By Barbara Roy, Content-Communications Strategist, Writer & Designer
Photo: Austin Distel
A cumulative variety of worldwide events continue to influence current customer priorities and buying behaviors. To build customer loyalty in this new climate, and stay ahead of rapidly evolving change, B2B businesses must redefine and invest in content marketing strategies that will position their brand as prepared to meet and manage the needs and concerns of modern B2B buyers.
In this article, we review elements currently impacting B2B buying behaviors and customer loyalty, explore how content marketing influences it, and highlight six strategies for boosting it.
Factors Impacting B2B Buying Behaviors and Customer Loyalty
Advantages of Using B2B Content Marketing as Part of Your Customer Retention Plan
6 Ways B2B Companies Can Increase Customer Loyalty
Factors Impacting Customer Loyalty in 2023
Shifting Customer Priorities
Customer needs and expectations have changed significantly over the past couple of years, impacting the way even major brands, with established, high-value client relationships, approach customers. 2022 saw a shift in buying behaviors due to changing priorities, global maneuvering and divisiveness, uncertainties about cross-border trade, goods availability, and fluctuating economic conditions. With these persistent, interdependent concerns, customer loyalty and retention strategy are also being reconsidered. It's not about rewards or standard loyalty programs right now; customer expectations are high and favor no-fuss interactions with sales that provide personalized experiences and meet them where they're at in their buying journey.
Accelerated Digitization
As B2B businesses prepare for the future, digitization is a pivotal element driving buying decisions that impact customer loyalty. Many B2Bs are rethinking operational strategies to meet customer needs and expectations. Technological, user-friendly advancements and innovations, such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, no-code platforms, and data analytics tools make the possibility of modernization less complex, and more affordable.
Here are just a few ways B2Bs, seeking to grow their businesses, may be considering purposing technology for the future:
Flexibility
Technologies, like cloud computing, can provide a flexible infrastructure that enables B2Bs to adapt to changing business needs. Buyers need solutions that seamlessly integrate with their existing systems and infrastructure. Compatibility with existing technologies, and ease of implementation and scalability, can significantly influence their buying decisions.
A variety of flexible pricing models have been introduced for interruptible workloads, making cloud services more affordable to a wider range of customers. Options include up-front payments and static service savings plans; pay-as-you-go plans for dynamic services; and spot instances for short-term, low-cost services.
Efficiency
Emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) can enable B2B businesses to monitor and optimize their operations, leading to more cost savings and efficiencies.
Insights
Business intelligence (BI) architecture, software, and tools for collecting, managing, storing, analyzing, and reporting data metrics can provide B2B companies with insights into their own operations, the broader market, and specific customer behaviors.
Personalization
Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can also personalize the customer experience by providing real-time customer insights and recommendations at the time of service. Businesses that can stay ahead of the latest technological developments to provide their B2B customers with the best possible solutions and services, will ultimately be able to influence customer loyalty and retention.
Why B2B Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a great way for business owners to meet customers' needs, build brand loyalty, and develop, nurture, and retain customer relationships in the B2B space. By providing relevant and timely content and resources that help potential customers make better purchase decisions, companies build trust while also demonstrating their knowledge and expertise.
Here are a few ways content marketing drives customer loyalty:
Content marketing increases your product, services, and brand awareness and is especially useful for reframing your organization's mission and approach to its customers following significant changes.
Compared to traditional marketing, content marketing is a less expensive means of lead generation.
It is effective at attracting qualified leads.
Content can be adjusted for multiple uses and platforms.
Different content types, including whitepapers, case studies, videos, and social media, engage each audience level of your sales funnel and, over time, influence buying decisions.
Content provides value to your existing customers by validating knowledge and expertise; educating them about industry benchmarks; and demonstrating processes and product uses.
How Can B2Bs Boost Customer Loyalty with Content Marketing?
1. Increase Your Digital Visibility
Meet customers where they are.
In our modern digital world, 85% of American adults go online at least once a day. Buyers are already well-informed by the time they reach out to your sales team for insights and offerings. According to a recent study by TechTarget, most buyers have Googled products to see what interests them, visited your website to make comparisons, read analyst reviews, and maybe watched a webinar by the time they're ready to talk to you. Gartner's B2B Buying Journey research suggests sales reps only have about 5% of a customer’s time during their B2B buying journey.
What this means for sales teams and partners is, any conversations or face time with customers must be on point, persuasive, succinct, and value-led. A salesy approach to content may not be consumed at all by buyers. Consistent content marketing efforts also can help ensure you're on the radars of B2B buyers.
Provide self-service options for B2B buyers but be available to provide support.
