The New B2B Buying Journey Series: Personalization

Today's B2B buyer is a digital native who expects their online personalized experience will mimic their B2C world. They want to complete a purchase efficiently online and sellers need to satisfy this demand to continue earning their sales.

What traditional B2C tactics are helping to elevate B2B sites for this new breed of buyers? Customer personalization is one traditional B2C eCommerce practice you can leverage in B2B to generate increased demand, build better relationships, and ultimately drive sales.

Personalization Objectives Personalization in eCommerce means you’re tailoring the personalized experience and marketing to an individual’s needs or preferences. It might seem counterintuitive to use B2C retail practices to sell to other businesses, but treating companies like “faceless entities” is just not a viable option anymore.

Show your B2B buyers that buying from your business is easy and efficient. Making the buying decision process easier will result in a higher level of engagement Reduce the cost of the sales journey within each component of the B2B buyer experience Drive more efficiency throughout the B2B eCommerce customer journey Even though the sales process usually involves more than one customer, personal relationships and personalized marketing are more important factors now than ever. Ultimately you’re selling to individuals and when you communicate one-on-one with your customers based on their behavior, you’ll stand out and gain a competitive advantage and provide an excellent customer experience.

This is an excerpt of the information available within “ The New B2B Buying Journey: 6 Digital Trends to Drive Sales. ” Download the entire on-demand webinar .

Know Your Customer Different customers need different experiences. A first-time customer may need more convincing to buy a product so it’s important to have landing pages that talk about the benefits of your product or provide that customer with relevant resources to help them make a purchase.

Today, AI and machine learning make it much easier to provide better personalization and make more accurate product recommendations. In an Accenture survey of 8,000 consumers, 91% said they would be more likely to shop with brands that recognize them and provide relevant recommendations.

One of the primary objectives of personalization is to drive more efficiency throughout the B2B eCommerce cycle.

Every company has a different organizational structure that doesn’t fit into a typical buying group, however, you can drive personalization by designing customized catalogs with pricing based on negotiated contracts that support not only buyers but your customer's sales reps, field service techs, and even crews on a job site.

This level of personalization is a sales strategy that ensures your customers have a smooth purchasing process and can get the post-sales support they need.

An important part of trying to make the whole buyer’s journey smooth and efficient for your customer is to make sure they can easily browse your site and find what they need. With the volume of searches conducted during the buying process, the ability to personalize the search experience for each unique customer adds tremendous value by reducing the amount of time spent looking for relevant information.

Personalization Works Research from Adobe surveying 400 marketers shows that personalization has the most positive impact on customer loyalty, followed by sales revenue and customer retention.

The B2B buyer just “ feels good ” when a business goes out of its way to listen to them and serve them better throughout the purchase process. Loyal customers are likely to do more business with a brand they trust, then become advocates, and recommend your brand to others.

And it’s not just good for marketing teams. It can also drive revenue by providing sales teams with the data they need to target high-value prospects. Website personalization allows B2B companies to collect insights about industry, demographics, and website behavior, so you know what customers need before they even enter your sales funnel.

This six-part blog series takes a closer look at the components of a B2B eCommerce buyer's new journey. To read more, visit our blog .

To meet your customers where they are in the new evolution of B2B commerce, you need the right web partner. Smart Solutions is 100% dedicated to your success.

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