economy, contractors are trying to find new ways to sustain their businesses

What we found
In our quest to be relevant, we also faced challenges.  What was easy to do for the client was to create a microsite with the typical features | benefits | case studies information.  As I probed deeper and deeper, we kept asking the question what does your customer care about.  The answer was simple – the customer wants to be able to make more money in this down economy.  They are not sophisticated enough to determine ROI – they just care about the R (Revenue).  Therefore our content that we provided needed to be focused around solving this core problem of making more money for the contractor.

Lead generation
The goal for the product launch was to create a lead engine that could attract prospective buyers and in the end create sales-ready leads that were ready to be engaged by a salesman who could close the deal.  To get those leads, we knew we had to give the contractor something of value so that we had the right to ask for a name and email address (simple forms for landing page optimization).  Going back to our research, we decided to create white papers and eBooks around “How to make more money in a down economy”.  We are now going to tailor those to each primary segment and personality profile that we have identified.  So we will have “4 ways for HVAC contractors to heat up your business in a down economy” and elements like that.  The information is simple, not product focused and has a lot of value – no marketing propaganda.

What’s next?  We are now working on the nurturing approach to turn them from leads to sales-ready prospects.

Creating a relevant dialogue is critical.  Here are a few practical strategies to keep your content relevant.

Related posts:

1. Hand in hand – traditional and interactive marketing
2. 6 strategies to make your content relevant
3. Business-to-Business Marketing in a Recession