Implementing a B2B Omnichannel Strategy for Your Brand

Hopefully by now you’ve read the article in this series where we make the case in favour of B2B companies embracing omnichannel strategies in 2022.

With B2B customers now expecting the same channels to be open to them as the enjoy in B2C interactions, the time is now to make sure all your marketing channels, both contemporary and traditional are working in harmony to give those customers the best experiences possible when engaging with your brand.

In this follow up piece, we’ll be offering some guidance on how to actually incorporate omnichannel into your B2B operation.

Customer Centric

As with any marketing strategy, the focus must always be on the customer and their needs.

The most important thing to remember about your B2B clients is that they are also B2C customers in their personal lives. They want to have that same kind of flexibility available to them as they do when shopping on Amazon or eBay when dealing with B2B interactions.

They may want to begin researching products on your website or even through a social media account. When they have questions, they need a range of communications options such as live chat, booking a sales rep visit, or speaking to someone on the phone. You need to make sure your data capabilities are up to scratch to ensure whomsoever is speaking to them has access to the customers history and previous communications and all your channels are working harmoniously.

Omnichannel vs Multichannel

The issue B2B companies often have with omnichannel implementation is they can often treat various channels as silos and not as a complete set of interconnected tools which a customer may want to switch between depending on their personal circumstances and which stage of the buying journey they are in at the time.

Switching from this multichannel approach to an omnichannel strategy is challenging, but it is the key to successfully implementing this kind of strategy.

Customer relationship management [CRM] platforms can be one of the most powerful tools available to you during this process. With a CRM platform at your disposal, it becomes far easier to gain a complete view of the customer and their interactions with your brand. This ensures marketing and sales teams can deliver consistent messaging across channels which move the conversation along instead of going over points which have already been covered.

Not only does this create a seamless experience for customers, but also enables your sales people to be rewarded for their contribution to a sale, regardless of who actually completes it. With a transparent view of the entire sales process, credit can easily be given where due.

Conflict Management

When multiple channels are all working together, incidents of conflict are inevitable. This is especially true in the post-COVID-19 business environment where many sales and marketing teams are working remotely.

Indeed defines channel conflict as “any dispute, disagreement or other similar issues that may occur between two or more channel partners, where the decisions and actions of one partner affect the other's business metrics, such as profit, sales, or market share. A channel partnership is a collaboration between a company that produces or manufactures various products, services, or technologies and another one that markets and sells them.”

Conflict cannot be avoided but can be addressed proactively. Segmentation allows operators to find the perfect fit between channels, customers, and products.

We are also seeing a recent rise in credit as a service products where a third-party provider can support omnichannel transactions where an approved buyer purchases a product or a service by a variety of different channels such as an ecommerce site, a marketplace, through a salesperson, in-store, or through a customer support representative, and reduce incidences of channel conflict through objective transparency into the purchasing process.

Final Thoughts

Implementing an omnichannel strategy is never easy but once yours is off the ground and running you can fine tune things as you go and then work towards increasing the maturity of your operation by adding more channels and CRM technology.

Implementing omnichannel is certain to be a hot topic at B2B Online 2022.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.