10 B2B eCommerce Advantages To Capture Before Your Competition

By / January 14, 2021
B2B eCommerce Advantages

Everyone in the B2B sector had heard the call to action for digitization. But most businesses were reticent to take action and execute.  

And why would they? If business was good enough and they were enjoying steady growth, there seems to be no reason for them to start the transformation project. 

Of course, they didn’t anticipate the coming of COVID-19, which forced everyone to think about online channels – buyers and sellers included. 

And that’s when we saw almost 100% growth in B2B eCommerce adoption, only when COVID had just begun to disrupt industries – in the first quarter of 2020. 

So, while eCommerce has become critical for survival, one may ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ – other than sustainability of course. 

Let’s touch on those B2B eCommerce advantages that should convince you to start the digital transformation project and launch your B2B online store. 

#1 – Be Relevant for Your Customers

The most obvious benefit is sustainability in the new digital world and relevancy for your changing customer profile. Like mentioned earlier, your buyers are changing. The new buyer is a digital native who prefers fast, frictionless self-service as opposed to getting back and forth with sales reps on the phone. 

With a B2B eCommerce channel, you can deliver a relevant experience to those buyers and give them a reason to buy from you and stay loyal to you. 

#2 – Reach Markets You Couldn’t Reach Before

An eCommerce channel allows you to reach market segments you couldn’t reach before. As buyers turn to the internet for their product research, it allows you to be present where they are searching for and increase your customer base and enter new markets. 

An example is smaller customers and accounts that your sales teams weren’t focusing on before. With an eCommerce channel, you can reach those smaller customers and let them self-serve and place orders. It just means more revenue for your business. 

#3 – Increase Sales with Upselling and Cross-Selling

An eCommerce site allows you to implement upselling and cross-selling techniques easily. By setting product recommendations on your store, you can increase the average order amount easily and sell more stuff – something that could only be done restrictively by your sales team before. 

#4 – Allows Your Sales Team To Be More Strategic

With the eCommerce channel in place, your sales team can focus on more strategic and impactful things like building relationships with customers, consulting, advising, and just being proactive instead of being reactive and taking orders all the time. 

As the eCommerce channel takes care of the smaller customers, your sales teams can particularly focus on the bigger accounts and growing their book of business. 

#5 – Cut Out The Middlemen and Improve Profits

An eCommerce site allows you to go direct to consumers, wholesalers or whoever the target customer is, allowing you to cut the middlemen out. This allows businesses to earn higher profits and be more price competitive. 

#6 – Be More Effective with Analytics

An eCommerce site easily integrates with analytic tools, which allow you to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, messaging, sales efforts, and advertising. You can understand the buyer’s behavior with analytics like heat maps, and improve your site and the customer’s experience using that data. 

#7 – Create an Impact with Marketing

With online selling channels, you can use modern marketing methods like PPC, SEO, and social media marketing, and create an impact with better brand awareness. 

#8 – Scale Up and Grow

With an eCommerce site, you can reach more customers and expand into new market segments that was previously unfeasible. This allows you to scale and grow your business. 

#9 – Offer an Omni-Channel Experience

Growing your business in today’s age requires you to be present where your customers are. An eCommerce channel easily integrates with other channels like social media so you can offer an omni-channel experience to your customers instead of being restrictive to your site. 

#10 Higher Efficiencies and Reduced Costs

Lastly, digitization brings increased efficiencies in your business as you automate most of the strenuous and time-consuming tasks. With self-service account management features, your customers can easily self-serve their accounts, check their order status, credit limits, and add or remove users while freeing up your sales team. This increases efficiency in your business and reduces the cost per transaction. 

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A writer by profession, Maria Ilyas is an eCommerce and digital marketing enthusiast and is always digging into the latest marketing trends, best practices, and growth strategies.