When you think of B2B eCommerce, you may imagine a group of stuffy executives in suits looking at endless rows of spreadsheets.
But with millennials making up 44% of the purchasing decision-makers at B2B companies, that’s simply not the case anymore.
At the end of the day, like B2C eCommerce, you’re just selling to people.
Those people just happen to be part of a business entity with a lot more money to spend.
That’s why B2B eCommerce is exploding in popularity, and why it’s so attractive for entrepreneurs and business owners.
If you’re considering starting a B2B eCommerce business, you’ve come to the right place.
The market is full of opportunity and there’s never been a better time to build your own business from the ground up.
As the saying goes, “there’s gold in them there hills,” and we’re going to help you find it in this ultimate guide to running a successful online business in 2023.
In this exhaustive post, we’ll take a look at:
- How B2B eCommerce business works
- How B2B customers differ from B2C customers
- B2B marketing strategies and tactics
- Which growth metrics to track (and which to avoid)
We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in.
What is business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce?
Simply put, B2B eCommerce is any business transaction between two businesses that occurs over the internet.
It’s a type of online commerce in which buyers and sellers conduct transactions on an electronic platform, usually through an online marketplace.
B2B eCommerce may include physical goods, but the broader definition also includes:
- Services
- Software
- Consulting
- Digital products
As we enter 2023, B2B eCommerce is expected to grow significantly faster than other forms of eCommerce.
To run a successful B2B eCommerce business in 2023, you need to understand the fundamentals of how it works, as well as the key differentiators from other business models.
How does B2B eCommerce work?
The basics of B2B eCommerce are quite simple. Two businesses transact with each other through an electronic platform, such as a marketplace or an online store.
These transactions can take many forms, from ordering products and services to negotiating contracts and payment terms.
We’ll get into the specific differences between B2B eCommerce and other forms of eCommerce, but these are the three biggest factors that set B2B businesses apart:
- High-ticket transactions
- Longer relational horizon
- Longer sales cycle
Very large B2B transactions may even require the buyer to submit an inquiry or request for a quote (RFQ) to multiple suppliers.
The supplier then reviews the RFQ, provides a price quotation, and negotiates payment terms with the buyer.
Once both parties agree on a deal, the buyer can place an order and make a payment.
Types of B2B eCommerce business models (with examples)
While it may cause eCommerce purists to wince, we are operating under an admittedly broad definition of eCommerce, which includes a multitude of online business types.
After all, if I pay money for a Photoshop template or a piece of software, that falls squarely under the umbrella of “eCommerce,” even though there’s no exchanging of physical goods.
With that said, here are some of the most common B2B eCommerce business models.
I’ve categorized them firstly by what they sell, and then how they sell them. Let’s take a look.
Physical products
Although we’re broadening our horizons a bit, you still probably think of physical products when you think of eCommerce.
So, it’s only fitting we start there.
B2B physical product sales can range all the way from multi-million dollar medical technology to wholesale microfiber cloths.
Needless to say, there is a massive range in both product and pricing in this category. Here are some typical ways physical goods are distributed in B2B eCommerce (and some real-life examples).
Physical goods marketplaces
One of the most successful forms of B2B eCommerce is the marketplace model.
In a marketplace, buyers and sellers come together via an online platform such as Alibaba or Amazon Business to transact directly with each other.
These marketplaces are often more cost-effective than brick-and-mortar stores and provide buyers with access to a wide selection of products from multiple suppliers.
Alibaba is probably the most famous B2B eCommerce market on the planet for wholesalers.
They make their money by purchasing products in very large quantities from manufacturers, then selling them to retailers, who in turn sell them to consumers.
Amazon Business is another big powerhouse in this space. They are a B2B platform that provides businesses with access to Amazon’s vast selection of products at discounted prices.
They also provide features like bulk ordering and business-only pricing which helps companies save money on the items they need.
Direct-to-business physical goods
Some companies opt to sell their physical products directly to the customer, instead of through a marketplace.
This is normally known as direct-to-business (D2B) eCommerce, and it can be a great way for businesses to establish a unique brand identity and control their own pricing.
Here are a few examples of D2B eCommerce businesses in action:
Mac Tools
Mac Tools is a leading supplier of high-end tools and equipment for automotive technicians.
The company sells its products directly to automotive businesses like garages and mechanics through its website, which enables them to offer special discounts and promotions that are tailored for technicians in the automotive industry.
KaTom Restaurant Supply
KaTom is a D2B eCommerce business that specializes in providing restaurant supplies and equipment.
