Personalization is a hot subject over the past years in eCommerce world. The concern is that as customers get personalized experience in B2C, they expect the same treat in B2B. Buyers also want content and experiences tailored to their company, which provides valuable assistance to their decision-making.
According to the Gartner study, companies who employ personalization will increase their income up to 15 % by 2018, comparing with their competitors. That is why it is necessary to embrace B2B personalization to get ahead of others.
In this article, we will focus on personalization and the ways B2B businesses can apply it for their buyers.
What is Personalization?
As Wikipedia explains, personalization “consists of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals.” In simple words, personalization manifests in such a manner: companies offer a specific product for buyers, provide them additional information, if needed, and interact through messages and emails for buyers to make an order.
Is Personalization Needed for B2B?
All B2B buyers come from different industries and have their own needs and content preferences. Infosys declared that 74 % of customers are frustrated when the website content is not personalized, and tired of the ‘one size fits all’ marketing approach. B2B buyers are not exception.
Companies who have implemented personalization for their B2B business already feel the benefits of it. The customer experience improves, the visitors’ engagement increases.
How to Adapt Personalization in B2B?
Personalization often goes well with segmentation. This method involves categorizing subscribers into groups according to particular needs and interests. For example, customers can be divided in such segments as job title, benefit, function, management level and industry sector. This gives you understanding of your customers and allows to make customer experience more personalized.
The main tips which B2B marketers can apply are the following:
- Inspect their behaviour
- Set personalized price<
- Attract
- Stay in touch
Firstly, if your website has a log-in system, it a high time to take advantage of it. You can get info in their profile and track their purchase history. Also, take into account how customers are wandering around the site clicking and leaving the notes. That’s a good way to learn their preferences and habits, which will help to tailor suggestions and discounts for customers.
Customers appreciate special attitude to them. A good job can be to offer for loyal customers personalized price and discounts. The price difference can vary according to the quantity, contract length and other factors.
Attraction of clients requires tremendous efforts of B2B vendors. The good decision would be to add explainer video, special sheets and additional functions to your website. The customers appreciate companies which provide a great understanding of the products for their clients.
Personalized email is a way to speak directly to your customers. It is essential not only to use the first names in emails, but also divide your subscribers into different lists. That would help to send the needed information for a category of people based on varying levels of engagement. In addition, as customers use different touchpoints such as mobile apps, web, social media, for B2B business owners the task is to be prepared to meet clients on all of these channels.
Conclusion
Due to the demand for a new level of customer service, personalization has become vital for B2B businesses. In order to gain more potential clients B2B business owners have to think about the ways how to catch the attention of the customers and finally make a purchase.
In case you are interested in integrating your B2B solution with shopping platforms, try API2Cart. Schedule a call with our rep and get more details.
