Blur­ring the lines of B2B& B2C Ecommerce

For the past few years, it seems clear that B2B needs to catch up and learn how to offer buy­ers ​“a B2C-like expe­ri­ence”, under­stood as a seam­less, engag­ing, or, in oth­er words, decent per­son­al expe­ri­ence. The (valid) rea­son­ing behind it is that, ulti­mate­ly, buy­ing is always per­son­al, because — at least for now — all buy­ers are peo­ple, regard­less of whom they may be buy­ing for. This could be sum­ma­rized as the ​“all com­merce is B2P (busi­ness-to-peo­ple) or B2H (busi­ness-to-human)” approach.

Pro­fes­sor Mark Rit­son notes that ​“almost every mar­ket­ing con­cept and approach (for B2C) is still rel­e­vant to B2B”. And it’s true.

It’s also true that B2B has its speci­fici­ties — audi­ences are more focused, sales cycles are longer, rela­tion­ships are more com­plex, and stakes are high­er, as is loss aver­sion, because mak­ing a bad per­son­al pur­chase deci­sion will hard­ly ever cost you your job, as Rory Suther­land apt­ly explains:

And the plot thick­ens, because the lines between B2C and B2B eCom­merce are increas­ing­ly blurring.

After 2020, there was a major change in the way B2B com­pa­nies behave in the dig­i­tal realm. Fig­ures, like hips, don’t lie:

• Ecom­merce pen­e­tra­tion in the US went from 16 to 34% in just 8 weeks dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, which equals a 10 year leap for­ward. (McK­in­sey)
• 87% of B2B clients pre­fer a sup­pli­er with the best Ecom­merce por­tal and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence even if it means pay­ing more. (Big­Com­merce)
• 35% of B2B busi­ness­es have list­ed invest­ing in Ecom­merce plat­form tech­nol­o­gy as their top pri­or­i­ty this year. (Big­Com­merce)

What B2B can learn from B2C

“One-to-one” can be ​“brand-to-brand”

B2C brands have always tried to con­nect on a one on one rela­tion­ship, offer­ing online expe­ri­ences that made things eas­i­er and more enjoy­able, deal­ing with sup­port and return requests effec­tive­ly, and focus­ing on inno­v­a­tive mar­ket­ing tac­tics. B2B had not need­ed that, until now. We relied on offline rela­tion­ships and online trans­ac­tions, and now we have to catch up with the inter­sec­tion: Online ABM is more impor­tant than ever.

B2B com­pa­nies can emu­late B2C by invest­ing in UX design that sim­pli­fies com­plex trans­ac­tions and enhances sat­is­fac­tion. With more B2B buy­ers using mobile to research and pur­chase, a respon­sive design that ensures the plat­form is acces­si­ble and func­tion­al across all devices is no longer optional.

The sto­ry actu­al­ly matters

DTC brands are pio­neers in influ­encer mar­ket­ing and sto­ry­telling, cre­at­ing engag­ing nar­ra­tives that res­onate and build trust. And yes, there’s per­haps too much fuzz about sto­ry­telling as if it was the Holy Grail of Mar­ket­ing, when it’s only one piece of the puzzle.

One that can ele­vate B2B com­pa­nies’ posi­tion­ing and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion to a tru­ly com­pet­i­tive lev­el, help­ing them com­mu­ni­cate val­ue propo­si­tions more effec­tive­ly and cre­ate a more per­son­able, engag­ing, brand image.

Every­one loves lifestyle con­tent when Apple does it, but we often neglect it in B2B, lim­it­ing the con­tent to sim­ply trans­ac­tion­al, spec-dri­ven require­ments. A con­vinc­ing, authen­tic, beau­ti­ful sto­ry can help you beat the competition.

Sell­ing goal is to sell as much as we can

DTC brands mas­ter the art of omnichan­nel mar­ket­ing, using every pos­si­ble dig­i­tal chan­nel to reach their audi­ence. B2B com­pa­nies should adopt sim­i­lar strate­gies, lever­ag­ing email, social media, SMS, and sub­scrip­tion mod­els to engage cus­tomers and dri­ve sales.

It’s no longer just about stock, pric­ing, and cus­tom deals. It’s about cre­at­ing all these things to con­trol and con­vey the nar­ra­tive through your dig­i­tal chan­nels and find new cus­tomers, and for those cus­tomers to be able to dis­trib­ute your prod­uct effi­cient­ly to the end customer.

Key ele­ments to work hard­er at:

• Exper­i­ment­ing with syn­di­ca­tion, data feed, mar­ket­places and oth­er ways to find new whole­sale buyers.
• Dar­ing to ques­tion the mod­el and explore whether sell­ing direct­ly to con­sumers (per­haps out­side your cur­rent mar­ket) is a good idea.
• Empow­er­ing your dis­trib­u­tors or whole­salers with top-notch mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als so they, in turn, can explore omnichan­nel under one glob­al brand strategy.

