OmniKick Blog

E-commerce runs a fierce competition around the world today. And the chances to get success also are increasing each year.

According to Shopify, global retail eCommerce sales will reach $4.5 trillion by 2021.

Source:Shopify

In B2C eCommerce, it’s more intense. Business owners directly interact with consumers to get sales through the Internet.

For a B2C company, you don’t need a bucket full of different products on your list.

American food brand Chobani shows that. How?

They just take different types of delightful pictures of a single product (Specially Yogurt). And run their marketing campaign through them.

Look at their Instagram photos-

It’s inevitable. You need to follow a handful of practical strategies to get the shore of sustainability.

My discussion will provide you a clear understanding of B2C eCommerce, the difference of B2C than another significant eCommerce model, help you to make a perfect plan to build a successful conversion.

The topics you will get to know-

• What is B2C eCommerce?
• What are the differences between B2B and B2C?
• Get an understanding of the B2C customers
• What strategies do you need to get succeed in B2C eCommerce?

Let’s get on the train.

What is B2C eCommerce?

Investopedia defines B2C like this- “Business to consumer (B2C) is business or transactions conducted directly between a company and consumers who are the end-users of its products or services.”

According to Insight soft, B2C eCommerce or electronic commerce is used to describe a transaction conducted over the Internet between a business and a consumer for his/her personal use.

Now, you can see the diagram provided by tutorialspoint.

Source:tutorialspoint

They explain B2C eCommerce model as “a business website is a place where all the transactions take place directly between a business organization and consumers.”

So, you can see, B2C eCommerce is the way a business can reach its final consumers without the help of any third parties.

The B2C activities revolve around business owners website and their direct buyers.

It is one of the four categories of eCommerce. Other models are- B2B (business to business), C2B (customer to business, C2C (customer to customer).

B2C is the most familiar model to the users. And it’s immensely popular, growing further every day.

Before the world apprehended the rise of eCommerce from mid 90’s to 2000s, people usually tend to buy products physically. It’s like they go to a super shop, pick some packets of cookies and pay directly to the cash counter.

But today, as we see, customers seem not like to buy products physically; they prefer more to do it via the Internet.

You know the fact. In 2015, Amazon won over Wal-Mart as the most valuable retailers in the US by market capitalization.

Now for the next phase, I want to discuss the significance of B2C eCommerce than the others. It’s important.

But why it is important? Let’s find out.

What are the differences between B2C and B2B?

Before executing an effective strategic plan for your B2C eCommerce, you need to understand it in a broader sense.

In such point, it’s essential to know its differences from the other major eCommerce model B2B (business to business).

There are significant differences between B2C and B2B. See a simple example provided by The Balance.

“Consider this: My product is lotion.

My lotion will moisturize the skin and relieve itching skin.

If I have a B2B client, they will be most interested in the feature of the client, which is moisturizing the skin.

If I have a B2C client, they will be most interested in the benefit, which is relief of itching skin.

We will be most effective in marketing if we understand what both markets need to make a decision.”

Infographic by visual

How is B2B eCommerce work?

It usually works with marketing for a product to another business. Here, you cannot use any emotional tools rather than the logical impact of your product.

That means you get to fuel your marketing campaign within your products efficiently and how they are going to continue help the buyers.

Source:Intel

Using statistics and success ratio is more vital. See this advertisement of Intel. They use this innovative technique.

In B2C eCommerce, you need to make understand the customers that your product is going to help them than the others. You try to trigger their motivation to make sales.

Priceline.com is a travel organizer company. They triggered their customer’s interest using these types of advertisement in their website.

Get an understanding of the B2C customer

Reaching to the customer is your goal. Make them satisfied and evoke them to stay with your business should be the motto.

According to tweak your biz, there are four major factors you need to understand about a B2C customer.

Decision-making: B2C buyers take decisions to buy a product faster than the B2B.

How a B2C customer makes decisions?

Jessica Nussbaum (Global Alliances & Partnerships, Dun & Bradstreet) found that B2C customers are tending to get more personal while making a conversion.

Take a look at the table Jessica shared-

Priorities: Usually a consumer ask him/herself before buying that-

• Will I use it?
• Do I really want it?
• How will it help me?
• Will it last for as long as I need it?

As an eCommerce marketer, you need to analyze all of these questions.

For an excellent example, take a look at Sephora’s VIB program (Very Important Beauty) ad campaigns.

Source:emarsys

This advertisement triggers the customer by Sephora’s value-added VIB services within some free extra benefits.

Referrals: How rides sharing app Uber gets phenomenal success over 80 countries around the globe?

It’s they used referral programs cleverly that draw instant consumers attention.

Source:bizjournals

business2community said-

• The program for riders offers $ 20 to both the person who recommends the app to a friend and the person who sets up an Uber account following the invitation.
• Ubers rewards employees who refer the job to drivers with ridesharing experience with $ 500 in cash (and $ 100 for bringing new employees with no relevant experience).

It’s a behavioral approach; you need to understand your customers thinking process. Before you go for a strategy, learn how your customers act with referrals.

