There has never been such an accelerated shift in b2b marketing as what we've seen in the last two years. B2B buyers are quickly becoming frustrated with suppliers and, in many cases moving their business as a result of poor digital experiences. Companies adjusting their marketing strategies to adapt to the new digital experience that customers expect capture marketing share from the companies that are not adopting a digital experience strategy.

Adobe/Econsultancy recently surveyed B2B executives working in the manufacturing industry sectors and found that these B2B companies see dramatic shifts in their businesses as a result of digital trends

  • 62% said they are experiencing a surge in existing customers using digital channels
  • 59% said they are experiencing a surge in new customers through digital channels
  • 67% said they are sharing new and changing customer journeys

According to research from Bloomreach, not keeping up with this digital experience transformation for B2B marketing will come at your peril. Their research found that 79% of B2B buyers said they would change suppliers over a poor digital experience.

In case you're wondering, nope, this digital experience is not just a trend. Digital experience is here to stay for B2B companies.

An Adobe/Econsultancy survey of B2B executives found that 97% of these B2B executives said their emphasis on the digital experience would remain steady or increase moving forward.

That said, it's easy to understand why companies that do not have a strategy to develop a robust digital experience will quickly find themselves falling further and further behind their competitors.

How Digital Is Shaping B2B Customer's Experiences

For years, worrying about the customer's digital experience was something only B2C companies had to do. Though some B2B companies were thinking outside the digital box, most were not.

For many buyers, working with their suppliers was frustrating and slow. Orders required contacting a salesperson by phone; service issues required contacting a customer service representative by phone, which could take up to 30 minutes. The entire B2B process hadn't evolved for decades.

Much of the buyer's frustrations grew out of their personal experiences as a consumer. It's important to realize that the buyers that you're trying to gain business from also utilize online services like Amazon in their personal life.

This makes them wonder why they can have an enjoyable experience purchasing, returning, and getting service on items that they purchase at home, but can't get that same experience with their dealing with their suppliers at work.

We all know some unique differences between B2B and B2C purchases. B2B purchases are typically more expensive; they require more information and/or specifications and, consequently, more research, resulting in a much longer buy cycle.

Because of these B2B purchasing nuances, e-commerce has been much slower to adapt to within B2B environments. However, research shows that B2B buyers are becoming more comfortable with the ability to make purchases online. Another study, this time conducted by McKinsey, found that 70% of B2B buyer respondents said that they would be comfortable making an online purchase of $50,000 or more online.

They Want It Now!

Another way that B2B buyers are drawing parallels from their personal buying experiences is through real-time communications.

The amount of time that a B2B buyer is willing to wait depends on the channel they are using to communicate; however, the overarching research shows that the time that B2B buyers are willing to wait is shrinking dramatically.

This real-time demand is demonstrated by the fact that 56% of customers expect companies to respond to an email either immediately or within one hour, according to research by Salesforce.

They're Happy To Self-Serve

B2B buyers prefer to self-serve to get the information they are looking for before talking with a salesperson. Some examples of how b2b companies can let buyers self-serve are:

Knowledge-based information: The first and probably most important component of a self-serve strategy is providing lots of information that B2B buyers need regularly.

To get an idea of what this information should include, involve the sales team. They are accustomed to answering buyers' questions, and they'll be able to identify the most common questions that buyers have.

Once you have a list of the most common questions, your B2B buyers have, develop downloadable papers, explainer videos, and even blog posts that answer their questions.

On-demand training: If you've been doing any webinars over the past couple of years, you've got an immediate collection of content to support an on-demand training effort. Grab the recordings from these past webinars (here's a link to a past webinar that we did on chatbots) and make them available to both customers and prospective customers to view when it's convenient for them.

Explainer Videos: Another resource for on-demand training is explainer videos. We're seeing an immense desire by buyers to engage with video instead of text, with the average person reading a mere 25% of an online article.

The most common video type for businesses to create is explainer videos, according to a report by Wyzowl. This report showed that 74% of the kinds of videos created by companies are explainer videos.

Chatbots: Chatbots are a piece of software that you can integrate within your website to have online conversations with your website users. Chatbots are programmed to provide answers to your user's most common questions.

Chatbots provide people with the fastest resolution to the most common issues that creep up with your product or service. Some of the most common uses for chatbots are:

  • Automation of customer support
  • Collect customer feedback
  • Lead qualification
  • Lead nurturing

Ecommerce: Once thought to be the domain of B2C companies, e-commerce is quickly finding a place in B2B strategies. In fact, McKinsey published an article that busted some of the more prevailing myths of B2B e-commerce. Some of the interesting points are

  • 65% of B2B companies in multiple industries offer e-commerce to their clients.
  • In-person and e-commerce are now tied as the top producing revenue channels
  • 66% of corporate customers intentionally reach for digital or remote in-person when given a choice

If you've not put e-commerce on your business development radar, it is time to start looking at this trend.

Personalization

I know you've heard this a thousand times, but it can't be said enough.

With a well-thought-out personalization strategy, your company can focus on the sales leads that matter and deliver an experience that impacts them. After all, who we are and how we prefer to engage with a company doesn't change from our personal lives to our professional lives. B2B buyers are also consumers.

Personalization is more than just adding someone's first name to an email subject line. In today's market, personalization is more about delivering an experience tailored for the person you want to talk to.

When it comes to B2B personalization, think about it in terms of providing content specific to a person based on where they are in their buying process, the type of product or service they are interested in, or possibly even the industry that they are in.

One of the easiest and most basic ways to personalize the information you send out or provide is through a segmented email list. If your list of people you send marketing messages to is all lumped into one list, you'll never get past the level of personalization that is nothing more than just putting their name in the subject line.

However, segmenting your email list into multiple lists that are important to your company, segments like geography, industry, past purchases, etc., is a good first start at personalization.

Clearly, providing this type of personalized information will depend on the amount and type of data you have on both your customers and your prospective customers.

Data Collection

Personalization will be impossible if you've not been collecting data on your customers and/or prospective customers. As your marketing personalization matures, you'll find multiple types of data to collect, but as a beginning, here are four primary types of data that will get you started for a great foundation of personalization:

  • Firmographic: The type of information you can collect about a company is important to your marketing efforts. Examples of this type of data are industry, company size, revenue, type of product, distributions method, etc.
  • Demographic: This data is about an individual within a company. The people within a company will typically be collected on decision-makers or decision influencers. Examples of this type of data are name, title, location, interests, etc.
  • Contextual: This data is about how people arrive at your website. What piqued their interest enough to take action. You can collect this data with your Google Analytics account (yup, there's more information in Google Analytics than just a traffic count). Examples of this type of data are referral source, device type, new or returning visitor, pages viewed, etc.
  • Behavioral: This information is what they did when interacting with you online. Examples are pages visited, documents downloaded, email subscriptions, etc.