The company sells direct to restaurants, caterers, and other food service businesses. KaTom offers a wide selection of products on its website and provides special discounts for larger orders.
Primera
Here’s a bit of a philosophical question: if an office doesn’t have an industrial-grade printer, is it really an office at all?
Primera has been providing office printers and supplies to businesses since the 1990s. They sell directly to their customers, giving them access to a wide selection of products at competitive prices.
These are just a few examples of how physical products can be sold in B2B eCommerce.
Services
Next up, we have services.
And yes, service-based eCommerce businesses can be extremely profitable, especially with the continued growth of remote work and the value of being a digital generalist.
Here are some of the ways businesses sell their services to other businesses.
Service marketplaces
An exciting trend for service-based businesses over the past ten years or so has been the rise of service marketplaces.
Service marketplaces are websites like Upwork, Fiverr, 99Designs, and more that allow businesses to quickly find professionals they need in a wide range of specialties.
These marketplaces offer a host of features that elevate them above traditional job boards, including a rating and review system, time-tracking, and automatic invoicing.
These service marketplaces essentially sell professional connections for a small fee taken out of each business transaction.
In fact, many direct-to-client service providers got their start by utilizing a service marketplace like Upwork.
Direct-to-business services
In addition to service marketplaces, there are plenty of businesses out there that specialize in providing services directly to other businesses.
These can range from behemoth consulting firms like McKinsey and Deloitte to boutique graphic design agencies and web development shops.
The key is to focus on delivering a unique value proposition that can’t be found elsewhere, or else you risk competing on price alone.
Advertising
If you’re lucky enough to build a large audience, other businesses will gladly pay you to get in front of it.
Digital advertising in the 2010s was reserved for giants like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Now, anyone can build an audience and then monetize that audience via ads. Take the email newsletter Morning Brew, for example.
Morning Brew offers a daily dose of business and financial news that’s tailored for millennials.
They have an email list of over two million subscribers, which they’ve built slowly and steadily over the past several years.
Now, it’s a massive source of advertising revenue for the company. You don’t need to be Mark Zuckerberg. You don’t need to build the next Facebook.
You just need to steadily and consistently build an audience.
Digital products
Digital products are a favorite among solopreneurs and SMBs alike because of their infinite replication and crazy high profit margins.
Infinite replication essentially means that, unlike physical products, digital products can be sold an infinite number of times without any additional overhead or costs.
Plus, with the exception of software, these products are usually created once and (maybe) updated every year or so.
This means that each additional sale requires no additional resources and is 100% incremental revenue for the business.
This divorces the business’s revenue potential from its time, allowing it to scale up cash flow without hiring a team.
Examples of digital products include eBooks, software as a service (SaaS) applications, online courses, and membership programs.
Digital goods marketplaces
Let’s say you’re editing an explainer video for your business to demonstrate how your product works.
You’re not too bad in Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, but you definitely don’t have time to create all these fancy animations, transitions, and assets.
No problem. Just head to a digital marketplace like Videohive, Storyblocks, or Motion Array. These marketplaces offer a wide range of professional-grade video assets, including templates, motion graphics, and sound effects.
Digital marketplaces are incredibly useful for small businesses that don’t have the resources or budget to hire expensive film production teams.
Similar to service marketplaces, digital marketplaces connect the creations of talented professionals with busy business owners. The marketplace then usually takes a cut of each transaction.
Direct-to-business digital goods
If you have digital goods – such as eBooks, software, browser extensions, or templates – that you think businesses can benefit from, there’s no need to go through an intermediary.
You can always try selling your product directly to individual business owners or even larger corporations.
You can use social media, email campaigns, or even cold-calling to pitch your product and sell it straight from your own website.
Of course, this requires more effort upfront on your part. You’ll have to create the actual product, market it, and be available to answer customer service questions.
But if you’re willing to put in the work, direct-to-business digital goods can be a great way to build your brand, not build on top of someone else’s.
We could devote an entire blog post to any one of these business types (especially software), but for now, let’s move on to examining the core differences between B2B and B2C eCommerce.
What’s the difference between B2B and B2C in eCommerce?
The key difference between B2B and B2C, or business-to-consumer, eCommerce is the relationship between the buyer and seller.
In a B2C setting, the customer is typically a single individual making one-off purchases. The relationship is usually short-term and transactional.
In a B2B setting, the customer is typically an organization and the relationship between buyer and seller is more ongoing.
The transactions are also usually larger in value and involve multiple players from both sides.
