A niche market: the addressable market professionals are smaller and targeted sector is often hyper-specialized. This induces both a lower competitive intensity and the need for business excellence for e-merchants.
Offers and complex pricing: the pricing strategy is complex and finer than B2C, with price levels, batch sliding scale depending on the amount and customer tariff classification, requiring a dual display and without VAT.
A long and expensive customer acquisition: business customers stand to end consumers by a particularly rational purchasing behavior requiring the agreement of several makers. The processing window extends in time, the channels used to know the product before buying multiplied and the more complex conversion path. Moreover, the effort of acquisition is higher than B2C and the seller promises to be particularly competitive and reliable to allow customers to pick up the pros.
A lasting customer relationships: the relationship with business customers is part time. These seek a long-term relationship with their suppliers, which implies for e-tailers strong negotiation skills, flexibility and customer satisfaction. The B2B e-retailers have the opportunity to establish a stable customer base, with a customer relationship – strong provider.
A strong CRM challenge and blurred vision customer cycle: data on customers and decision makers are richer and more numerous; this is a
gold mine for customer loyalty
. Nevertheless, the border is more blurred than B2C between the acquisition phase, loyalty and customer retention. The difficulty is to establish criteria for the definition of a loyal customer over an inactive client when the life of the product is long and recurrence of purchase therefore low. Customers who have not bought for 1 year, for example, is it a new customer, a loyal customer or inactive client to remember?
A mastery of logistics and time: the challenge for B2B e-tailers are to manage the volume of stock, direct delivery on site, and the time in terms of supply and delivery.
B2B customers expectations focused on the quality of products and services, expertise and the conditions of sale, rather than on price.
Fundamentals of Web Marketing B2B
Speaking to professionals instead of end customers, the B2B E-commerce requires an approach E-marketing and differentiated Multichannel Marketing. How to design and implement an
effective marketing
strategy to professionals?
To cope with the professional market specificities, the main issues of B2B web marketing are:
CAPTURE / ACQUIRE
: the path of conversion and the period of time between taking information and the act of final purchase being longer than B2C, B2B e-tailers should capitalize on the knowledge of their prospects and develop B2B retargeting.
SERVE
: face to the customer’s quality requirements, product promise must be kept, Marketing device shall allow the customer to put forward are business experts. Customer reviews are for example a guarantee of professionalism and reliability of the sign.
LOYALTY
: excellence in managing customer relationships is the key to success. Loyalty requires a personalized relationship with customers, flexibility in negotiating and a steady improvement in supply. B2B newsletter is a key lever for customer acquisition and retention, for placing the product offering in an editorial setting to showcase the expertise of the brand. Nevertheless, it is important to adapt the newsletter to the professional context: for example, be powerful in the messages (48% of professional players spend less than 10 seconds to open a newsletter, according to a study Sarbacane) target screens professional operating systems (computers rather than mobile, Windows rather Apple).
DEFINING THE OFFER
: the pricing strategy offers through detailed analysis of the competitive positioning, the customer base and customer needs. The search for an optimal display of prices and an optimized website usability is key in understanding the offer of the contractor / client.
STRUCTURE AND EXPLOIT THE PROSPECTS DATA / CLIENTS
: aggregate and organize customer and prospect data is necessary to optimize customer acquisition and retention.