Make it personal

Per­son­al­iza­tion is not easy to get right when deal­ing with com­pa­nies. B2C learned how to pull this off ages ago. The tech­nol­o­gy offer­ing around per­son­al­iza­tion is huge, and ubiq­ui­tous across all plat­forms. Gath­er­ing good data and using it to mold your offer­ing in a rel­e­vant, eth­i­cal and pos­i­tive way for your cus­tomers is rea­son­ably sim­ple, afford­able and cost-efficient.

As a B2B brand you’re not only deal­ing with a customer’s pro­cure­ment depart­ment. You’re deal­ing with peo­ple that will appre­ci­ate short­cuts, per­son­al­ized sug­ges­tions, tar­get­ed con­tent and tai­lored oppor­tu­ni­ties that will make their lives easier.

Com­ple­ment that with a plat­form that can help you inte­grate your ERP and deliv­er spe­cial pric­ing when­ev­er you need it — per­cent­age based, cred­it based, or a sim­ply a well inte­grat­ed price list. Well exe­cut­ed, this helps you make the most out of every agree­ment, while mak­ing every client feel appre­ci­at­ed and cared for.

Make it agile

Exper­i­ment­ing is key to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment of both cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and sales. Con­ver­sion Rate Opti­miza­tion (CRO), a fan­cy way to say ​“exper­i­ment until it improves”, is a wide­spread prac­tice for B2C brands. Who says you can’t run split test­ing on a whole­sale por­tal? Or that you can’t ana­lyze the cus­tom pric­ing dif­fer­ence between cus­tomers and gain insights?

Come up with a game­plan, cre­ate the ques­tions you want answers for, put them in a cal­en­dar, gath­er data, improve, and iterate.

Think dig­i­tal first

95% of the sales cycle on B2B hap­pens dig­i­tal­ly. It’s the final, human pow­ered, 5% that clos­es and makes it hap­pen, but the more you can opti­mize the big 95% cycle, the bet­ter your chances at clos­ing the deal.

A per­son­al­ized, smart cycle, with a sen­si­ble use of AI pow­ered fea­tures can dri­ve your gross order val­ues up and your churn rates down, and remind your cus­tomers to refill, reorder or in oth­er ways, return, mak­ing the rela­tion­ship stronger.

And what can B2C learn from B2B?

A few things we can think of:

Posi­tion­ing

Posi­tion­ing is often neglect­ed. April Dun­ford explains it through this won­der­ful quote:

B2C brands can be so focused on met­rics and sales fig­ures that they for­get about actu­al brand posi­tion­ing. Work­ing sales and expe­ri­ence alone can deliv­er results in the short term, but real­i­ty will catch up if your posi­tion­ing is weak.

Loy­al­ty

Arguably the biggest chal­lenge in the most com­pet­i­tive mar­ket sce­nario in his­to­ry.B2B knows the game. It’s about peo­ple, rela­tion­ships, and antic­i­pat­ing needs. Through care­ful per­son­al­iza­tion and smart CRM fea­tures, this can be repli­cat­ed on B2C’s one to one relationships.

Influ­encer relationships

With the excep­tion of very pub­lic ver­ti­cals like fash­ion and lux­u­ry, influ­encer mar­ket­ing is not as com­mon as it should be on B2C. B2B, on the oth­er hand, because of its more ​“corporate‑y” nature, has a bet­ter han­dle on suc­cess sto­ries, case stud­ies, and pub­lic endorse­ments from experts in their field. Take this one with a pinch of salt, though: A lot of whole­sale com­pa­nies are way behind with their home­work when it comes to sell­ing the sto­ry of suc­cess deliv­ered by their brand.

What about DNVBs?

Oh my, we sure love a good acronym.

Dig­i­tal­ly Native Ver­ti­cal Brands excel at a num­ber of things. Particularly:

• Con­trol­ling the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence end to end. From prod­uct to sup­port, the whole val­ue chain is tai­lored to reflect brand values.
• Build­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Empow­er­ing the user to become the best pos­si­ble ambas­sador, and sell on their behalf.
• Smarter dis­tri­b­u­tion chains. Due to their nature, these brands have a very smart con­trol of their product’s life­cy­cle, from cre­ation to dis­tri­b­u­tion to sup­port. Is your process improvable?
• Run every­thing back­wards. These brands reverse the tra­di­tion­al cycle: They’re born online, and then grow and expand to brick and mor­tar. The key take­away is to always try to invert a prob­lem to find an unex­pect­ed solution.

Here’s a handy list of out­stand­ing DNVB brands you might find interesting.

Speak­ing of reversing

Here’s a clas­sic, with a twist:

We’d like to pro­pose a Reverse Anna Karen­i­na Principle.

B2B mar­ket­ing chal­lenges, B2C mar­ket­ing chal­lenges, they’re just mar­ket­ing chal­lenges. The endgame is the same: mak­ing our cus­tomers hap­pi­er, and our brands stronger.

Tech­nol­o­gy allows us to escape dog­mas and apply what we like to our busi­ness, whether it’s around mar­ket­ing, strat­e­gy, mon­ey, pur­pose, sto­ry­telling, or just plain experimentation.

When it comes to inspi­ra­tion to grow your busi­ness, as the Belfast Lion would say, take it where you find it.