Cost: B2C customers usually want to pay comparatively reasonable price unit.

The primary intention is to buy a product instantly to measure its value.

So, to take positions in the market, you need to follow an appropriate pricing strategy. Get an idea about your target customer how much they able to pay.

Black curve sets three major challenges to understand B2C buyers costing psychology.

Challenge one

How well do you understand the market?

Challenge two

How well do you know your competitors?

Challenge three

Do you have an effective pricing strategy?

Your cost should be a motivator rather than increasing your bounce rate.

How are pricing triggered? See the image provided by Google.

Source:IPC Development

Your B2C customers act differently because of their online appearances also quite diversified than the others.

Chuck Cohn (a regular contributor from the Forbes) specified three major B2C consumer’s key. They are-

• B2C customer follows a shorter decision-making process
• B2C eCommerce involved a smaller number of stakeholders
• A shorter relationship with the business

You should care about your target consumer’s behavioral approach. You need to act on their preferences.

I think, now it’s time we can get through the strategic discussion about B2C eCommerce.

What strategies do you need to get success in B2C eCommerce?

As one of the fastest growing sectors like eCommerce, it always feels like a running field.

After taking decisions to participate, you do not find a room for just go on. Millions of competitors are roaming around, and everyone wants to reach the peak.

There are tons of plans you may find, a lot of success stories and use cases too. But to set up a successful B2C eCommerce strategy, you must have to consider some core factors like-

Source: Thecapgroup

B2C Content Marketing

According to Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

B2C content marketing is always a great way to win the bread for you. 86% of B2C marketers are using content marketing for generating leads and successful brand promotion.

But, repeatedly most of the company does the same mistakes. They published a lot of content every day on their site but cannot produce a great result.

Why is this happening?

Olga Rabo, a content marketer for Styla find out three major issues; you should care.

One

If you don’t know what to write about, you probably don’t know what you’re writing it for.

Two

If your content marketing isn’t working, you probably not doing it right.

Three

If you do have a strategy, but it’s not working, then what it needs is a reset.

So, considering these issues, you need to set your content marketing strategy with four key elements. They are-

• Product
• Place
• Price
• Promotion

Let me clear about these simple questions.

Why product-driven? You are doing content marketing for your B2C eCommrece product. So more you relevantly drive your content within your product clarifications, it will increase your chance of success.

See the example of the product driven sites example of Alibaba.

Are you considering User experience? Tailor your content that is more connective. More personal.

Design matters. It cast an impact on the user’s mind to value your content aka your product.

Do you know? How cloudsponge increase their conversion rates up to 33%?

Take a look at the images below that show you the before and after the status of cloudsponge’s landing page.

Before

After

You can see the change between the two designs. One is dull and non-communicative, has one call to action, carry no valid reasons why anyone should choose CloudSponge. But the new website lets visitors experience a demo that gives them reasons to try CloudSponge.

Why do you need to establish brand awareness? Vertical Measures claims that, For B2C content marketers, brand awareness is the top goal at 74%.

Source: CMI

You tell your story with your content. To do that, find out your customer’s goal. What do they want to gain? How much time are they spend on your website?

Tailor your content considering these options and issues.

Social Media Marketing

More active you are, more your B2C can make a connection with people. Use online social media platforms and go for sharing your products demo. It will help you to generate more leads, brand awareness, and sales.

Do you know? According to dream grow,

Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%).

71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.

2.56 billion global mobile social media users, equaling 34% penetration; globally with 1 million new active mobile social users added every day.

Today, social media marketing can be used as roaring strategies for B2C eCommerce. As we are on the side of statistics, who can avoid its domination over the people’s choice?

Source: SMM

To conducting a B2c social media marketing strategy, You need to follow these steps-

Show the most joyous characteristics of your product.

Talk about the things that add values to the customers. You should be precise and to the point. You can relate your product to social awareness.

Engage customers with contests. Social media contest always helps to connect you with more consumers.

For example, take the case for “Lay’s Do Us a Flavor” contest.

Frito-Lay’s launch this contest to their consumers who are eating their new flavored potato chips, and ask them to suggest new flavor. Winning money was $1 million.

B2C customers are getting more personal while making any conversion. And social media helps you to get in touch with them more closely.

And after the contest, three champions flavor added by Lay’s three new products. That ignites the real-time interest for the brand value of the Lay’s potato chips.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a prominent key to B2C eCommerce. Why SEO works? Because it’s initial customers are individual most of the times.

Source: unlitips

What is SEO’s goal in the B2C?  The environment usually works to generate an online sale in a single visit. Ideally, searchers find a high-ranking site in the search engine results and navigate quickly from the landing page through a prescribed channel, ultimately through the shopping cart and checkout process.

I want to mention some SEO Tips for B2C eCommerce that works.

Add meta description and tags that will help you to recognized by Google. This tip is the most primary things.

Use JavaScript to text links.

Write attractive and keyword friendly headlines. Suppose you write a great article. But fail to add attention grabbing headlines. How is this going to help you?

