Maintaining a consistent flow of sales is indeed crucial for success in the competitive B2B world.
With an enterprise brand it becomes even more crucial to offer a perennial flow of orders for all your sellers and distributors.
Slack and dry sales periods can be quite challenging to navigate, often requiring innovative strategies and the right timing to overcome.
Need a plan to end the sales drought?
Look no further!
We bring you some insider secrets and battle-tested strategies to keep the cash counter ringing on your B2B marketplace website.
Let us get started by analysing what’s happening in the digital B2B realm.
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B2B Ecommerce Market: Insights and Market Trends
Online buying across business models has evolved rapidly in the post-pandemic world. B2B buyers are now adopting online as their primary channel to search, interact, and buy goods and services.
Here is how buyers interact with enterprise B2B brands:
- 74% of B2B buyers feel buying from a B2B website is easier than buying offline
- 80% of interactions to happen online between buyers and sellers by 2025
- 74% of B2B buyers would switch suppliers if another B2B marketplace offered a better experience
- 91% of the B2B searches are carried out on mobile devices
- 80% of the B2B buyers say they are more likely to engage with a brand that offers a personalized experience
Source: Linkedin, Mckinsey, Statista
When you build a B2B marketplace, understand that your B2B buyers are all in for self-service models and look for a B2C-like shopping experience. You can start by putting your customers’ needs and interests in the front seat and you can draft a winning strategy for your B2B business.
And a customer centric brand not only gets regular orders but has tremendous scope to accelerate sales through cross-selling.
We are sure you might have used this winsome strategy at some point, but we are now going to give you a thorough walkthrough of B2B cross-selling and how it can amp up your marketing game.
Let us begin by understanding the concept first.
What is B2B cross-selling?
B2B cross-selling is a sales technique where the B2B seller or distributor encourages customers to make additional or complementary purchases of products related to their original purchase. The goal here is to boost the ticket size by offering relevant products.
For example: Say a customer enquiries for bulk t shirts, now while you accept his RFQ, you can also pitch buyers with other garments like shorts, jeans or shirts. You can thus cross sell and promote inventories of other sellers related to the order enquiry already being processed.
Paving the way to B2B Marketplace Success With Cross Selling
Well, customers browsing the site, adding the products to the cart, and still not going through with the purchase have become a common sight today.
Wonder why?
For a myriad of reasons. Starting with no discounts available, comparing prices with competitors, delayed deliveries, lack of personalization, to much more.
Wonder how to convert these incomplete purchases into sales?
How about retargeting your customers via B2B cross selling?
Yes, you can cross-sell your products by suggesting an additional product to the customer in multiple ways and at various stages of their shopping journey. And the benefits?
- It helps boost customer retention
- It boosts the average value per order
- It improves customer loyalty
But how do you implement cross-selling on your B2B marketplace?
Let’s find out.
10 Battle-tested strategies to drive sales on your B2B marketplace via cross-selling
To help you attract customers and drive sales on your B2B marketplace via cross-selling, we bring to you 10 strategies that if implemented well can work wonders.
Bulk discount
Well, discounts have been the best-selling strategy for years. And this holds true even for the B2B set up.
If you have been struggling to push your vendors and products, bulk discounts and offers can do the trick for you. Giving some additional discount to customers who purchase high volume products from you can push better conversions and repeat buys.
Won’t be an exaggeration to say that perennial good sales can be ensured by offering platform-wide bulk discounts to your B2B buyers.
For example: You can offer a 10% additional discount to customers who book 50+ t-shirts from your clothing B2B marketplace.
Bundle deals
B2B cross selling is all about promoting one product with another. How about offering complementary deals from different sellers in one package? Sounds interesting, right? As your customer goes on to purchase a product from one seller, you can offer a bundle deal or additional discount if they club their purchase with a complementary product from another seller.
For example: You can club your t-shirt seller with a seller who offers lowers or pants for a bundle deal. And when bought together, your customer can avail of special discounts.
Personalized recommendations
Every B2B buyer now expects to get a personalized shopping journey on wholesale marketplaces. By offering personalized recommendations, you can sub-consciously engage your buyers in B2B cross-selling fostering customer loyalty in the process. Yes, you can use customer buying trends and other relevant data to push items related to your customer’s search.
For example: If a customer is interested in buying chairs for their parlor setup, you can offer them other parlor amenities like manicure/pedicure chairs, hair styling products, etc.
Loyalty discounts
Well, even B2B customers love discounts. Offering loyalty discounts to your regular customer as you build a B2B marketplace is a sure-shot way of driving sales on your marketplace. Offering exclusive discounts on other products or perks to loyal customers also ensures that they keep coming back to your marketplace. A simple, yet effective way to drive sales.
For example: The 15% discount you offer on the first purchase can be availed on the next order within a month.
Loyalty credit
Did you know you can go for B2B cross-selling by offering loyalty credits? And of course, who doesn’t like some extra discounts, right? You can boost conversions by offering loyalty credits to your B2B buyers on each purchase which can be redeemed when they buy from the same seller again. This trick will not only boost conversions but also strengthen the buyer-seller relationship, driving your customers back for more.
