7 Tips to grow your B2B2C marketplace

With the changing business dynamics, gone are the days when B2B and B2C businesses used to stay in their own arenas.

Today the channels are merging and technology has given birth to different solutions. 

One of them is the B2B2C marketplace - the business-to-business-to-consumer set up! 

Well, the B2B2C ecommerce model helps businesses transcend crazy growth

Is it the same for you? Or are you struggling to keep up with the basic sales ratio? 

If so, it's time to revisit your growth strategies. 

Wondering what and how?

Let us first have a look at a few insights on B2B2C ecommerce solutions:

• 25.49% of enterprise brands have already shifted to a B2B2C model
• 39.22% of manufacturers are currently making efforts to adopt the B2B2C model
• 42.3% of brands’ second main sales channel was B2B2C

Source: Copperberg

More and more brands are adopting the B2B2C ecommerce model to keep up with the customers’ demands. The above data clearly shows that NOW is just the right time to take up new ventures for your ecommerce business that combines the goodness of both B2B and B2C models.

How B2B2C helps grow business 

The business-to-business-to-consumer model helps brands offer highly personalized and engaging user experiences by combining the elements of B2B and B2C business models. It differs from the traditional idea of selling. With the B2B2C ecommerce model, brands facilitate other businesses with the right technology and platforms to offer the products/services to the end customers simultaneously. 

Below are the reasons why customers engage well on the B2B2C platform:

• Provides a one-stop shop with a vast product catalouge 
• Offers a competitive pricing structure to compare with multiple sellers on the platform
• Provides an assured quality of products and services 
• Comes with a quick customer service model to help with grievances and complaints

With a strong B2B2C ecommerce strategy, brands can propel their business for greater success. The B2B2C ecosystem enables brands to reach an optimum level where the operational costs are at a minimum and the profits reach a maximum, the ultimate goal of any business. 

7 Tips to grow your B2B2C marketplace

To orchestrate a successful B2B2C marketplace can be a challenging task. However, by keeping up with winning strategies, brands can grow their ecommerce business and attract customers to their ecommerce platform.

Go for hyper-personalization

With more than 60% of the customers willing to do a repeat purchase if the brand offers a personalized shopping experience, you require personalization at all levels of operations. The hyper-personalization age has made it tough for brands to cater to the needs of diverse audience groups. Wondering how to go for personalizations on your B2B2C ecommerce platform?

The StoreHippo B2B2C software is built on a decoupled headless architecture that helps you implement multi-level personalizations. You can create multiple store-fronts for various locations or audiences. StoreHippo also helps to offer multi-level discounts with its powerful inbuilt discount engine. Brands can also customize their shipping solutions, logistics partners, digital payments etc to implement extreme personalization in your marketplace. With the go-global solutions from StoreHippo, you can also enable your global customers to purchase in their native currency and interact with them in their local language.

Chart an omnichannel strategy 

The market dynamics have brought tectonic shifts in the buying behaviour of customers across the ecommerce industry. Buyers even on B2B2C marketplaces prefer to connect on at least 4-5 different channels before making a purchase. The sure-shot way to grow your ecommerce business is to interact with your customers on all the channels loved by them and offer them a seamless buying journey on every platform. 

The StoreHippo ecommerce platform offers a ready-to-use omnichannel ecommerce solution to help you reach your customers on various platforms. With 300+ API points, brands can quickly add new customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs. The inherent flexibility from StoreHippo helps you create consistent buyer experiences across multiple channels. You can use the channel-specific insights from your B2B2C ecommerce platform to leverage data-driven strategies and grow your business. 

Provide a seamless user experience

A seamless and smooth user experience works towards building a conversion-oriented marketplace, which is essential for a successful ecommerce business. Customers come flocking to your brand as you offer convenience and simplicity along with easy navigation and smooth transactions. Prioritizing your customers is the surefire way to achieve increased loyalty, boost sales, and grow your B2B2C ecommerce business. 

Wondering what makes your website loved by your customers? We would say a simple user interface and easy navigation. The site performance and the page load speed should also not pose a hurdle in seamless shopping for your customers. Accessing your orders and transaction details, getting in touch with your customer service, etc should be easy and aligned toward quick conversions. StoreHippo B2B2C software comes with peak load tolerance even when your site scales to millions of users and products offering a smooth user experience. It offers guided navigation and faceted search for better conversions.

Leverage m-commerce

What’s one way to increase conversions? Well, just follow your customers. Be where they are, which translates into having a solid mobile commerce presence for your brand.  

Up to 80% of online orders happen through smartphones. If your B2B2C brand is not on mobile phones, you are certainly missing out. Customers today are inclined towards making a quick purchase on the go, and as you facilitate ease of shopping from anywhere at any time, you win. 

StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce solution is built on the mobile-first principle that offers a variety of mobile-ready solutions. You can build multiple B2B2C apps for different locations or audience-based stores. The inbuilt mobile apps builder helps you to build Android or iOS apps directly from the admin dashboard at zero additional costs. You can also enable your business partners to manage their business on the go with a variety of mobile apps for admins, vendors, etc. The stores built on StoreHippo are PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices. 

Market your brand to the end customers 

Marketing a B2B2C marketplace can be tough. Both B2B and B2C sales require different marketing strategies and approaches. The B2C ecommerce segment will require more real-time interactions, continuous offers, promotions etc to keep the flow of orders coming in. The B2B segment on the other hand looks at the parent brand for support with running, managing and growing the business. The parent brand has to cater to both audience segments and create policies and strategies that keep both the segments happy. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform comes with a multitude of in-built marketing tools to create strategies and promotions that work best for a B2B2C business model. You can send personalized notifications and emails, recover abandoned carts, offer personalized discounts and coupons, leverage SEO to rank higher on SERPS etc with StoreHippo’s gamut of tools and features. You can also create an astounding brand image for your ecommerce business with the in-built blog engine from StoreHippo B2B2C software. 

Scale the business on multiple fronts

To grow your business-to-business-to-consumer brand, you might also want to look at the growth of business verticals. Wondering how that helps your business grow? Well, suppose you are selling clothes and merchandise, you can expand your product line to fashion accessories and footwear to cover a wider audience base. To scale up your business and grow your customer base, you need to add more sellers or business partners on your B2B2C marketplace and need a platform that will support various business models like multi store, multi seller etc.

StoreHippo ecommerce platform offers a secure and inherently scalable cloud infrastructure that supports your business in its growth on various fronts. As you are able to scale your business to any number of users, products, pages, locations, or vendors, you know you are winning at the ecommerce game. StoreHippo also offers peak load tolerance and is designed to support the growth of your B2B2C business. 

Offer multi-channel customer support

Be it a B2B, B2C or B2B2C ecommerce customer, each of them wants their loved brands to be available for them and to understand their needs and grievances. The art of growing your business is synonymous with keeping your customers happy and satisfied. A multi-channel customer support that keeps a constant touch with the customers and attends to them helps you offer the best-in-class shopping experience. Also, for the B2B buyers, self-service and self-exploration is an added advantage.

StoreHippo B2B2C software helps brands connect with their customers on multiple platforms with the help of automated tools and features like abandoned carts, email notifications, SMS, push notifications, live chat, chatbot etc. You can also integrate with the customer service software of your own choice.    

Conclusion

The B2B2C business model has become the way forward for many enterprise brands in today’s economy. If you are willing to hack the growth of your B2B2C marketplace by expanding your prowess, you now have access to battle-tested tips and tricks. 

Brands however need access to robust, future-ready ecommerce platforms that help them aim for exceptional growth. StoreHippo comes with a 360-degree B2B2C ecommerce solution that offers enterprise-grade inbuilt features to align the strengths of both B2B and B2C models offering a rich customer experience. 

All set to grow your B2B2C ecommerce platform with StoreHippo? Explore the 300+ features by starting your 14-day free trial now.

FAQ 

1. Will I need third-party apps and software to run my B2B2C marketplace website seamlessly?

Depends on your choice of B2B2C software. As you choose StoreHippo to build your B2B2C marketplace, you do not need any additional plugins or paid apps and extensions to manage your business operations. StoreHippo is a fully hosted and managed ecommerce solution that comes with plug-and-play solutions to help you manage the complexities of B2B2C business like orders, deliveries, etc. You can, however, also integrate with multiple software of your choice with StoreHippo’s headless API structure. StoreHippo supports third-party software like CRM, ERP, analytics, accounting, etc. You can also integrate with different live chat and chatbots to offer a smooth customer support channel on your B2B2C ecommerce marketplace.

2. How much time will it take to build apps for my B2B2C marketplace website?

When you build your B2B2C marketplace website with StoreHippo, you can create Android or iOS apps quickly. Wonder how? StoreHippo is built on a mobile-first approach and comes with a built-in mobile app builder to help you create Android and iOS mobile apps. You can create B2B2C mobile apps from your admin dashboard at zero additional costs and without coding.  When you create an online store with StoreHippo, you also create PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices. StoreHippo also offers mobile solutions for different users of your B2B2C ecommerce business like admin, vendors, delivery boys etc. to help them handle their business on the go.   

