B2B Enterprise Special: How to Achieve "Customer-Centric" Marketing in 2022

When discussing the pain points B2B enterprises face in digital transformation, we often mention issues like the inability to track specific customer actions, difficulty in setting different marketing journeys based on scenarios, challenges in handling leads uniformly, and the difficulty in evaluating lead value. However, today we want to first discuss the psychology of B2B buyers. Have B2B enterprises truly achieved the "customer-centric" approach they hold as the holy grail?

1. 59% of B2B Buyers Do Not Trust Sales Reps

According to research by HubSpot, most customers generally do not trust a company’s marketing, advertising, or sales representatives. Another study indicates that 59% of B2B buyers prefer to do online research rather than interact with sales reps. It's not surprising, then, to hear salespeople saying things like, "My clients don't trust me yet."

Why do B2B buyers have such low trust in salespeople? It's because, despite being on the buying side, they need to balance product quality and subsequent sales revenue, ensuring that the company's money is spent effectively and efficiently. This concern doesn't end once the purchase is made; it is a long-term responsibility.

During the initial consultation phase, B2B buyers encounter various sales pitches and options. If salespeople are solely focused on pushing their products without positioning themselves as problem solvers, it undoubtedly exacerbates the buyers' anxiety, making it even harder to build trust.

As Peter Drucker once said: "The premise of being customer-centric is that we must first figure out who our customers are and who determines the future development of our enterprise. Furthermore, the premise of measuring the value of a product is what kind of value it can provide to customers."

Therefore, we need to build user experiences that help customers reduce anxiety and lighten their workload.

Two,

Being "customer-centric" is not just a catchy slogan.

In the past, both consumers and sellers have heard the phrase "the customer is king." Nowadays, it has evolved into "customer-centric," but the essence remains the same. However, some companies are genuinely implementing this principle, while others treat it as a deceptive mantra.

Research reports indicate that before making a final purchase, customers actively and passively interact with a company more than 12 times. In other words, every one of these 12 interactions is crucial for closing the deal. Moreover, compared to the B2C industry, the cognitive and decision-making processes of B2B customers are even longer.

To create more customers, B2B enterprises need to thoroughly explore the deeper needs of their clients, covering the entire process from initial search to choosing a supplier. Relying solely on previous user feedback and a set of sales scripts no longer impresses seasoned buyers. In the digital age, it's more crucial than ever for companies to truly be "customer-centric."

三、 Make marketing appear in a way that better understands the customer

To be honest, B2C enterprises have indeed taken the lead in user experience. The rise of brands like Genki Forest and Florasis (Hua Xizi) further supports this. According to research reports, 90% of buyers want B2B websites to provide a shopping experience similar to B2C. Accenture's research also shows that one-third of B2B enterprise customers have increased their expectations for the experience over the past year.

For B2B companies aiming to achieve "customer-centricity," precise customer profiling is indispensable. Before creating these profiles, we need to return to business applications by addressing three key questions:

1. Who is the target audience?

2. What problems does the target audience want to solve?

3. How do we plan to execute the strategy? 

After understanding the marketing effect expected to be achieved by building user profiles, it will be possible to interact better with customers. 

But due to the numerous channels and the complexity of user data, relying solely on manual efforts to complete highly detailed user profiles is challenging. Therefore, B2B enterprises need to utilize tools to effectively manage touchpoint channels, gain insights into omnichannel consumers, and manage user data, as well as to explore the full lifecycle value of users.

Utilizing marketing automation technology to categorize user tags into static tags and dynamic tags, static tags include age, occupation, name, gender, etc., while dynamic tags encompass multiple behavioral tracks left by users, such as searching, watching live courses, claiming coupons, filling out user feedback forms, etc.

When certain trivial and easily overlooked actions of customers are collected under dynamic tags, it allows for more accurate targeting of marketing leads, enabling sales personnel to follow up with customers more effectively.

By using preset scoring rules, it is possible to identify high-quality users among potential customers, create targeted and clear marketing journeys, implement multi-touchpoint strategies in an integrated manner, and deliver personalized content to customers based on their needs. Additionally, touchpoints can be iteratively optimized, automatically allocating highly matured leads to sales, thereby increasing sales efficiency and improving the conversion rate from potential MQLs to SQLs.

Take conference marketing as an example, which is a very important marketing tool for B2B enterprises. It involves invitation and registration for the conference, pre-conference reminders, conference check-in, and feedback, among other things.

Users register by scanning a QR code and, after filling out the form, receive template message reminders, which add related behavior tags. Within 24 hours after the conference ends, a targeted EDM email is sent to remind users to download conference-related materials, thoughtfully considering every step of the user's participation.

B2B marketing is a vast undertaking, with each stage closely interconnected. To better serve customers, it is essential to understand their true needs. Utilizing marketing automation technology to rebuild communication channels with customers from the perspective of helping them solve problems can create a more intelligent customer experience.

The Webpower marketing automation platform can help enterprises achieve customer acquisition goals and build a long-term digital marketing system. By gaining insights into omnichannel users and leveraging user profiles and scoring systems, it connects the marketing pipeline, ensuring close coordination between various stages and departments. This allows marketing data to circulate effectively, putting the "customer-centric" approach into practice.

Webpower Smart Marketing

As a one-stop enterprise-level digital marketing service provider, Webpower owns sub-brands such as iDigitalForce and DmartechForce, specializing in areas like marketing automation, SCRM membership marketing, email marketing, and private domain marketing. Through the "Smart Marketing" framework, we help enterprises create a complete marketing loop.

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