Come on; try to use funny and catchy headlines for your content.

Do you know? Today, page rank doesn’t matter anymore as it did a few years back. Google abandoned this ranking system and emphasize more on perfect keywords.

You need to write a keyword-friendly title tag. That works fine to initiate Google to recognize your site quickly.

Just remember this two precious points–

The first one, for a race with an unfathomable amount of competitors, SEO help your eCommerce site to float on this vast sea of Internet.

And secondly, everyone is using SEO as one of the primary strategies, so the process of doing it changes frequently. You have to cope up with these changes.

Paid search advertising

What is PPC (Paid Search Advertising)?

According to econsultancy ,

“Paid search marketing means you advertise within the sponsored listings of a search engine or a partner site by paying either each time your ad is clicked (pay-per-click – PPC) or less commonly, when your ad is displayed (cost-per-impression – CPM).”

What are the functions of Paid search advertising?

• You have to pay only when a user clicks on your ads
• Ads displayed at the top of the search engine result page
• It connects target customers with keyword
• Ads directly bring customer to the designated landing page

Source- Paid search advertising

Google Adwords or WordPress WordAds can be used for this. Paid search advertisement that functioned with paid per click (PPC).

Why is it necessary? From the field of action, it cost directly but helps your website to show on top of the search engine result page (SERP).

So, don’t worry about the cost, it’s a very effective B2C eCommerce strategy.

Email Marketing

Let’s take a look at the Wikipedia’s definition of Email marketing.

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

Email marketing can increase product engagement with the customers more efficiently. It catches the consumer’s mind as personally as anything can. People love to open their inbox to find something new.

According to study.com,

Business-to-consumer email marketing refers to communications from your brand or business directed to consumers. It differs from B2B, or business-to-business, email marketing that focuses on communications from one business to another.

How much success can you produce from email marketing in B2C eCommerce?

Campaign monitor claimed:

• Email marketing technology is used by 82% of B2B and B2C companies.
• 56% of companies currently use an email marketing provider and are 75% or more likely to be purchasers of marketing automation software over the next year.

To get a better result, you need to amplify your email marketing tactics.

• Create your email template short and to the point.
• Don’t make the reader bored rather than grabbing their attention by using proper words with fun.
• You can use funny and related images too.
• Try to ignite customers emotion

See what we get from hubspot. They use an example of email marketing campaign of charity: water

Source: charitywater

Loyalty and Reward-Giving Program

Shopify noted three benefits from loyalty and reward-giving program.

One.

It stewards relationships with existing customers

Two.

It helps increase sales

Three.

It attracts new customers

Source: Magneto

You do not just make friends in a desperate situation of life and pass them after you get over the troubles. If do this, you may end up like an unsocial person with no one come to care about.

In B2C eCommerce, why don’t you think that consumers are the key to increase your market value? After you complete conversion with a client, try to keep them for a future transaction.

In the long run, you can find many of the loyal customers, whose trust your service has earned you. Sometimes you need to evaluate them by giving rewards. It can be a gift or commissions on various items on your sites.

Why do you need to arrange Loyalty and reward giving program?

Be with the success ratio (Don’t you want to?).

• Existing customers spend 67% more than new customers.
• Existing customers spend 67% more than new customers.

Mobile first marketing

Marketers spent $36.6 billion on mobile ads in 2016 – a whopping 77% increase from the year before.

–Forbes

According to pew research center, 77% of US adults use smartphones.

Most of the time mobile-first marketing can be more personal than email marketing. If your mobile ads (I am not saying just apps) can reach the correct people, it can click to the right point.

Follow the steps given below. You will get a clear insight into the mobile-first marketing in B2C eCommerce:

– Make your mobile ads more alive by using a relative image rather than text.

– Words are essential so that you can generate funny and helpful ideas for the advertisement. Use minimum words but hit bottom with it.

– Stay close to your offer.

– Make the beginning more effective. Without a smooth start, the consumer may get lost their interest.

– Make your campaign up to date compared to the others.

– Optimize your B2C eCommerce website more mobile friendly.

Before executing a mobile-first marketing strategy, you need to gather relevant information and resources. Follow the list below, provided by marketingland:

• Cost;
• How commoditized the product or service is;
• Whether or not it requires physical touch;
• Size;
• Whether it is durable or disposable;
• Perishability.

Set a budget and how you use them to the correct portion, it’s vital. You need to research your target consumers demand and gather relative market information to complete this all steps.

Let me share this infographic. It will help you to understand how a mobile-first act as a dynamic strategy in B2C eCommerce.

Source: emarsys

So, are you convinced to adopt mobile first marketing strategy for your B2C eCommerce product? It’s time.

Conclusion

Take a closer look again. Maybe you missed something? If you want to do better, you need to prepare yourself better.

I mentioned the fact before. You need to set up your B2C eCommerce strategies based on your business metrics (target customer, market value, competitions, etc.).

So, it’s not about following the curve but innovate a new way to beat your competitors.

So what’s your next move? Let me know.