B2B eCommerce is a lucrative business model. Business buyers tend to be more loyal, spend more, and have a higher lifetime value than consumers because they don't want to waste time changing suppliers or services. When they find a solution that works for them, the best thing for a business to do is stick with it. However, that's not to say B2B eCommerce is easy.
The sales process of B2B eCommerce is fundamentally different. Therefore, generating a strong ROI from business buyers takes a different approach too. Generally speaking, B2Bs want to communicate their expertise, to make target business buyers feel confidence about dealing with them. On the other hand, B2Cs often aim to connect with their customers on an emotional level. Both, however, rely on building customer relationships.
Key Takeaways from this Post
There are multiple types of B2B eCommerce businesses, such as wholesale, manufacturing, service-based, and B2B2C. Each type has its pros and cons, which are worth looking into before you begin.
It's always worth making your customers happy, for a multitude of reasons. They'll be cheaper to market to, have a higher lifetime value, and be more likely to recommend your business to other businesses.
Link My Books is an automated bookkeeping software that'll free up your time and help keep you organised. With the time you save using the software, you'll be able to concentrate on other areas of your business, like enhancing the customer experience.
These practices can turn occasional spenders into loyal customers and enhance your ROI. But how exactly do you do this and how do you measure the success of your strategies? This guide reveals all.
What is B2B Ecommerce?
B2B eCommerce is a business that sells products or services to other businesses on the internet. The sale is normally to do with enhancing the business's operations. For example, supply chain logistics, SaaS, marketing, accounting, and manufacturing materials.
Although B2Bs sell to businesses, it's essential to keep in mind that this is still a very human-based process. The business is selling and appealing to an individual or small team that is responsible for making such decisions for the company. Therefore, you should always consider the person or persons you're marketing to. B2B eCommerce sales reps can help to enhance the customer experience.
Types of B2B Ecommerce
Here are the main types of B2B eCommerce that exist today:
Wholesale B2B eCommerce
Wholesale eCommerce is when a business sells products in large quantities to retailers and other businesses. These retailers and businesses then sell on the products, often individually, to consumers. A wholesale eCommerce business might buy their stock directly from the manufacturer.
The beauty of this B2B eCommerce business model is that you shift stock quickly because you're selling it in high volumes. Of course though, it often requires a rather hefty initial investment.
B2B eCommerce Manufacturers
B2B eCommerce manufacturers are businesses that make the products to sell on to wholesalers or distributers. They work with raw materials or ingredients, to create something from scratch. This could be anything, from food products and beauty products, to pet supplies and kitchenware.
Manufacturers work closely with other businesses to determine what to make, accounting for market demand and other discoveries that come with market research.
B2B2C ecommerce
This stands for business to business to consumer. It refers to a business selling something, whether products or services, to another business, who then goes on to cater to a consumer. The two businesses create a partnership which benefits both parties. For example, a supermarket could partner with a delivery company to deliver their goods to customers.
Service-Based B2B
Service-based B2Bs, whether through digital commerce software or a manual service, come in many different forms. It could be an automated eCommerce bookkeeping software like Link My Books, or marketing agency, or a CRM platform. The possibilities are seemingly endless and they can be designed to ease workload, boost businesses, and help them sell more products, to name just a few possibilities.
Factors That Impact B2B eCommerce ROI
Here are some factors that might impact your business to business eCommerce ROI:
- Industry: Different industries within B2B eCommerce can generally expect different ROIs. Some will be stronger than others, depending on the landscape and nature of the industry.
- Competitiveness: How competitive your B2B eCommerce industry is will likely effect your ROI. For those that are super competitive, you might need a larger investment, both initially and continually.
- Initial investment: How much you invested at the start of your B2B eCommerce venture will probably influence your ROI, at least for some time. You'll need to get that investment back and add it to your costs.
- Size of company: Large B2B eCommerce companies will have different costs to small ones. Their ROI will be different as they have more staff to pay and operational costs.
- Time: Long-term ROI is more indicative of B2B eCommerce performance than short-term. You need to look at the long-term trajectory of your finances.
B2B Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for Strong ROI
When is comes to marketing strategies for B2B eCommerce, a strong ROI should always be the goal.
