If you’re a B2B wholesaler, there’s no question that your online presence is essential. It can help increase brand awareness, drive revenue, and build customer trust. But if you sell wholesale products online without a robust website, competing with other B2B eCommerce businesses is nearly impossible. Wholesalers must understand how to create the strongest possible online presence through their wholesale websites. Here are several steps that will help.
Build a Better Business Plan
A business plan is a document that you can use to help your company grow. It outlines what you’re doing and how and where you want to go in the future. Building a solid online presence is essential for success if you want to make money with your B2B business.
A good business plan should include the following:
- A mission statement that describes why the company exists
- A summary of what products or services are offered by the firm
- An overview of how those products/services are delivered to customers (including pricing)
Why wholesalers need B2B eCommerce
If you’re a wholesaler, time and money are at a premium. That’s why any new online marketing strategy must be easy to implement, cost-effective, and effective at reaching new customers. B2B eCommerce offers all three of these things:
- It saves time – With an established website (and one optimized for search engines), selling products online becomes much more manageable than creating “storefronts” on multiple platforms like Amazon and eBay or managing inventory across multiple channels. You don’t have to worry about shipping products or dealing with returns because everything happens behind the scenes when someone places their order via the web storefront page link.
- It helps grow your business – By using this type of platform instead of setting up individual storefronts on each marketplace site where they sell their goods (which takes even more time), businesses can focus more energy on growing their core competencies instead having them distracted by trying figure out how best reach potential clients through different mediums such as TV commercials radio ads print ads, etc…
Optimize Your Online Presence
To optimize your online presence, you need to monitor the performance of your website and social media accounts. Google Analytics is a free tool that provides valuable insight into how people interact with your website.
Facebook Ads allows you to target specific audiences based on location, age, gender, and interests. Google AdWords is another paid advertising platform where you can promote products on search engines such as Google or Bing by bidding on keywords related to those products.
Twitter Ads lets businesses create ads that appear in users’ timelines when they tweet about specific hashtags related to the product being advertised; these ads are also shown in relevant tweets from other users who have tweeted about similar topics before, so this way, it helps build trust between potential customers because now they know someone else has tried out this particular service/product before them.
Instagram offers businesses an opportunity for visual storytelling through images accompanied by text posts (or “stories”) which disappear after 24 hours unless saved into private collections where only followers can reaccess them later.
Pinterest allows brands, either public or private boards, where anyone can pin content from anywhere online onto them without needing permission, unlike other social networks where approvals must always come before sharing anything publicly.
Build a Loyal Customer Base
- Email marketing: In addition to the usual marketing tactics you might use with your existing customers, you can target potential new customers with specific offers and discounts. For example, if you offer seasonal or time-sensitive products (such as holiday decorations), send emails announcing new promotions and sales around those times of the year.
- Social media: You don’t need thousands of followers on Twitter or Instagram for social media marketing to be effective for your business–just enough so that when someone does follow your account, they see something interesting each time they check it out. Even if someone only clicks “like” once every couple of weeks or months, this still shows that people are interested in what you’re doing enough to click through from their newsfeeds or feeds into yours. If possible, though…try getting more likes than dislikes 😉
- Customer service: When someone asks questions about products via email/phone calls/chatting via Messenger app etc., always respond quickly to keep them from losing before they become repeat customers.
Offer Superior Customer Service
Customer service is the backbone of any business and is a great way to build trust with your customers. When you take the time to answer questions and address concerns promptly, you’re demonstrating that you care about them as individuals. This can make all the difference when people decide whether they want to work with someone or buy from them again.
In addition to being a great way to retain customers (and earn repeat business), offering superior customer service can help differentiate you from other companies in your industry who may be willing to compromise on this crucial aspect of their operations.
Create Product Listings and Content on the Wholesale Website
Product listing and content are the most critical part of your wholesale website. This is where all the hard work that you’ve done to build a robust online presence will pay off, as this page is what potential customers will see when they search for your brand or products online.
To rank well in search engines like Google and Bing, it’s crucial that your product listings are optimized for keywords, include relevant images, and have unique copy written in a conversational style that speaks directly to potential customers who are looking for what you offer.
How to choose the correct wholesale B2B eCommerce platform
Choosing the right wholesale B2B eCommerce platform can be a difficult task. It would help if you considered the needs of your business and those of your customers and employees. Here are some things to think about:
- The needs of your business – Do you want to offer certain features that aren’t available on other platforms? Are specific features critical for your success as a wholesaler (such as inventory management), or do they make life easier as an end user (such as multi-language support)?
- Customers’ needs – Is there anything in particular that would make it easier for them if they could find what they’re looking for more quickly than usual? What’s important here is making sure that whatever feature set you choose offers something tangible enough so people will take advantage of them; otherwise, why bother having any at all?
- Employees’ preferences – Try using different systems before deciding which works best so everyone feels comfortable using whatever tool is chosen to avoid unnecessary confusion.
The more you do up front in your business plan, the easier it will be to succeed online.
A business plan is a tool that helps you clearly define your company’s goals and how you’ll achieve those goals. It also allows you with financial projections, marketing strategies, and other vital details about your company’s future.
To create an effective online presence for your B2B business, it’s crucial to have a strong understanding of what makes up an effective website. The more information you have on hand when creating or redesigning your site, the easier it will be for visitors to find what they’re looking for–and remember that people aren’t likely going through all of your pages unless they already know who (or what) they want.
To summarize
If you have a clear business plan and know what you want to accomplish, it’s much easier to build a successful wholesale website. You can use this guide as a starting point for your B2B eCommerce project by following the above steps. In addition, we hope that our tips on optimizing your online presence will help ensure potential customers find what they need from within your site rather than going elsewhere.