In our last article, we talked about B2B ‘Revenue Impact Marketing’ – or to put it another way – marketing that considers Return on Investment (ROI). There are a few other trends in B2B Marketing that have a direct affect on B2B Ecommerce, in this article we look at two – Intent Data and Converational Marketing.
Intent Data
B2C Ecommerce has changed the way companies do segmentation, targeting and even product management. The main reason for this is that it is easier to track customer behaviour and make decisions based on that behaviour rather than a stated intent.
Let’s imagine a customer looking to buy a car. Think about the customer journey of walking into a showroom or forecourt. Up the front, under the big lights is the latest sports car model with all the options. The customer might sit in the driver’s seat, as part of a fantasy – an aspirational behaviour. Maybe they are just there to ‘kick the tyres’. Maybe they have no real intention of buying that day.
Think about that customer’s online buying journey. Maybe they download a ‘wallpaper’ of the new model, but what else do they do? Do they check the fuel consumption numbers of a particular car, do they look at the finance package pages? Do they watch a video about towing capacity or search for information about a trade-in?
In a digital world, all of this is tracked. Someone who looks at the finance packages is giving you valuable data – intent data.
And, in the age of social media, there are people who are literally asking to be sold to. Think about phrases like ‘Where can I find…‘ and ‘Can anyone recommend…
In a B2B sense, Intent data can be used to identify prospects who are in the early stages of self-directed research for products or solutions in your product category.
Intent data helps in the process of Revenue Impact Marketing by tracking a prospect’s purchase intent, businesses can achieve higher conversion rates. Digitally captured Intent data becomes a valuable part of the lead-scoring activity by identifying leads that have the highest probability of buying. Sales teams can then use this information to focus their energy on the right prospects.
Leaving aside privacy concerns for the moment, there is a lot of data out there for companies using advanced Account Based Marketing (ABM) strategies using a B2B Ecommerce platform connected to a digital Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This includes gathering information such as : web activity, download history, and keyword searches.
Increasingly, companies are leveraging third-party intent data that tracks the audience’s behaviour outside the bounds of the company website or owned media – including physical location based on mobile device!
Think about that for a moment. What if you could see if a buyer was at a particular hall of a particular trade show or had visited the corporate HQ of your competitor. That’s not science fiction. That’s already happening – and it’s where the true competitive advantage lies.
Conversational Marketing – Talking to People (or Bots)
Most B2B buying is a ‘considered purchase’. You might think that you have given all the information that the customer needs, but what about the questions you missed?
The B2B customer experience (CX) is increasingly influenced by the digital and online shopping journeys that buyers are used to on consumer sites. Consider the following paths
Customer Journey 1 – Find the contact page, fill out a form. Wait for the form to be filtered and prioritised. Wait for a response. Can you imagine doing that in a showroom? Walk through the door, stand in front of the product on the shelf, wait for someone to come and help you. There is a point where you just leave. Even though you were ready to buy.
Customer Journey 2.1 – Click the ‘Live Chat’ box and get a bot which does its best to try and answer a question. Either give up or get put through to a human who can solve your problem. This journey can be very useful for gathering intent data and lead scoring, but can also lead to friction and frustration if implemented poorly.
Customer Journey 2.2 – Click the ‘Live Chat’ box and chat to a person who can answer or give you clarification in real-time without leaving the page. This person can also add products to your cart and create orders in the chat while looking at your account history and recent rantings on social media.
Now that customers are used to Zoom and interacting via video-chat, there are new versions of this software that are more like a physical interaction. Tools like Sales Meeting Hub provide a hybrid experience that can be linked to ecommerce and provide a guided experience.