Here are some B2B eCommerce marketing strategies:
Know Your Buyer
Business customers will likely have an understanding of your goals and processes more than a consumer because they can relate to them. But equally, you have a deeper understanding of what they want as a business. This means you can tailor your strategies and business systems effectively.
Business customers and business clients will be considering things like cost, practicality, and of course their own potential ROI. They want to know that the thing you're selling will help them to meet their objectives, and how it'll do it. They're often looking for solutions that will stand them in good stead for the long term, rather than for short-term, impulse buys.
Get Blogging
Blogging is quite an obvious strategy for B2B eCommerce but it's an important one for establishing yourself as an expert. You need to blog regularly and consistently to build up a positive reputation for being knowledgeable in your field. However, it's really important to consider the knowledge level of your target businesses too. If they're in a similar niche to yours, you don't want your content to be too simplified so you're just telling them what they already know.
Consider upskilling and learning new things about your industry. Stay ahead of the curve by keeping up with industry trends and share your knowledge with your audience. Include alters of new blog posts in your social media marketing campaigns.
Network
Networking involves mingling with other businesses online and offline, discussing your services and theirs, and widening your number of contacts. LinkedIn is the best social media platform for B2B eCommerce networking. But also consider attending trade shows and other in-person networking events regularly. Be open to discussing mutually-beneficial relationships.
Have your elevator pitch handy for when you'll undoubtedly need it at networking events. This is a pitch that concisely summarises your B2B eCommerce. You can share all the important and compelling details in a short amount of time.
Develop Your Brand Identity
This process includes defining your brand's vision, mission, and values. It looks at what your B2B eCommerce brand stands for and should be a reflection of your business customers. Consider if your business was a person, what would it be like? How would it communicate with customers? What kind of language and terminology would it use? You should consistently adhere to your brand image across all your communication channels. Additionally, your sales reps should also reflect your brand identity.
Build Loyalty
In any business model, building brand loyalty is essential. Brand loyalty will increase retention and the lifetime value of customers (whether business or consumer), and decrease the costs involved with selling to that particular customer. Consider long-term strategies for building loyalty, such as:
- Loyalty programs
- Educational content
- Referral programs
- Partnerships
- Regular, pro-active engagement
Brand loyalty often derives from customer satisfaction. Customers feel connected with a brand because they feel they have something in common with it or that it relates to them personally. In this sense, it's really important to know your customers if you're going to increase customer satisfaction, and enhance customer retention and loyalty.
Set Up Your Tech Stack
Your tech stack will help you keep on top of areas of your B2B eCommerce business like orders, content generation and sharing, email marketing, and bookkeeping. It will often incorporate both AI and automation to ease your workload and create efficiency within your business. The right technologies can also enhance the customer experience by gathering data and communicating with each individual business at just the right time.
Technology can increase the functionality of your website too by, for example, adding self service options. Your customers can have their own customer portal. And, manage their interactions with you through that. Business intelligence tools are also a great idea for gathering vital information about your business and competitors'.
Create Value
You want your business to business eCommerce customers to find value in your products, services, and communications. If they're going to take the time to open and read that email newsletter, it had better be worth it.
Before writing or creating each piece of content, consider what you want it to achieve. What will your audience get by reading or watching it? What will they learn and how will it help them? If you're going to drum up new customers and business with your content, it needs to offer something useful.
Don't be Boring
Traditionally, corporate environments are stuffy and boring. Consider rows of identical desks inside a large office building and the lifeless monotony of business communications. These were in pursuit of displaying professionalism to the point that you couldn't tell one business from the next.
Nowadays, the best advice is to shake off this guise, and inject some personality and life into your business. This will help ensure it's memorable, and help you stand out from the crowd. This also ties into the earlier point of ensuring you relate to your customers to boost loyalty and customer satisfaction.
Social Proof
Social proof within B2B eCommerce is a powerful way to encourage purchases online and boost your ROI. It gives your business that much-needed credibility for when a business is uncertain about buying from you. Ask businesses to review your services on Google and social media. Collect testimonials and display these on your website and your marketing materials. Let potential customers know that businesses just like them trust you to deliver on your promises.