For example: Brands can offer their customers loyalty credits which can be encashed during the next purchase cycle.
Extended services or warranty
You can provide extended warranties or offer other services to keep your customers satisfied and hooked to your business as you build a B2B marketplace. It instills confidence in your customers about your brand thus driving sales and word of mouth publicity. Sweeten your deals with extended warranties and services while your sales skyrocket.
For example: You can offer 2 year free servicing and warranty to customers buying Air Conditioners in bulk.
Cross-sell at checkout
Cross-selling at checkout is a tactic used by brands across all industries. When customers make bulk orders in a B2B business set-up, they expect free delivery as part of the deal. You can push your customers to add more products in their carts in lieu of free shipping. You can strategically do B2B cross-selling by suggesting complementary or related items right at the checkout page with a message flashing “add more items to unlock free shipping”. And trust me, this works like a charm.
For example: if your B2B customer has placed a bulk order for shoes, you can boost the order volume by cross selling socks or other shoe enhancements to offer free shipping.
Email campaigns
Since all your customers are on mobile phones today, one easy to reach your B2B customers is their mailbox. Yes, dropping personalized mails with a bundled offer of related products can be your key to B2B cross selling success. You can tailor the message to suit the unique needs of your target audience.
For example: You can send out mailers with customized offers to your customers about office chairs and club them with other office necessities like coffee machine, water coolers, desktops, etc.
Paid ads on marketplace site
Cross-selling via paid ads is a strategic move. You can showcase a related product to the customer searching for their required products on your marketplace. Sounds complicated? Well, it's not. You just need to choose the right B2B marketplace platform that enables you to implement paid ads within your marketplace and target potential customers. Paid ads drive engagement, and conversions and boost sales growth.
For example: A customer who is searching for office chairs will also see ads for office printers and coffee machines that are related to the purchase.
Offer value-added services
Offering value-added services goes a long way. Yes, you can acquire more customers and drive sales on your B2B marketplace by offering value-added services to your customers. It can range from free shipping on bulk orders to additional discounts on immediate payments for buying more or for buying from bundle deals. Well, you can build a B2B marketplace with value-added services and boost your sales growth.
When you have the right tools and marketplace platform, B2B cross-selling becomes not only a sales booster but also a cornerstone of increased customer satisfaction. The challenge that comes along is finding the right B2B marketplace platform that will help you boost conversions and thrive in the competitive world.
What makes StoreHippo the best solutions to build a B2B marketplace
The StoreHippo B2B marketplace platform is designed to help you implement various cross-selling strategies hassle-free. It comes with built-in solutions that enable you to implement upselling, cross-selling and product bundling with much ease.
With the decoupled headless architecture, you can seamlessly build a B2B marketplace that is personalized and add multiple customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs. You can also seamlessly integrate with the best-in-breed software and solution providers with StoreHippo’s API-based architecture. The StoreHippo SaaS-based fully hosted and managed platform is built on MACH architecture that gives inherent flexibility and control to build tailor-made solutions for the unique needs of your B2B business.
With StoreHippo’s reporting and analytical tools, you can understand your buyer personas and choose the most befitting marketing approach for your B2B brand. You can easily send out personalized notifications to your customers to recover abandoned carts or to address price queries and convert potential customers as you build a B2B marketplace.
With the built-in tiered pricing from StoreHippo you can quickly implement and manage multi-pricing on your B2B marketplace. You can quickly set up multi-level prices like volume-based, rule-based, quantity-based, or customer-specific that helps engage better and attract more B2B buyers. The wishlist feature from StoreHippo helps customers create their wishlist and add products that interest them to check later.
StoreHippo’s plug-and-play solutions do not require additional plugins or paid extensions to run B2B marketplace. StoreHippo comes with 120+ integrations that help you make your own ecommerce environment. With a host of built-in marketing tools from StoreHippo, like a powerful discount engine, blog engine, SEO tools, etc, you can market your B2B brand to the right audience and cross-sell your products seamlessly.
If you worry about the security of your B2B marketplaces, StoreHippo has it covered as well. The PCI-DSS-compliant platform comes with a host of security features like authentication, authorization, and audit logs to ensure multi-level security of your platform. Also, the StoreHippo B2B marketplace platform comes with multilingual support, multi-currency payments, geo-location-based multiple storefronts, comprehensive multi-vendor solutions, etc. to make future-ready B2B online marketplaces that can drive sales both in domestic and international markets.
Conclusion
Driving sales on your business-to-business marketplace via B2B cross selling need meticulous planning and execution. You need the best B2B marketplace platform to stay ahead of the curve and effectively drive sales by implementing cross-selling strategies. It involves a complete step-by-step process right from analyzing customer behavior, identifying complementary products, and utilizing advanced platform features to implement those cross-selling strategies.
The best B2B marketplace platform StoreHippo offers a host of built-in B2B features like support for enterprise B2B marketplace websites and apps, seamless integrations, multi-vendor features, and 300+ enterprise-grade features to build, run, and drive sales on your B2B marketplace.
Are you all set to drive sales on your marketplace via B2B cross selling? Explore the B2B marketplace platform, StoreHippo, by starting your 14-day free trial now.
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