From B2B to being Omnipresent

Now more than ever, businesses should be exploring all routes to market to keep up with consumers changing shopping habits and behaviour. Sticking rigidly to your traditional lane could lead to missed opportunities for growth and untapped brand ambassadorship waiting to be harvested.

The B2B model provides a brand with scale at speed allowing it to quickly infiltrate the market with lower acquisition costs to gain market share than a direct model and the ability to leverage exposure and reach from the B2B partners’ pre-established network. Whilst all at a lower margin than direct B2C, the business benefits from a quicker route to market and profit in absolute terms tends be significantly higher than direct retail.

Nevertheless, the growth that a B2B or indeed any brand may experience at the start of its cycle, invariably slows and matures at some point with a steady stream of new clients gently buoying the business. But where next, when the hot, new kid on the block is gobbling up your trusted B2B market share or, dare I utter the ‘C’ word, a pandemic sweeps the globe impacting your B2B presence?

Experience shows us that the winners are the ones with a cohesive omnichannel approach that let consumers shop and experience the brand in many different ways. Often, the actual reluctance to venture into this direct territory is through the fear of luddism from B2B clients, unaligned internal goals between departments, waiting for competitors to go first or simply a lack of faith that adding channels will grow the pie.

When a predominantly B2B business does choose to embrace direct channels, such as its own retail presence or, more likely in the current climate, ecommerce, it should do so with conviction or not at all. The risk with many businesses is that they hesitantly dip their toe in the water, pull back, then try again a few more times. This in, out, in, out, shake it all about dance should be left firmly at the children’s party.

Here’s our take on how to do it the right way.

Arch-rivals versus Overarching Strategy

Direct channels like ecommerce sites need not rival your B2B business. A carefully planned, overarching strategy that brings all strands of your business together will always lead to a stronger brand proposition than disparate channels competing and conflicting in purpose from one another.

The end consumer, regardless of B2B or direct to consumer businesses, drives brand demand. No B2B partner will stock a brand that consumers are disinterested in, so ensure your brand purpose extends to and encompasses this end audience too.

We often explain to our clients that consumers are brand loyal not channel loyal so don’t force consumers to shop in a way that helps your own internal short-term objectives.

After all, offering customers a choice of where to shop enhances their opinion of your brand. From a sales perspective, the instant call to action from digital marketing initiatives and social platforms to brand websites also means that there is no attrition along the way as there might be en-route to the B2B channel.

More than just a sales channel however, an ecommerce site is your window to the world. It can become a showcase for your brand. Bells, whistles in the form of functionality and service will create a positive brand experience to drive brand loyalty. Now more than ever, tools such as virtual consultations for spa brands and AR tools to test products on your own face for make up brands allow brands to start a direct conversation and build loyalty and brand ambassadorship amongst your end consumer. Throw in a healthy dose of digital marketing initiatives and social support and you can directly measure what drives your customer, who they aspire to be like and what converts them to purchase. The ability to capture this valuable, actionable data about your customer is knowledge that B2B partners often do not or cannot share with you. One client of ours was recently offered this customer data from one of their B2B partners at the cost of several thousands of pounds. Utilising this data was in the interest of both parties, yet the partner saw this as a sideline business instead! Start collecting your own data or risk being left out in the cold should the B2B relationship come to an end.

Mitigation

Adding direct B2C channels does not damage B2B growth, but in fact builds awareness and loyal customers that happily move back and forth in the channels. This is particularly true of industries where B2B channels offer a mix of service and product elements that cannot be easily replicated in B2C channels such as in the interior design or spa industry.

Nevertheless, showing willing goes a long way in traditional industries and can help calm stormy waters with B2B clients so that you can execute your new direct strategy peacefully and unencumbered.

The basic premise is to up the ante in support terms for your B2B clients to drive brand growth. Think about whether you are doing enough to support their business needs and drive footfall to their locations.

• Are you rewarding success?

• Have you provided the tools and training for them to drive your brand forward?

• Have you created a programme of extra benefits for your top tier of clients?

• Do you have nursery programmes in place to nurture and develop new doors to build your brand?

All of this can be addressed with a structured CRM programme that starts at prospecting and continues through the lifetime of the client relationship. This, in fact, can avoid much of the luddism in the first place. Thriving businesses are less likely to react strongly to your channel extensions.

Learn to separate ‘noise’ from actual impact on business. Remember, if consumers still want your brand, then B2B partners will continue to stock it. So focus on brand building, not channel building. Think of the long game.

Execution

Spend 6 to 12 months prior to your direct channel launch building a 360 CRM programme to support your B2B clients to grow your brand while simultaneously lining up your consumer press, (virtual) events and social campaigns to create awareness and excitement for your brand amongst consumers. Note to self: business owners are also consumers. Creating awareness for your brand will create demand in all channels which in turn will make new B2B door openings rise. Essentially, you are creating a circle that adds value at each stage.

Follow Through

This awareness circle will take time to build, but crucially requires holding your nerve. Do not give up and chop and change strategies or you risk losing all the hard earned momentum you’ve gained and will have to start again from scratch. Short term and often panic based strategies rarely work, so resist this urge even if your private equity investors are pushing for instant remedies. Patient capital investors, for this reason, tend to reap higher rewards.

Two-pronged Approach

Building your brand from both sides, namely presence in B2B and B2C channels means that you can support your clients with consumer demand. It is not solely left up to B2B clients to ‘sell’ your brand to consumers. The end consumer is in fact walking into their outlet because it stocks your brand, so the hard work is half done already.

This is a tested strategy that works by building awareness from all available quarters but cannot be combined with short term goals with conflicting strategies. It is a medium term option and must be treated as such. Once in place however, the potential for continued automatic growth will be worth all the pain.