The B2B e-commerce world is more complicated than selling products to online customers. B2B marketing relies on inbound sales due to which it has bigger stakes in terms of finding a new client and retaining the pre-existing one. Therefore, you must leverage the following B2B e-commerce strategies to get your brand more exposure and enhance your sales.
Strategies for Increasing B2B E-commerce Sales
- Create Compelling but Visual Product Description
Product description is imperative. Mostly, B2B buyers do online research. Rather than reading promotional content, they search for more objective information. So, your product description must be compelling enough to enhance B2B sales. It should answer the most common challenges of the target audience. While creating the content, you must focus on your clients’ unique requirements and concerns. Just like Amazon, you can also incorporate product reviews into your B2B e-commerce platform. Apart from this, you can implement the cross-sell and upsell function in your B2B e-commerce strategies.
- Make Use of Social Media
Social media is one of the most underrated B2B marketing tools for boosting e-commerce sales. Although it is useful for most B2C businesses, it can be beneficial for any e-commerce business if used correctly. The social media platform that you are using is also important. B2B marketing is not much effective on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, while it is the most effective on LinkedIn for targeting various industries and professionals. Facebook and Twitter are other most effective platforms for B2B marketing.
- Invest in SEO
Generally, B2B buyers search online before deciding to purchase any products, and their search starts with generic terms. So, you need to create such content that includes the most common terms searched by your audience. In this way, you will have an edge over your competitors as your organization will be listed in the top search results. To draw B2B buyers to your e-commerce website, you can make use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques.
- Provide Excellent UX and Appealing UI
The success of your B2B marketing strategy depends on the most critical factors – greater user experience and user interface. If your platform is confusing or hard to navigate, your potential clients will take more time to learn about your business and products/services, and you may lose out on prospective buyers/customers. Hence, to provide excellent UI and UX, you must consider the type of user persons that you are dealing with, their requirements, and pain points.
- Offer a Starter Pack for New Buyers/Customers
Buyers usually want to test your products in their workplace. So, even if you are selling items in bulk, you can provide an option for selling a single unit. In case, you do not want to add the single item purchase option, you can also send free samples to your customers. The idea is to allow your buyers to use your products. This decreases the risk of buyers regretting the bulk purchase.
- Prioritize On-time and Quick Deliver
Generally, B2B buyers want to know when their products will be delivered. It is recommended that you focus on your product shipping and provide an accurate and reliable date of delivery to your buyers. In some cases, buyers are willing to pay extra for early shipping.
- Add More Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are crucial for influencing the decision-making of purchasing products from e-commerce sites. Through customer reviews, businesses get assured of your products and services. It indicates that you are offering products that help companies to succeed. Not all reviews need to be positive, an honest review can also reflect positively on your business.
- Simplify the Transaction Process
B2B buyers want a fast and quick payment process. If a buyer has ordered your product and is about to make a payment, chances are that he will abandon the cart if the payment system is complex. So, there is a necessity to simplify the complete payment process.
To simplify your payment process, you must keep your payment form short and ask for only essential information. The rest of the details can be asked through the payment screen, personal info, or shipping details form. In addition to this, you can utilize a payment gateway that supports the most common payment method.
- Search for B2B websites and e-commerce marketplaces
If your B2B website is fully optimized and running well, you must also expand to other territories online. To maximize your efforts, focus on industry pages and other wholesale distributors.
Online marketplaces (such as Amazon Business and eWorldTrade) are excellent for B2B sellers as they provide quick access to a broad, new audience.
Conclusion
B2B e-commerce strategies are not easy to create. You must stick to your execution and be patient with the results. If you have mastered what works well for your business, all your efforts will eventually pay off with a high ROI (return on investment).