3. Do B2B2C ecommerce platforms offer solutions to manage supply chain and logistics?

Some B2B2C ecommerce platforms offer and some don’t. The 360-degree ecommerce solution StoreHippo comes with pre-integrated solutions to help you manage your supply chain and logistics. StoreHippo comes with 30+ pre-integrated logistics solutions to help you create a streamlined supply chain for your B2B2C business. You can integrate with more than one logistic partner to also optimize your shipping costs. StoreHippo B2B2C software also offers a built-in delivery boy management system to help you manage your fleet of delivery boys and ensure error-free deliveries. 

4. Are there any free/built-in marketing tools offered by B2B2C ecommerce solutions?

Yes, when you choose StoreHippo B2B2C software to build and manage your business, you get access to a host of marketing tools. StoreHippo comes with a powerful built-in discount engine that helps implement multi-level discounts. You can recover abandoned carts using the PUSH notifications feature from StoreHippo and engage with your customers talking about the personalized discounts coupons. With the built-in comprehensive SEO engine, you can rank your B2B2C ecommerce business higher on SERPs. With StoreHippo, you can create unique URLs, meta descriptions, meta tags, etc. You can also publish personalized content using the built-in blog engine from StoreHippo. However, for your other marketing needs, you can also integrate with paid software of your choice. 

5. How can I manage data privacy and security in the B2B2C marketplace setup? 

StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce platform helps you maintain security in your marketplace. StoreHippo provides you access to high-end security measures to protect your customers’ data and other sensitive pieces of information. You can build PCI-DSS-compliant B2B2C ecommerce stores with StoreHippo in a few easy steps. It offers multi-level security features and tools like audit logs and free SSL certificates. StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with 60+ pre-integrated payment gateways that help you offer a secure and frictionless checkout process. 

6. Will it be possible to handle transactions in different countries and currencies on my B2B2C marketplace?

Yes, it’s possible. StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce solution helps you handle transactions in different countries and in multiple currencies seamlessly. StoreHippo comes with built-in global solutions that help you take your B2B2C business beyond borders. You can seamlessly integrate with StoreHippo’s 60+ pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways. You can integrate with more than one payment solution to offer your customers the option to pay in their preferred payment method like COD, net banking, digital wallet, UPI etc. The multi-currency support from StoreHippo helps your global customers make payments in their native currencies. You can enable IP-based auto switches or set different currencies for different locations. Your customers can also choose the currency of their choice while checking out from your B2B2C ecommerce marketplace.

7. Will my vendors receive support and training on how to use the B2B2C ecommerce platform?

StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce solution comes with an easy-to-use vendor dashboard that helps even novice sellers to easily sell on the ecommerce platform. With the comprehensive vendor dashboard from StoreHippo that offers a separate vendor account for each seller, it becomes easy for them to manage and perform their day-to-day business activities. Sellers can overview their order summary, sales report, etc in just a few clicks. However, StoreHippo enterprise marketplace builder offers a rich help center that comes with detailed answers to all your questions. You can refer to our rich help center that contains all the information you need about working with StoreHippo. 

8. Can we use our preferred analytics tools when we build a B2B2C marketplace website?

Yes, when you build a B2B2C marketplace website with StoreHippo, you can integrate with the tools and software of your own choice. StoreHippo is built on an API-based headless architecture that helps you integrate with multiple third-party tools like CRM, ERP, analytics, etc. However, StoreHippo comes with a gamut of analytics tools and solutions to help you analyze your customer base and make data-driven strategies for your B2B2C enterprise marketplace. With StoreHippo B2B2C ecommerce solutions, you can also build custom landing pages and forms to capture rich customer data that helps you make strategic decisions. 

9. Will it be possible for my vendors to set their prices on the B2B2C ecommerce marketplace?

Yes, your vendors on the B2B2C ecommerce marketplace can seamlessly set their prices when you build your marketplace with StoreHippo ecommerce solutions. The inbuilt tiered pricing from StoreHippo helps you implement and manage multi-pricing on your marketplace. Your vendors can quickly set up multi-level prices like volume-based pricing, rule-based prices, min-max quantity-based pricing, customer segment, or customer-specific pricing to attract and engage with customers from various segments.  

10. Will our data be safe and secure when we build our marketplace website using B2B2C software?

Yes. When you build your marketplace using StoreHippo B2B2C software, you can secure all your business data. The robust multi-layer security from StoreHippo comes with an SSL certificate and highly secured payment gateways. You also get a free SSL certificate directly from the StoreHippo admin. As you build your B2B2C ecommerce website on the  PCI DSS compliant ecommerce platform, you can ensure payment safety and protect sensitive information like passwords, customer details, etc. seamlessly with StoreHippo.