Here are the three primary differentiators between B2C and B2B eCommerce:
High-ticket transactions
Established businesses have the capital (and the motivation) to make larger investments than most consumers.
This means more revenue potential, but it often takes more time (and trust) to close deals.
That’s why B2B eCommerce requires a more meticulous approach to pricing, payment, and product delivery.
You’ll also want to focus on building relationships with customers through emails, blog posts, social media interactions, conferences, etc.
Multi-player negotiations
With B2B customers, you’re often dealing with multiple people from different departments within an organization. Compare this to a single individual making one-off purchases in a B2C setting.
The negotiation process for B2B customers is usually much more involved since it covers everything from technical specs and payment terms to customer service guarantees.
Ongoing relationship
In a B2C setting, the relationship with the customer is typically short-term and transactional. But in a B2B setting, the customer relationship is typically ongoing.
The seller needs to provide reliable support and services to maintain the relationship over time.
This could involve anything from software updates and upgrades to technical training or even consulting services.
Longer sales cycle
B2C eCommerce transactions are usually completed quickly, but B2B sales cycles can be much longer.
This is mainly because of the multiple players involved in each decision and the potential for legal contracts that need to be signed off on by all parties.
It also means that you’ll need to put more effort into creating a seamless customer experience, from lead generation to conversion.
Overall, B2B eCommerce is a great way to increase your revenue potential and build relationships with businesses.
But it does require a more strategic approach and longer sales cycles than B2C eCommerce.
Price flexibility
Lastly, while B2C eCommerce often has fixed prices, B2B eCommerce pricing, especially in service-based businesses, may change from client to client.
For example, a software development company may offer different contract lengths and services for each customer.
Many of these variables depend on how resource-intensive a particular client will be to serve and support.
Or, B2B wholesalers may offer discounts to customers who buy in bulk or commit to long-term relationships.
This can be a great way to maximize your profits and make sure you’re providing the best value for each customer.
The point is that B2B eCommerce pricing tends to be much more flexible than B2C, allowing businesses to optimize their prices for each individual customer.
What do all great B2B eCommerce businesses have in common?
While we’d love to provide a foolproof, step-by-step guide to starting each kind of eCommerce business on this list, that goes well beyond the scope of this blog post.
What we can do is examine the fundamental components of successful B2B eCommerce businesses and try to deduce what qualities they all share.
That way, you can have a list of things you know you ought to do if you’re going to be successful in B2B eCommerce.
Let’s examine some of those attributes now. Here’s what all great B2B eCommerce businesses have, regardless of their particular business model.
Excellent product-market fit
Product-market fit is the foundation of any successful eCommerce business.
In B2B eCommerce, product-market fit is all about finding the right balance between what you can offer and what your customers need.
This is the first attribute on this list because businesses simply won’t succeed without it. The great thing about product-market fit is that it can be massaged and shifted over time, especially when informed by customer feedback.
For example, let’s say you decide to package your expertise in small business accounting and sell it in the form of an eBook.
You could spend a few months writing and editing, hire out a designer, and create the perfect eBook.
Or, you could survey your ideal customers (Facebook groups, subreddits, and Quora threads are best for this) and figure out if an eBook is something they’d really want.
As a result of your research, you might confirm your hypothesis or disprove it altogether (turns out small business owners prefer video courses to eBooks).
Or, you may find out that the people you thought were your target customers don’t actually need your product at all.
This entire process is tough, and can often lead to disappointment, but it will save you so much grief (and money) in the future.
B2B business owner and SaaS founder Simon Høiberg said that he doesn’t try to validate his business idea, but actively tries to invalidate it.
Why? Because if he fails to invalidate it, product-market fit is practically guaranteed, and he’s got a much higher likelihood of success.
Omnichannel presence
It’s not enough to spin up a website, pump out two blog posts per month, call it “content marketing,” then expect to be successful.
Great B2B businesses have to be everywhere their customers are.
We call this having an “omnichannel presence.”
This means at the very least, you should have a search-optimized website, social media accounts, a blog, and an email list.
But that’s just the beginning.
You should also explore channels like Quora, Reddit, YouTube, PPC ads, forums related to your industry, and even offline channels like conferences, trade shows, and meetups.
Being everywhere means you’ll never miss an opportunity to acquire new customers or deepen relationships with existing ones.
We get it: this is a lot of work – potentially enough to fill several full-time jobs.
Here’s our advice: start small with a few “keystone” channels and build up from there.
