For a B2B to be competitive and relevant it needs to grow. Without identifying opportunities for growth, customers will seek the products and services that they need from suppliers that can grow with them.
However, it is predicted that one in three businesses cannot identify how to grow. Your scalability is attractive to customers. If you have a vision for how you might expand your business and you can share your journey with your potential clients, it can give them a sense of security knowing that your business has a vision and a plan for longevity.
Knowing where the growth is expected to take place is vital to developing your strategy to appeal to the right B2B customers.
Security and Privacy
Data security, privacy and accountability are a priority for digitally connected buyers. However, only 57% of B2B companies are confident that they can meet those demands.
It is important that as an online business, you can show potential customers that your website is secure, meets with minimum security requirements and has not sustained any data breaches.
How to improve your B2B site security:
- Switch your website to a HTTPS certificate
- Invest in a GDPR-ready CRM system
- Assign a Data Protection Officer and make sure you comply with the GDPR regulations
- Remove any personal contact information that you don’t need
Customer experience
A recent Cisco study found that consumers would not care if 74% of the brands they use vanished. This is a confronting statistic for SaaS companies, as between 70% and 95% of a subscription-based company’s revenue comes from renewals and upsells from existing customers.
This means that customers are more interested in their experience than they are in the brand because brands are replaceable. It is, therefore, important that customer experience is at the centre of marketing strategy and planning.
What you can do:
- Deliver personalised and relevant customer marketing campaigns
- Provide real-time customer service
- Resolve customer complaints quickly
- Have clear refund and cancellation policies
- Reward customers with upgrades, event invitations and quality content
Real-time customer service
If you have an account with one of the biggest music streaming sites in the world, then you likely know that if you have issues you cannot contact the company. If you have questions, you have a FAQ page that you must scroll through to find an answer. If they do not have the answer there, you are diverted to a public posting site that is filled with millions of complaints about the service provider, and no resolutions.
This lack of response communicates two things to the customer:
- You are replaceable
- The business profit is more important than your business
When a subscription service treats customers this way, they will find another supplier, even if its quality and variety is not as immediately large, because people want to be heard. Newcomers who support their customers and offer superior customer service grow fast and soon expand.
The average customer support response time is about 12 hours, while some companies taking more than a week to respond. Your customers expect a response to their question within an hour. The best way to solve your customer service needs is by using live chat.
Chat has been proven to shorten response times, increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. Your customer service support team are able to handle multiple chats at one time (compared with only 1 email or phone call at a time).
Sales and marketing alignment
Aligning your sales and marketing teams helps you to generate 32% higher revenue, improve customer retention rates by 36% and achieve a 38% higher close rate as potential clients move through a streamlined sales and marketing funnel.
Aligned marketing and sales have been proven to attract higher quality leads and secure more sales. Too often marketing leads are passed onto sales teams before they are qualified, which means high volume but low quality, which also skews sales conversion rates. Combining your sales and marketing departments solves this challenge.
Personalisation
Personalisation is key to reaching potential clients, and it always has been. If you know your customer’s name, great, but if you know how to answer questions they have before they even think of them, then you are a solutions provider that they can trust to anticipate their needs.
Using your data to build a profile of your customer is the first place to begin to personalise your offering. This is not about marketing and trying to lure people in. It is about using the information you have to ensure that you are providing the solutions that customers want.
To enhance personalisation:
- Allow the customer to choose when, how often and what type of communication they receive from you
- Know a customer’s purchase history and about their previous correspondence each time they contact you
- Recommend new products or services based on a customer’s interest or behaviour
Conclusion
Your growth strategy needs to be based on understanding how technology is influencing the buyer journey, customer expectations and growth opportunities. Your B2B venture needs to understand how the online landscape has changed marketing and sales in order to achieve the growth required to succeed in a busy globalised environment.
