As per the latest report published by Dun & Bradstreet, 90% of B2B marketers believe that their organizations need to stress more on customer experience to match the high expectations set by their B2C counterparts.
According to that study, only about 38% of those B2B marketers are actually confident that they are better than their competition at creating and delivering customer experiences. At the same time, a quarter of them feels that they are lagging in the race and need to buckle up to match the expectations of their target audience.
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The report indicates that B2B brands realize the value of personalized omnichannel experiences, but they fail to work on it. The other words, the problem isn’t awareness, but the lack of focused efforts. There is no concrete reason why B2B marketers should be at a disadvantage while delivering enriched customer experience. In fact, they should share the same enthusiasm as their B2C counterparts for satisfying customers, as personalization always translates to loyalty creating long-term customer value.
But, the pervasive belief about no scope for B2B personalization keeps the B2B professionals on the back foot. It is time for the B2B marketers to look forward to the other side of the marketing world, considering the target audiences as individuals rather than industrial machines, looking only for profit.
The c-suite is getting younger, and modern professionals look for diversity, personalization, and value addition. To be successful, the B2B marketers should start considering their consumers as individuals looking for enriched B2B customer experiences. Taking customer feedback regularly will help to work on continuous improvement of the marketing strategies focusing on delivering the best-in-class CX.
B2B marketers need to put together the marketing strategies based on the relevance to their audiences. And, this is only possible by understanding different strategies and seeing them through a B2B lens, then aligning them to the consumer expectations. To create and deliver the elusive CX, B2B marketers need to first convince themselves of being capable enough to do so. Next, they need to be sure about why it is crucial for the success of their business. It might require a radical change of mindset to prioritize understanding the customer before designing marketing strategies – something that is still rare among large B2B organizations—but this is truly essential to ensure that great CX follow.
According to reports and expert views, this is a persistent problem in the entire B2B world. And, the Dun & Bradstreet report confirmed that the B2B marketers feel they are struggling to use the tools and data at their disposal to identify customer touchpoints effectively and gain insights into the customer journey.
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The B2C and B2B marketing worlds are now colliding. In this complicated digital world, they are overlapping to a great extent in terms of the vision and customer expectations. If the B2B marketers want to close their customer experience gap, they need to understand their customers well – think beyond profit and focus on customer satisfaction and retention. And if they can successfully do so, then B2B marketing will become creative, more relevant, and difficult to forget, and, in the long run, lead to customer satisfaction, sales conversion, and brand loyalty.