For example, you know you need a website, so start there. Then, once your website is established, start producing regular written content on your blog.
This content should be based on the things that interest your target audience.
For example, if you’re wholesaling pet supplies to small businesses, start writing about pet care tips, pet health advice, and other topics related to the industry.
Make sure each blog post has an email opt-in form for readers to sign up for your email list or get your weekly newsletter.
(You can set this up for free using a platform like MailChimp.)
The great thing about starting with the written word is that it can be repurposed into almost every other type of content.
If it resonates with your audience, turn it into a YouTube short that you film with your phone and upload to your YouTube channel (no fancy equipment needed).
Or, turn it into a Twitter thread, LinkedIn post, or Facebook post, linking out to the full blog post for those who want to read more.
We’ll talk more about these channels in the following sections on how to market your B2B eCommerce business.
Unique pricing models and several pricing options
B2B pricing models can be incredibly complex, but they all have one thing in common: they need to provide some kind of value to the customer.
Whether it’s offering discounts for bulk orders or providing a subscription model with built-in support and training, your pricing should be unique to you and tailored to meet each customer’s individual needs.
Here are some typical B2B eCommerce pricing models:
- Per-usage: Customers are charged for the amount of product or service they consume.
- Subscription-based: Customers pay a recurring fee, usually on a monthly or annual basis.
- Flat rate: A fixed price is offered for specific products or services that don’t change over time.
- Tiered pricing: Prices vary based on the volume of purchase.
- Pay-as-you-go: Customers only pay for what they use, and have no upfront or ongoing costs.
Confused about which pricing mode to choose? Here’s a not-so-secret trick.
Find 5-7 competitors or similar businesses in your space and study how they set up their pricing.
Open up a document or grab a pen and jot down all the similarities you see in how they both structure and present their pricing.
Emulating this in your own business is likely the best place for you to start. Then, as you learn more about your specific customers, you can iterate on your pricing strategy as needed.
Intentional audience
Successful B2B eCommerce businesses are constantly building an audience. Why? Well, there are a few reasons:
- As mentioned above, B2B businesses are most successful when they nurture long-term relationships with customers that result in repeat business
- B2B business cycles often take a long time and require prospects to be “nurtured” through the funnel through trust-building content and touchpoints. This is best done through audience-building tactics on email and social media.
- An audience also provides you with valuable insights into your customer, so you can make better decisions about how to craft your products and services.
When it comes to audience-building, we’ll never tell you not to leverage tools like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube.
But we will caution you not to build your audience on those channels alone. You should always be funneling those folks to your email list.
Here’s why: at any moment, a single algorithm change or policy update can take away your ability to reach those audiences through organic means.
But with an email list, you own the subscribers and don’t have to worry about having the rug pulled out from under you.
This isn’t to say that social media doesn’t serve a purpose for B2B eCommerce businesses—it does.
But it’s important to remember that it should always be supplemental to your email list.
Here’s the bottom line: having an intentional and well-crafted audience will help you build relationships with prospects, gain valuable insights into customer behavior, and ultimately drive more sales for your business.
Customer segmentation
The best B2B eCommerce businesses know that different types of customers resonate with different messaging.
Segmenting your customers—or breaking them into groups based on shared traits, such as purchase history, interests, and location—allows you to customize your marketing strategy accordingly.
For example, if you’re selling office supplies, a customer segment might include those who have purchased notebooks in the past versus those who have exclusively bought paper products.
Some common ways to segment your customers include:
- Age ranges
- Industries
- Job titles
- Buying habits
- Demographics (gender, location, etc.)
- Income levels
Segmentation is a bit like cleaning your room.
If you segment as you go, the job is much more manageable.
As customers start coming into your CRM or marketing automation software, you’ll begin to notice trends and logical categories, which you can use to segment customers and deliver marketing messaging accordingly.
If you wait to segment your customers until you have a massive database of leads, it’s a bit like waiting until your room is an absolute disaster before cleaning it.
It’s certainly possible, it’s just going to be a much more daunting job.
Clear value proposition
Having a clear value proposition (sometimes known as a unique selling proposition, or USP) is a great idea for any business, but it’s essential for B2B eCommerce.
A unique selling proposition is simply a statement that outlines why customers should do business with you.
At its core, it should communicate how you’re different from your competition.
For example, Amazon’s USP is “the world’s largest online store.” This statement communicates the sheer size and scale of their offering in just a few words.
When crafting a USP, be sure to include information on your menu of products and services, customer service policies, payment options, loyalty programs, and any other unique features that would make a customer choose you over the competition.