Go Beyond Customer Expectations
If you're going to encourage repeat custom, happy customers, and word-of-mouth recommendations, you need to go beyond customer expectations of your B2B eCommerce. This could be in the form of what your business has to offer in terms of products. Or, it could be more to do with providing exemplary customer service, for example. Here are some ways you can do this:
- Follow up after sales and interactions with a sales rep visit, phone call, or email.
- Personalise each communication.
- Listen to customers and act on comments and complaints.
- Train employees to be excellent at their jobs.
- Provide multiple ways of getting in touch.
Simplify The Sales Process
No one likes long sales processes that take up lots of their time. You need to ensure that this process is as smooth as possible, whether you sell B2B eCommerce products across online channels, digital commerce and SaaS products, or business services like accounting or web design.
If it's not obvious on your website, you need to outline what the sales process is like, particularly if you're providing a service. Let potential customers know what they can expect from you and what you need from them.
If you run a B2B eCommerce store selling products, here are some things you can do to make the online sales portal simpler:
- Add a Guest Checkout option.
- Provide the option to save information.
- Give multiple payment options.
- Offer multiple shipping options.
- Ensure the process isn't buggy.
Leverage Customer Data
Customer data can tell you a lot about your B2B eCommerce business. You need to put tools in place to gather this data, and enable you to segment customers into different customer groups according to different characteristics.
You can, for example, give customers feedback surveys to see what they think of your service. You can analyse which email topics get the most opens, and also add Google Analytics to your site. You can leverage data to understand your target customers, and their behaviours and preferences across different touch points.
Optimise for Search Engines
Search engine optimization is a topic that should be on every online business's mind, whether or not they're a B2B eCommerce. Optimising your website for search engines can bring in free, organic traffic from relevant online searchers.
Enhancing your website's SEO can take time. But, once you've achieved strong placements in the SERPs, you'll enjoy a greater targeted audience that are more likely to be interested in your offerings. Being high up in the SERPs also enhances your business's credibility as it shows that Google trusts your B2B eCommerce site.
Create a Solid B2B eCommerce Business Plan
A business plan is an absolute must, whether you're a B2B eCommerce or B2C. A winning business plan has multiple benefits, including identifying risks within your business, helping to obtain funding, and giving you a definitive guide to move your B2B eCommerce business forward.
These are the sections that you should consider including in your business plan:
- Executive Summary: This summarises your B2B eCommerce business and what it does, including the products and services you sell. You can also include a vision and mission statement.
- Company Description: Go into more detail about your company, such as the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved. Include historical data, such as gross and net profits.
- SWOT Analysis: This is where you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to your business. You take a very close look at your circumstances, as well as B2B eCommerce competitors'.
- Market Analysis: In this section, you'll look at the market, such as trends and your target audience. You'll also take a closer look at competitors.
- Marketing Strategies: You must define and clarify your marketing and sales strategies within your business plan. This will articulate how you plan to grow your B2B eCommerce company and achieve a strong ROI.
- Financial Projections: Add a section that shows financial projections and costs. Outline how much capital you need and how you came to these conclusions.
Measuring B2B Ecommerce ROI
When it comes to measuring your B2B eCommerce ROI, there are some steps you need to take:
- Set Your Goals: Firstly, set your goals for each of your campaigns. Do you want to boost retention or conversions, for example? Each campaign might have different goals or they might have the same ones. Either way, define it before you begin.
- Track progress: You need to use analytics and data to track the progress of each campaign and measure it against your budget. Use tools like Google Analytics, LinkedIn Analytics, and Mailchimp to track various aspects of campaigns.
- Decide on your metrics: What metrics, or KPIs, will you use to determine the success of each campaign? Gathering more leads might not pay off financially immediately, but you can use that data to market to the right audience and make more sales.
- Benchmark performance: Benchmarking gives you something to measure your success against. Link My Books Benchmarking is one tool to help you do this. You can see how your business performance compares with industry averages, and use that information to enhance your business.
- Separate ROIs for each channel: Track your ROI for each sales channel and marketing strategy, as well as as a whole. This will help you see which of your approaches are working for you and which ones might not be. You'll be able to allocate your budget according to where it's most likely to generate a strong ROI.
ROI Formula Calculation
Here are the steps you need to take to calculate your B2B eCommerce ROI:
- Identify how much revenue your business has generated within a time-frame. This includes all the money that you've made from sales.
