Merkle B2B has released its e-book titled “Architecting the Ultimate B2B Experience: The Four Brand Superpowers that Make It Happen”. Insights were taken from 3094 buyers of B2B products and services based on their journeys for 5622 recent B2B purchase experiences. What came to light was that B2B marketers were faltering on basic principles for creating optimal buying experiences.
Michael McLaren, global CEO at Merkle B2B, said: “Our study found that B2B providers are far better at meeting business value add needs than they are at meeting personal value add needs. This is often because they have an incomplete understanding of customers as individuals. Further research conducted by B2B International in 2020 revealed that only 27% of B2B marketers felt their organisation was strong at using buyer personas.”
Here, we broke down the four brand superpowers –two business-focused and two personal-focused – and why they’re critical for the ultimate customer experience.
Reliability (business value add)
Reliability can be interpreted based on your company’s offerings, but it’s important to think about reliability beyond just ‘not messing up’. Quality should always be strong. Prices should be appropriate and all promises made to customers should have a follow through.
Merkle’s research finds that the ability of a supplier to demonstrate that their offer will help the customer achieve tangible productivity gains is an extremely important purchase driver across many categories. This includes performance metrics such as profitability, revenue and productivity. However, it’s an area that many brands struggle with.
Michael says: “Suppliers who can provide clear and easily understood measures of the positive impact their offering will have on the business also make it easier for less senior (often more technical/specialised) decision makers to prove the business case for adopting the offering to their own superiors, who may have final say on budget allocation.”
Understanding (business value add)
“We understand you and are here for you.” This sentiment was reiterated countlessly when the pandemic first hit. Research found that during the first wave, three quarters of B2B companies intended to prioritise a better understanding of customer needs in the next 12 months – ahead of any other of the other strategic objectives they had.
Michael recounts: “At a time when brands such as Amazon and Tesco were being widely congratulated for adapting at speed and scale to the new needs of consumers, the business customers in our study pointed out that buying from B2B suppliers is often a painful ordeal. This is a critical issue and there is work to do.”
Understanding is all about tailoring and adapting, which means anticipating expectations and being able to act on them swiftly. That means communicating to your customers throughout the journey.
Enrichment (personal value add)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a psychological theory that comprises a five-level model of human needs. Starting from the bottom, this is as follows: physiological; safety; love and belonging needs; esteem; and self-actualisation.
Michael saw a lot of parallels between Maslow’s hierarchy and the customer’s needs. Individual decision makers want someone to make them feel connected, educated and challenged to some degree, even if it doesn’t necessarily benefit the employer. That’s where the next superpower comes in. Enrichment refers to the need for belonging, connectedness and recognition on an individual level.
He says: “Customers require basic needs, such as product quality, to be met. However, they also have more sophisticated – often personal – needs, which tend to be contained within the enrichment superpower.”
Pre-eminence (personal value add)
Research suggested that thought buyers are often expecting thought leadership to be incorporated into the customer lifecycle. Merkle B2B saw that the best performing brands showcase their expertise and enhance the reputation of the individual customer at every stage.
Michael explains: “These are the brands we are proud to buy from, whose reflected glory we bask in, whose stardust rubs off on our professional reputations. One reason that companies perform poorly on pre-eminence is that they routinely relegate thought leadership to the status of a lead generation tactic, usually used at the start of the brand funnel. This is a big missed opportunity.”
Buyers are looking for a long-term partner to meet their challenges, and, when your company accomplishes this, it also highlights your brand as an innovator in the eyes of your customers.
He adds: “Thought leadership is a key aspect of the pre-eminence superpower, as it demonstrates the credentials of the supplier as a company that is sophisticated, modern, and a leader within its field.”
So how are these brand superpowers acquired? Merkle gave five steps in its report to cultivating the ultimate buying journey and developing these superpowers.
- Hypothesis – Brainstorm internally how your business is currently performing against these superpowers. These superpowers are intersectional, so there will likely be some overlap.
- Measure – Using those insights, conduct a survey to establish the full picture of your company. What are you getting right? What are you getting wrong?
- Gap analysis – Identify the gaps between the B2B customer experience, your business’s hypothesis, and your business’s performance.
- Optimisation – Deliver specific improvements on every component of the customer experience, to ensure smoother transitions between steps of the journey.
- Step change – Consider what to do with the ‘white space.’ Every interaction with a company is an experience; every step an opportunity to make a difference.
Michael concludes: “Companies are not seeing beyond the business value add superpowers; in fact, in many cases they are not even seeing beyond the simple ‘reliability’ issues. There is an opportunity for B2B companies to make a step change in their customer relationships by being genuinely introspective and examining honestly how they perform against all four superpowers. At this point they can start to plan to architect the ultimate customer experience.”