Having a clear value proposition will help you stand out from the competition and make it easier for prospects to understand why your eCommerce business is the right choice for them.
The great thing about dialing in your USP is that it acts as a North Star for the rest of your messaging and copy.
For example, Loom is a company that sells video messaging software to both individual consumers and businesses. They have the following value proposition:
“We are on a mission to empower everyone at work to communicate more effectively, wherever they are.”
It’s simple, but it encapsulates why they’re so great at what they do and implicitly alludes to the features of their software (asynchronous video communication and browser-based video messaging).
Robust supply chain management
For B2B eCommerce businesses that deal with physical goods, supply chain management is a key component of success.
The goal of supply chain management is to ensure that the right products are delivered to customers at the right time and with minimal cost.
This includes everything from sourcing raw materials, storing inventory, manufacturing and assembly, order fulfillment, delivery, and after-sales support.
A well-functioning supply chain is essential for any B2B eCommerce business, as it can result in better customer satisfaction and higher profits.
To ensure your supply chain runs smoothly, consider automating processes wherever possible and using a dedicated inventory management platform like SkuVault to track inventory levels and orders.
Strong customer service
A big part of nurturing and maintaining long-term customer relationships is keeping them happy with your product or service.
With B2C eCommerce, customer service is often as simple as facilitating returns and refunds every once in a while. This is due to the short-term relational cycle of most B2C businesses.
In contrast, B2B eCommerce requires a longer-term customer service strategy. Here, your goal is to build strong relationships with customers by providing exceptional service and support long after the sale is completed.
To do this, consider providing resources such as FAQs and tutorials, live chat support, technical documentation, and even a dedicated account manager to handle questions and requests.
By providing top-notch customer service, you’ll create a positive reputation that will keep customers coming back to do business with your B2B eCommerce store in the future.
B2B eCommerce marketing strategies
Alright, we need to talk about a hard truth before we move on to the next section.
Here it is: nobody cares about your business.
Nobody owes you sales, traffic, or leads. In fact, most B2B businesses spend just as much time developing their product or service offering as they do marketing that offering.
This is especially true if you don’t have an audience and you’re starting from scratch.
We don’t say this to be unnecessarily harsh, we just want you to go into this business with both eyes open and have the greatest chance of success. We warn because we care!
But on the flip side, there has truly never been a better time to start an eCommerce business. The number of free tools and software available is truly unbelievable.
You have the potential to reach untold masses across the globe — if you’re willing to put in the work.
In this section, we’ll go over some of the ways to achieve that “omnichannel presence” we talked about in a previous section and get your business in front of paying customers.
Content marketing
Content is king when it comes to B2B eCommerce. Why? Because you need to establish yourself as an authority in your industry in order to be taken seriously by potential customers.
Content marketing is a great way to do this. This includes blogging, podcasting, video creation, and any other form of publishable media.
As long as it’s quality content geared towards your target audience, it can be considered content marketing.
As mentioned above, starting with a website, an email list, and keyword-targeted content is really the foundation of any digital marketing strategy.
In our opinion, this should come before any social media marketing or paid advertising. Not only because it costs very little, but also serves as the foundation for what you actually post on social media.
Social media marketing
We won’t dive into the nitty-gritty of social media marketing here, as each platform has its own best practices and recommended content types.
But as a refresher, here are the basics:
Step 1: Find out where your target audience is (Facebook? Instagram? LinkedIn?) and create content tailored specifically for them.
Step 2: Use your blog posts and content created in the previous section as the basis for your content creation.
Step 3: Create content that’s suited to each social media platform. This is a mistake we see tons of businesses making. Don’t post LinkedIn-style content on Instagram (or vice versa).
Each social media platform has its own “language.” Instagram is all about vertically-recorded videos (YouTube shorts are the same).
LinkedIn mostly features 150 to 200-word posts on corporate culture, marketing, or subject matter expertise. These posts are often supplemented by a graphic or video, hashtags, and tagging of relevant professionals in the poster’s network.
And you don’t need to be an expert in social media marketing to understand this. All you need to do is follow 5-7 of your competitors (or businesses in your industry) on these platforms and study how they do social media.
Pro-tip: for even more streamlined social media content, try encouraging your customers to post their experiences with your brand on social media.
You can then repurpose their video/images/posts as UGC (user-generated content), which is extremely popular right now.
Many massive companies are running ads by simply promoting UGC. This is not only extremely inexpensive, but essentially outsources content creation to your audience (while also providing valuable social proof).
