As an entrepreneur, you know how competitive business is. To compete in a world of ever-changing trends, it’s important to keep up with both technical and consumer trends. Here are four ways B2Bs compete in a changing marketplace.

Capturing the Younger Customers

Older B2B leaders remember how business was conducted before the internet. For younger entrepreneurs, especially in technical and start-up environments, the internet is indispensable to everything they do. At a time when CEOs and business owners are getting younger, it’s necessary to understand what they do differently in order to capture their attention and their business.

Here are a few things to consider when marketing to younger business decision makers.

  • They sleep later. Generally, younger leaders don’t start their days early. Keep this in mind when you’re trying to make new contacts and generate leads. Afternoon is probably the best time to reach out to them.
  • They don’t like meetings. Younger CEOs tend to work fewer hours, so when they do work, they make it productive. Avoid calling and asking for a meeting during their work hours. Look for more creative ways to get a piece of their time. Join them at a coffee shop before work, or offer to bring lunch to their office and chat over a sandwich.
  • They are always “connected.” While they may spend fewer hours at a desk in an office, they are always online. They check and send emails throughout the day and night.
  • Keep up with Social Media. Follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Get an idea about what they think about the day’s business or global news. Help them find you by leveraging social media to build your brand and presence.

Going Green

More people are adopting a green lifestyle. Thus, more businesses are marketing to the green consumer. Those businesses are looking for B2B partners who embrace the same green ideal in products and services.

Once, larger corporations held the bragging rights to sustainability and green initiatives. However, sustainability is not limited to these corporations as small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) gain the upper hand by focusing on sustainable products and materials, energy efficacy, and recyclability.

Your claims of sustainability must be backed by substance, measures, and awareness. According to Small Business Trends, when it comes to tapping new consumers in an already crowded green market, “The answer may lie in supplying consumers with details—and authenticity.” It’s not enough to claim to be green anymore; you must help the customer understand what making eco-friendly choices means for them and their customers.

Leading with e-commerce

The popularity of B2C e-commerce spills over to B2B. The ease of ordering and paying for products or services online, any time of day, drives the paradigm change for B2B transactions.

Unlike B2C ecommerce, B2B transactions are more complicated. Prices are highly variable with more complicated shipping requirements, and more complex tax and regulatory impediments. To meet the demands of B2B ecommerce, there are multiple solution software applications available to facilitate your ecommerce needs. When looking for the right application for your business, be sure to consider the three categories of B2B ecommerce products:

Volume Products

Ease of ordering is the goal of volume-products ecommerce. The idea is to make ordering lower priced items easier with the fewest clicks from any place at any time.

Subscription Products

More and more, products are offered as a service and are purchased on a recurring basis. While purchasing plans can vary, it’s common to see subscriptions set up on monthly or yearly recurring basis for the duration of a contract. Instead of purchasing and checking out products as needed, customers sign up for routine services or product delivery.

Configuration Products

Configuration products are numerous. They include manufacturing equipment, medical devices, telecommunication and networking products. Most often these products are sold in custom bundles at a high price. Customers typically want a quote before purchasing. Many ecommerce software applications have built in quote-to-purchase options.

Companies investing in ecommerce are rapidly gaining the competitive edge. By failing to move into digital commerce, companies lose customers, struggle to compete, and see their margins shrink. Failing to invest in a B2B ecommerce platform is a costly mistake in 2021.

Investing in Business Intelligence

Trends attract a crowd. As Business Intelligence (BI) firms emerge, some of the most profitable businesses in the last 20 years—startups and established companies—are embracing the BI movement in great numbers. A digital BI platform collects meaningful information and displays it for easy analysis for business purposes.

BI can handle large amounts of information to help identify and develop new opportunities. Making use of new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy can provide a competitive market advantage and long-term stability.

Learn more about the top BI software, applications and platforms and how they can help your B2B grow. As your business grows, let Allied Financial Corporation help with your financial needs.