Insight into your customers equals sales. It is a simple formula, but many B2Bs struggle to understand their clients. In the past, only large companies could afford the market research and analytics that would give their businesses an edge.
Today, a wealth of end-user information is hidden in plain sight, just waiting for the savvy B2B to see its potential. Here are 5 strategies for maximally leveraging consumer data from your website.
Your B2B website is the central place where customers are researching products, searching for information, and clicking on the items and services that interest them. How can your business transform all that digital activity into actionable insight?
1. Centralize data. You start by integrating all of a customer’s product preferences and purchase history so that it is readily available in one place. This greatly improves the re-ordering processes. It also allows you to see at a glance their previous orders. As a result, you’ll have a much richer understanding of the customer, With this fuller picture, transactions will be smoother since you know what each client wants, needs, and has. You’ll also be able to make it easier for the customer to buy supplies, materials, parts, and new systems.
2. Buyer profiles. Creating individual customer profiles is a powerful way of understanding how to market to them. By identifying commonalities in customer segment types you’ll be able to deliver the product information and content that is relevant to them. This will help you deliver “product triggers” around certain types of activities or patterns. It will also help you capitalize on real-time marketing, such as the timely email reminder just when the product they bought from you is about to run out or expire.
3. Turn preferences into personalization. Once you’ve created a customer profile, you can use that picture to make personalized product recommendations based on their purchasing history, and also what customers like them are buying.
4. Harness omnichannel. Empower your sales force with relevant data. In fact, your customer profile should be compiled from and available to all your channels–Salesforce, call centers, and website. Your sales teams and service reps should have a complete customer profile in front of them before they interact with the client. In particular, sales reps should have shopping cart info, inventory details, and pricing/delivery facts at their fingertips so that they can anticipate the customer’s needs.
5. Real-time reports. Empower management with up-to-the-minute reporting that reveals how customers are interacting with your business. This will help managers spot trends and identify hot products. By getting this information directly, rather than through the filter of the sales teams, they’ll be able to respond faster to real-time market conditions.
Takeaway
Today’s consumer is in the driver’s seat because they have so many choices in the palm of their hand. Businesses must understand their customers so that they can anticipate their needs and create a great end-user experience. The B2B that utilizes all touch points with the customer as an opportunity to understand them will have the inside track on their business.