- Identify all the costs (investment) you've had throughout that same sales period. These include COGS, marketing expenses, operational costs, etc.
- Subtract your costs from your revenue.
- Multiple this figure by 100 and convert it to a percentage.
You now have your ROI.
For the sake of clarity, here is the ROI formula:
Revenue - Costs X 100 = ROI
Always Analyse Reports
If you're going to improve your B2B eCommerce ROI, you'll ultimately need to generate and analyse financial reports. These will tell you the financial landscape for different aspects of your business. You can work with an accountant to create such reports, analyse them, and offer advice. Or, you can use software to generate and analyse them yourself.
Here are some types of financial reports that will be helpful for your B2B eCommerce:
- Revenue
- Expenses
- Cashflow statements
- Sales forecasts
- Accounts payable/receivable
- Balance sheet
- Profit and loss statement
This is just a selection of the reports you can generate and analyse. Doing so will help you view trends and patterns within your business's finances. And, address any issues that might arise quickly.
Why Use Link My Books For Your B2B eCommerce Business?
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Link My Books is an automated bookkeeping software, designed, created, and run by eCommerce experts. Our software caters to eCommerce businesses, both B2B eCommerce and B2C, in addition to eCommerce accountants and bookkeepers.
Its core functionality is that it connects with your eCommerce store and your accounting software, and automatically transfers financial data. This means you don't need to manually input this data into your accounting software, saving you hours every month.
Let's take a look at some of the best Link My Books features:
Profit & Loss Statements
Link My Books generates Profit & Loss statements from your eCommerce platform payouts. It gathers and consolidates data like sales, advertising costs, COGS, fees, and refunds, and breaks it all down clearly and concisely. You can view this data for each eCommerce platform in your Link My Books portal, manually transfer them to your accounting software, or set the software to autopilot so they send automatically with each payout.
Guided Tax Wizard
The Link My Books Guided Tax Wizard is a revolutionary tool that walks you through the process of setting your tax rates. It'll ask you a few questions as you're setting up your account and apply the same rules to each applicable sale. Once set up, the software will automatically correctly calculate taxes on each item you sell, regardless of where you operate. It includes this tax information in your statements and sends it to your accounting software. This makes it easier to file your returns.
Benchmarking
We went through this briefly earlier but I think it's worth going into Link My Books Benchmarking in a little more detail. This is a first-of-its-kind new feature that tells you where your business stands in relation to industry averages. Benchmarking uses a cohort analysis to identify the median results for metrics like sales growth and refund ratio. It presents this data anonymously, and shows you precisely where your business falls in relation to averages on each eCommerce platform.
Profit & Loss by Channel
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Link My Books P & L by Channel allows you to have a bird's eye view of the performance of each eCommerce platform, and do side by side comparisons. Filter the data that's presented to you by eCommerce platform and time-frame. And, see which of your eCommerce platforms are generated the most revenue and expenses. You can see, for example, if the higher advertising fees on one eCommerce platform reflect in the number of sales it gets.
Integrations
Link My Books is a multi-channel software. You can connect multiple eCommerce platforms to your one Link My Books account, and Xero or QuickBooks account. You can also connect all the major payment processors, including PayPal, Klarna, and Clearpay.
These are the eCommerce platforms you can currently integrate with Link My Books:
- Walmart
- Amazon
- eBay
- Etsy
- Square
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- TikTok Shop
You can connect multiple stores from the same eCommerce platform. And, multiple eCommerce platforms that are different.
Final thoughts on maximizing B2B eCommerce ROI
Maximizing your B2B eCommerce ROI takes careful planning and strategic ways of implementing your plans. You must focus on building customer relationships to enhance the customer experience, and simplify the supply chain with automation, technologies, and eCommerce tools. Each eCommerce platform you sell from must work both individually and towards your business as a whole.
Word of mouth recommendations can really propel business to business eCommerce and build customer loyalty. Identify customer pain points, and address individual consumers with personalised communications. But before all this, you need to create a business plan that'll be your blueprint for B2B eCommerce success.
If you want to save time on your B2B eCommerce bookkeeping, Link My Book is on-hand to help. Our software automatically transfers your financial data to your accounting software, calculates your taxes, and gives you access to powerful analytics.
Check it out for yourself and grab your free Link My Books trial today.
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