With the development of the B2B industry, e-commerce has become not just a pleasant pastime, but an obligatory routine for many people. The explosive growth of e-commerce over the past few years has only increased the need for B2B businesses to shift their focus to online sales. That’s why we’ve decided to look at 5 B2B sales trends that will help your business reach the next level!
According to Digital Commerce 360, 42% of sellers say that creating an up-to-date and optimized website is their top priority for the coming year. And to help keep you up to date, we’ve put together the latest B2B sales e-commerce trends. It will have the biggest impact on your business in 2022!
What you need to know about B2B sales?
As Digital Commerce 360 noted, online sales across B2B e-commerce sites, entry portals and marketplaces grew 17.8% to $1.63 trillion in 2021. Statista data shows that the B2B e-commerce market in North America will exceed $4,600 billion by 2025.
Clearly, e-commerce itself is no longer the trendy new channel that B2B companies are exploring. Instead, McKinsey & Company reports that in 2022, about 65% of B2B companies across industries will conduct all of their operations entirely online. For the first time, B2B companies are more likely to offer e-commerce development than offline sales.
Why? Because e-commerce makes money. The same study by McKinsey & Company shows that about 18% of B2B revenue comes directly from e-commerce!
In the meantime, this correlates with data provided by Wunderman Thompson from the buyer side. It showed that as of 2021, 49% of B2B purchases in the UK, US and China are made online. To provide shoppers with the expected shopping experience, B2B companies must make digital transformation a priority in 2022.
Now let’s get to the point!
5 B2B sales trends to step up your business
Well, let’s list the main B2B e-commerce trends that you need to master in order to succeed with this business model:
- Real-time contextual pricing.
- Sell on third-party B2B marketplaces.
- Explore different social media platforms.
- Growth of customer experience statistics.
- Simple and fast order processing.
1) Real-time contextual pricing
Actually, we believe real-time contextual pricing will be a game changer in the coming years. This allows B2B businesses to provide customers with consistent and customized pricing. However, to do this, businesses must first understand customer behavior throughout the buying process.
The rapid adoption of mobile payments coupled with retailer mobile apps confirms our prediction that real-time in-store pricing will become standard practice by 2022.
As a result, this trend works best when integrated with e-commerce analytics and the overall customization movement in B2B ecommerce.
2) Sell on third-party B2B marketplaces
Firstly, marketplaces are an integral part of the B2B buyer journey. Indeed, many B2B buyers find inspiration and start searching for products on marketplaces.
Besides, 15% of US shoppers and 20% of UK shoppers shop through Amazon Business, just one of many third-party B2B marketplaces.
Meanwhile, one of the best benefits of third-party marketplaces is their ability to attract new customers. This may mean not only an increase in sales, but also an opportunity to enter global markets and test new products.
“Many successful B2B merchants are leveraging tools like Feedonomics to optimize their marketplace strategy. In fact, Feedonomics helps B2B merchants streamline their Amazon listings. For example, Feedonomics’ Amazon Business integration allows B2Bs to incentivize buyers with prices visible only to registered Amazon Business customers, and quantity discounts for customers who purchase in higher volumes,” says Dmitriy Ryzhiy, Vice President, Marketplaces at Feedonomics.
3) Explore different social media platforms
While social media commerce was dominated by B2C businesses, B2Bs are now looking to get into the social media game. Because, in many cases, their buyers are already using these channels.
According to Gartner, about 46% of B2B buyers use social media to find out about available solutions, 40% use it to compare solutions, and 35% use it to get the information they need before making a purchase.
In the meantime, Gartner also found that 54% of B2Bs have used social commerce to build an online store.
Yet, if selling and offering to pay via social media seems too intimidating at this stage, you can still experiment with B2B social media marketing.
Choose the platform that best suits your audience. Start by creating various posts such as videos of how your product works or quotes from customers. How? Simply sharing their experience with your business. This can help you determine what types of content resonate best with your audience.
4) Growth of customer experience statistics
Customer experience data is an important aspect of this B2C-like catering experience. It is the science of monitoring customer behavior across multiple meetings and evaluating how that behavior impacts company results. The same theory is now applied in B2B business. One of the benefits of B2B e-commerce is the collection and study of online information.
E-commerce analytics helps improve the online store experience for customers. CDP (Customer Data Platform) integrates and consolidates consumer data into a single platform. It collects information from various sources to create a complete picture of your consumers and how they interact with your content. CDP tools provide your marketing team with vital data to run effective campaigns.
For example, CDP may collect data from Facebook, LinkedIn, your website, email, and other places where your customers connect to your product. This information can help your advertising strategy. It will show what you need to keep customers. Customer service teams can even use CDP to tailor their support to each customer.
37% of B2B organizations are already using advanced campaign measurement and analytics technologies.
5) Fast and easy order processing
Both consumers and business buyers want fast and expedited delivery. B2B business must adapt and build a more efficient system. According to recent reports, logistics is one of the nine core elements that create customer value in multi-channel retail.
Current trends call for improving your omnichannel delivery strategy by eliminating the frictional elements of the process that your customers care about the most.
Summarizing all B2B trends
2020 and 2021 have been about getting online for B2B businesses. But 2022 will be about optimizing the online experience to keep up with ever-changing customer expectations.
With that in mind, B2B businesses should focus on the new trends we’ve identified, including moving away from legacy systems, investing in e-commerce technology, personalizing the shopping experience, and exploring new sales channels.
And while it may seem necessary to prioritize everyone, the key to success will be gathering data about your customers and building a digital transformation strategy.
Finally, once you do, you can use it all as a roadmap to success.
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