It seems modern B2B buyers may lean on digital self-service in 2023. An article in Forbes calls this the "era of the self-serve B2B tech buyer", meaning buyers want information available at their fingertips to be able to validate and consider options with their peers. To meet this demand, businesses should strive to create content that is easily accessible and digestible from multiple devices.
Self-service shouldn't mean unsupported though. Be available from a support standpoint, and decrease any layers to circumvent added customer frustration. Create opportunities for open conversations, and head off customer concerns with virtual events, webinars, whitepapers, and online chat.
Offer a little something extra.
To build customer trust and encourage repeat visits, take a page from the traditional marketer's playbook. Give your customers something to look forward to while rewarding them for their loyalty by offering surprise freebies and extras such as free shipping on orders over a certain amount, a discount on their next purchase, or a complimentary item with purchase.
2. Monitor Sentiment Closely To Anticipate Customer Needs
Nearly all B2B purchasers of goods and services believe content is a valuable tool for judging a company. Keep up with industry trends, research the market, and understand your target audience to ensure your content marketing represents the most current factors influencing B2B buying habits in 2023.
Be transparent and anticipate customer needs for a frictionless experience.
When B2B buyers do connect with your business with questions, or for support, provide truthful answers. Make interactions easy for your buyers and don't upsell them something they don't need.
3. Make It Easy To Do Business
Solve problems promptly.
Solve their problems, like now. Buyers are overwhelmed, and our "drive-thru" world doesn't lessen the pressure but exacerbates it. In such a climate, expectations may teeter on the unrealistic. Whatever you can do to reduce customer frustration, simplify tedious processes, and curb unanticipated delays will go a long way toward satisfying your customers and growing the customer loyalty bank.
Brands like Walmart, for example, which strategically provided mobile devices with a proprietary app to each of its associates, is now positioned to head off customer frustrations by ensuring its team has up-to-date inventory and customer data at its fingertips---not to mention an improved employee experience since associates can also take the devices, partitioned for privacy, home for personal use. The free phone is a great employee perk and a win-win in the loyalty department.
4. Create Customer-Centric Content
Frame content from your customer's perspective.
For 42% of companies, the content specialist team is between one and three people. Every person who crafts external content should be provided, and invited to contribute to, a current content style guide. Anyone touching content should also be trained on the organization's content best practices.
Customer-centric language means considering the customer first and verbalizing the value of your offerings, benefits, or features from their perspective. Research what search terms your customers are using to find products like yours, then model your content and communications using the customer's same word choices and expressions.
5. Personalize Buying Experiences
Focus on supplementing knowledge and adding value.
Customers should be able to immediately understand what’s in it for them, in a personalized way. Modern, educated buyers don't want to be told or sold; they simply want to build upon their existing knowledge to be able to make informed purchase decisions.
Focus more on educating buyers by offering them insights and use cases. Actively listen and personalize your communications based on what they are telling you; challenge their thinking where necessary. Validate that you have understood their needs and take any opportunities to reiterate how your product solves their stated needs.
6. Embrace SEO
Focusing on SEO is an exercise in harvesting low-hanging fruit. It may be one of the best strategies for 2023-24. Companies must consider its holistic impact. 55% of content marketing strategies focus on improving the quality of content. Raising your SEO game is one of the easiest bang-for-your-buck actions you can take to uplevel your content immediately.
Key Takeaways
Shifting Customer Priorities: Changing global events have significantly impacted B2B customer needs and expectations. Customer loyalty and retention strategies need to focus on providing personalized experiences and meeting customers where they are in their buying journey.
Accelerated Digitization: B2B businesses should embrace technology to adapt to changing customer needs. Technologies like cloud computing, automation, and AI can offer flexibility, efficiency, insights, and personalization, ultimately influencing customer loyalty and retention.
Importance of B2B Content Marketing: Content marketing helps build brand loyalty, nurture customer relationships, and generate leads in the B2B space. It increases product and brand awareness, attracts qualified leads, and provides value to existing customers by demonstrating expertise and educating them.
Strategies to Boost Customer Loyalty with Content Marketing: a. Increase digital visibility by providing relevant content and being present at every stage of the buyer's journey. b. Monitor customer sentiment closely to anticipate their needs and provide a frictionless experience. c. Make it easy to do business by solving problems promptly and simplifying processes. d. Create customer-centric content by framing it from the customer's perspective and using their language. e. Personalize buying experiences by focusing on supplementing knowledge and adding value to the customer. f. Embrace SEO to improve content quality and increase visibility in search engine results.
By implementing these six strategies, B2B businesses can enhance customer loyalty, meet evolving customer needs, and position their brand as prepared to address modern B2B buying behaviors.