B2B eCommerce Marketing Strategies in 2020: How to Engage Your Audience

B2B eCommerce Marketing Strategies in 2020: How to Engage Your Audience

2020 is around the corner, and it’s time to strategize and set goals for the next year. That said, only 64 percent of B2B-businesses do have a formal marketing plan – which means 36 percent don’t! You don’t want to be part of that 36 percent.

Looking into the next year, you want to understand where the eCommerce space is going. Customer expectations are changing, and technology is advancing. Here are my key marketing strategies for 2020:

Omnichannel marketing: Keep testing!

It has never been wise to put all eggs in one basket. Even if you already have established marketing channels that generate leads, keep testing. What works today won’t necessarily work tomorrow. And just because one channel is producing good results, that doesn’t mean other channels couldn’t do even better.

Which channels to use?

Sagefrog Marketing Group found that email is still dominating B2B marketing. According to a survey, 84 percent of B2B marketers use email-campaigns, most likely due to their high ROIs. Social Media comes in second (73%), followed by Blogging and Content Marketing (63%), and Search Engine Optimization (61%).

You should test a variety of strategies and platforms to reach out to your target audience. Reusing content can help to cut the workload and costs to boost the ROI. For example, if you have written a blog post, you can reuse part of the article for social media postings or email campaigns.
A new channel that could grow bigger in 2020 is voice. In 2019, 14% of B2B customers already wanted to see voice ordering in their online B2B buying experience. Although in its infancy, voice recognition will find its way into B2B eCommerce over the coming years as part of the marketing channel mix.



Personalization remains king

Personalization has been a trend over the past years – this will continue in 2020. Customers expect personalized products, services, and websites.

Advances in AI technology are accelerating this trend. Today, eCommerce platforms provide personalized recommendations and targeted communication through chat-bots based on the users’ individual preferences. Tactics like triggered emails can provide a level of personalization that is effective for nurturing leads and keeping customers.

Engage your audience: content, loyalty programs, and apps

Marketers need to be aware that their target audience is changing. The usual suspects from the CXO suite or product managers are no longer guaranteed to be mid-lifers with years of experience under their belt. Instead, the younger tech-savvy millennials are now in charge, an audience that is used to getting things done digitally – but also has completely different expectations of an eCommerce platform.

This new audience wants to be engaged. eCommerce platforms can do this through interactive content, loyalty programs, or applications, preferably apps that are designed to work across all mobile devices and operating systems. Talking to an audience is not enough anymore; today, your audience also wants to talk to you. Give them a platform.

Sweet Tips from Ally:

1. Keep on testing, keep on improving your messaging.
2. Personalize EVERYTHING.
3. Make sure your audience is engaged with you and your business!