Justin King October 18th, 2009
In the retail world, eCommerce is driven by conversion and sales and is up front in the marketing funnel. For the B2B company, the main intent of eCommerce is often to build customer loyalty and to retain customers. eCommerce is really a tool to build deeper relationships with your customers, isn’t it? Yeah, there are many other side effects of eCommerce:
- 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.
Tags: B2B customer loyalty, B2B eCommerce, customer research
Justin King November 23rd, 2008
In 2009, I am excited to be an interactive marketer within B2B. Here is what I am looking forward to seeing shape out in the next 14 months:
- Nothings figured out – We on the B2B side are a little further down the long tail then the rest. We have a lot to figure out this year with some great models from our brethren on the B2C side. But it has to be different – more measurable, more edgy, more applications, and in the end more revenue. Nothings figured out and I am looking forward to participating.
- Commerce – I know you probably expected to see Social Media at number 1. But, Commerce is where I am focused. B2B e-commerce is still not defined, and there is still a lot of work for those of that are passionate. And I like to follow the money. I think there is a lot of money for B2B organizations to leverage in B2B e-commerce. I also think that like in B2C, B2B marketers are going to start getting more involved in commerce. The user experience needs to be dictated from marketing, and not from IT.
- Social Media – Twitter acceptance, Facebook wild fire spread, LinkedIN building applications, and all the others will start to penetrate B2B – especially for communicating and thought leadership.
- Acquisition Marketing – As B2B marketers we know SEO, e-mail marketing and white paper syndication. I think this is the year of figuring out PPC and Online Display advertising leveraged for B2B AND viral.
I can’t wait. We are ready to go, and ready to start thinking outside of the box. Commerce and Social Media will be my focus. What is yours?
Tags: Acquisition Marketing, b2b commerce, b2b e-commerce, b2b marketing, e-mail marketing, PPC, SEM, SEO, Social Media, White paper syndications
Justin.King November 11th, 2008
When looking at B2B commerce, there are a numbers of objective & metrics that B2B organizations are looking for. I just created this chart to show the Business Challenges and associated Best Practices.
Tags: b2b best practices, b2b business challenges, b2b commerce, b2b marketing
Justin.King November 11th, 2008
I work a lot in developing strategies for b2b e-commerce. Not sure I adapted this from, but here are a few challenges marketers and IT face.
- Multiple Branded Sites
- Internationalization
- Website Maintenance: Cost and Efficiency
- High Cost of Customer Service
- Integration with ERP
Tags: b2b e-commerce, business-to-business, e-commerce, microsites
