B2B E-COMMERCE MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU THINK!

If you are an industrial goods manufacturer or a supplier, e-commerce may not satisfy your expectations.

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of products or services.

This one is the general definition.

Most e-commerce businesses focus on online shoping.Buy and sell!

Sales volumes are average 1-100 USD at C2C, 100-1000 USD at B2C and 1000-1M USD at B2B.

As it is seen sales volumes at B2B normally much more higher than C2C and B2C.

When you think about hundreds or millions of dollars product prices, it is a little bit a dream to add these products to cart.

Most industrial manufacturers or suppliers have higher volume product prices and these prices also are changeable!

What does changeable mean?

It means that product prices are going to change in the way of a stock status, logistic costs, manufacturing costs, order quantities, equivalent products and so on…

Anybody pays for 42000 USD some kind of a machine online or a 150.000 USD cable drum, a 500.000 USD transformer building, a 100000 USD 42 inch valve sytem, pipes, instruments, raw materials or millions of dollars projects…

That is why when you check these kind of sellers websites there are no e-commerce system or no product prices.

“Add to cart” action is not suitable with the nature of “Request for quote”

Some manufacturers and suppliers focused on e-commerce under e-shop at their websites after pandemic but they did not succeed.

Most manufacturers and suppliers have PDF product catalogs on their website.

When you check inbound point of view, they upload neither products nor blogs to their website.

Just PDF catalogs and a few products beside their thousands of product range.

So is this the end? Does this mean that they will never become online?

No, sir!

B2B companies main mistake is they underestimate a buyer and still don’t understand about buying journey.

Because most of them reached their customers with bilateral relations of bosses.

%70 of a buyer’s research is done before they talk to sales. %59 of buyers prefer not to talk to sales at all according to aligned to achieve.

It means that they are searching online and they will but not purchasing in the first step.

To gather information. The key point is a buyer represent 4 people average. There are champions, decision makers, influencers and blockers in their buying comittee.

If you want to reach them, you need to serve all of your products online and you need an affective content strategy with your blogs.

But this one also not enough itself. You need alternative online channels to your company.

Check marketplaces! You can upload all your products as well!

For example, Bidustry is one of them. It is B2B marketplace for industrial sellers and buyers. It is not an e-commerce marketplace. Thousands or ten thousands of products can be uploaded without prices.

No need prices at Bidustry. No comission! Buyers may send a message or request for a quote.

Buyers and sellers coming together. In the end, all product pages will be online channel to your company!

As a result of all:

-E-commerce or e-shop is not the only way of serving products online,

-Your website is empty with just only PDF catalog,

-Buyers are searching online and they can not reach you,

-You should upload your products and write blogs in the way of ideal customer profile questions,

-You need long term plannings,

-You need to change your team structure step by step in 3 years,

-You need marketing point of view!

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