Email marketing
Email marketing is often overlooked when it comes to B2B eCommerce, but it’s still one of the best ways to reach your customers.
With email marketing, you can build relationships with your clients and customers over time.
You will also be able to remind them of their past purchases, send promotional offers and discounts, as well as keep them up to date about any changes or new products/services that you have added.
Email marketing is also great for segmenting your customers and sending them targeted messages based on their purchase history and interests. This allows you to create highly personalized emails that will help increase engagement rates.
Finally, email marketing can be automated so it requires minimal effort on your part. All you need to do is set up a few campaigns and let them run in the background.
Influencer marketing
Influencers are social media personalities and celebrities who have a large following and their own personal brand.
They have the power to sway public opinion, so partnering with an influencer can be a great way to get your business in front of more people and gain the trust of potential customers.
We wrote a whole guide to influencer marketing here.
The key is to find influencers that speak to the people you want to reach.
Mastering these four marketing strategies will get you a long way, but if you want even more ideas, check out our comprehensive post of 41 Best Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website.
Tracking your growth: KPIs and how to measure them
So now that you’re well-equipped with marketing strategies and tactics, how do you actually measure their efficacy?
How can you be confident that all the effort and money you’re putting into marketing is actually resulting in a positive ROI?
There are two types of metrics to be aware of in B2B eCommerce: KPIs and vanity metrics.
KPIs are key performance indicators – metrics that actually measure the success of your campaigns.
Examples include:
- Visitor conversion rate
- Revenue per visitor
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
Vanity metrics are more superficial numbers like likes, shares, and page views. Vanity metrics are important to track but they don’t necessarily help you determine if your campaigns are working or not.
Many businesses fall into the trap of thinking that just because users share a social media post or an email has a high open rate, that channel has a high ROI.
These things may lead to KPI growth, but until they do, they’re just vanity metrics.
And while they may look impressive charted on a graph, they’re not actually contributing to your bottom line.
In other words, feel free to track vanity metrics, just don’t be fooled into thinking they’re actually resulting in real organizational growth.
B2B eCommerce technology tools
Running a smooth and streamlined business on the internet requires at least half a dozen software platforms.
As your business scales up, so will the complexity of your “tech stack.” Here are some of our recommendations for excellent B2B eCommerce software:
eCommerce platforms
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- BigCommerce
Shopping cart abandonment recovery software
- BounceX
- Rejoiner
CRM software
- Salesforce
- HubSpot
Payment processing
- Stripe
- PayPal
Inventory management
- SkuVault
- Linnworks
Business intelligence and analytics
- Tableau
- Google Analytics
Social media marketing
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
Email marketing
- MailChimp
- ActiveCampaign
- ConvertKit
If you’re just getting started, don’t worry about investing in all of this software right away. Start with the basics – like a shopping cart and payment processor – and add more tools as your business grows.
Once you have a good understanding of what each type of tool does, you can start to customize your stack to fit the needs of your business.
FAQs about B2B eCommerce business
Q. What are the most important things to consider when starting a B2B eCommerce business?
- When starting a B2B eCommerce business the most important things to consider are:
- Having a solid product-market fit
- Understanding the pain points of your target customer
- Having the right technology and tools
- Creating a value proposition that resonates with your buyers
- Using data and analytics for informed decision-making
Q. What are the best ways to drive traffic to a B2B eCommerce website?
The best ways to drive traffic to a B2B eCommerce website include:
- Using SEO best practices
- Creating content to educate and inform buyers
- Using digital advertising platforms
- Investing in influencer marketing
- Executing email marketing campaigns
Q. How do you measure the success of a B2B eCommerce business?
In order to measure the success of a B2B eCommerce business, you should track key performance indicators such as visitor conversion rate, revenue per visitor, average order value and customer lifetime value.
You should also be aware of vanity metrics that look good on a chart but don’t necessarily result in meaningful business growth.
These are just some of the questions you should consider when starting a B2B eCommerce business.
Final thoughts
Starting a B2B eCommerce business can be an intimidating process, but with the right knowledge and tools it doesn’t have to be.
We’ve provided key insights into the fundamentals, including product-market fit, understanding customer pain points, value propositions that resonate with buyers, and using data analytics for informed decision making.
Additionally, we’ve discussed best practices for driving traffic to your website as well as how to measure success through KPIs and vanity metrics.
With this information in hand, you’re now equipped to launch or refine your own successful B2B eCommerce business.
Good luck, and thanks for reading!
