How to turn your company website into sales machine (even if your a B2B supplier)
One of the biggest advantages that platforms such as FaceBook and Amazon have is a massive amount of customer data that gives them insights into customer behavior, including what they purchase, what they are looking at but don’t purchase and who is purchasing.
Ongoing developments in technology have now made it possible for even small companies to get almost the same birds eye view of their own customers. The problem is that few are making use of it. Most companies look at customer data analysis as something that only big brands do – and certainly not within the realm of B2B suppliers.
That’s starting to change and smart companies are turning their company’s websites into an opportunity to not only show products but also to learn more about what customers are looking for.
“When we say ‘know your customer’ it is not only about having the customer in your CRM or database or having your sales team calling them regularly. Now we need to observe their behavior – what are they clicking on, what they are looking at and what are they purchasing – and map it to their long tail buying history,” said Joanne Persico, president of OneCount, a marketing automation company.
The next step is to marry all of that data – across all of your silos, both online and office – and connect the dots amongst your systems to create a 360 degree customer view.
Most companies don’t lack data, what they lack is actionable data.
The Biggest Problem with Big Data
In the old days there was a lack of data making analysis difficult. Today, data is essentially limitless, but it is taking a similar toll on analysis.
“There’s more data in the world today than there are grains of sand. To make big data more meaningful, and digestible there are technologies like a customer data platform (CDP) to connect all those data sources and give you and your team that unified customer view,” said Ms. Persico.
Most companies don’t lack data, what they lack is actionable data. By using a customer data platform to pull data from multiple sources together, companies can get a much clearer view of what their customers are doing.
“Sometimes companies have to take action off the data from as many as 10 different platforms. They have their Google ads, their advertising, social media, email and so forth. Typically, most of those platforms and those analytics are all in separate systems. So it’s been hard to take action off each. This is where technology like a customer data platform really helps,” she added.
Customer data platforms can give smaller B2C and even B2B websites Amazon-like customer data capabilities.
Diving into Customer Behavior
Once you’ve gotten all of your data organized the next step is to look at it from the point of view of ‘behavioral intent.’
“You might have a lot of data but the behavioral intent changes depending on where that customer is within their buying cycle or within the customer journey. Maybe they’re just researching, maybe they’re just looking at fabrics or maybe they’re just thinking about designs. By marrying the behavioral intent to an actual individual in your database you are better able to see new opportunities for working with that customer.
“For example, if a customer previously purchased cotton shirting and now they are looking at cotton jersey, that could alert you to start showing them more of that type of fabric – even though according to their customer history, they never purchased that product from you.”
It also enables you to show customers products related to the products they previously purchased or are looking at now. Amazon does this masterfully, showing customers similar products to the one they are looking at, as well as products that could be used with it. B2B websites could do that same, with some easy to implement technology.
“There has been a lot of focus on direct to consumer. Now there’s a huge opportunity for B2B companies to create more of those experiences by taking the data they have and looking a little bit further into it, as well as looking at who’s logging into their portal.”
A customer data platform like OneCount puts a widget on your website that can capture user data and behavior from your site, as well as from other sources, and pull it together into one easy to analyze dashboard. Essentially, it gives your website Amazon-like customer data capabilities.
This kind of SaaS (software as a service) tool pulls together multiple data streams and gives you a holistic view of what your customers are doing – in a way that is frictionless.
The Importance of Personalization
Users have come to expect a very personalized experience. You want to make sure that you’re delivering the right message at the right time to the right user to the right person. And the more you personalize, the higher the engagement – and that drives sales.
“Sometimes a customer will tell us ‘Our analytics are telling us that this product is not getting much traffic.’ Or maybe ‘We’re getting traffic but our customers’ engagement is very low, what do we do?’
“A customer data platform like OneCount helps them to prioritize which of various actions they should take next to boost that product.
“Actions like ‘Do we want to recommend these products at the bottom of our site or during the checkout process? Or do we show them when they’re logging into the portal? Do I want to create a popup that says, Hey, did you know about this new product and literally serve them a pop up instantly?”
Even what seems like small actions can have a big impact on increasing sales – and help customers discover products that they might have overlooked.
Breaking down data silos and getting the teams all on the same page is a huge step forward in driving more effective marketing - and better serving the customer.
Faster, Better Decisions
“Track the success, leverage the data and leverage the insights so that you can make more informed decisions. When you see something trending in your data or you’re seeing a spike or look at it more carefully. Be agile, be able to make quicker decisions or instant decisions.
“A lot of times I find that the departments are siloed, even within an organization. When we work with a client they’ll say ‘oh, we don’t share our event data and our email list with that department, that’s our data. Breaking down those silos and getting the teams all on the same page is a huge step forward in driving more effective marketing – and better serving the customer,” said Ms. Persico.
“Too often I hear marketing and sales management say ‘we’ve never done it that way.’ But times have changed. Looking at the data is certainly a key piece of making smarter marketing decisions and business decisions,” she said.
