Personalisation trends and considerations for enterprise context marketing
We are often asked what are some of the current trends and best practices for B2B sites?
Codehouse globally has a strong B2B customer register, with close to 60% of our projects addressing the B2B segment – our expertise crosses both B2B and B2C segments, often within the same project.
We know that B2B visitors enjoy first-class digital experiences when they are not undertaking their daily job roles, as they digitally navigate almost every part of daily life. In their “civilian life” they know very well how frictionless great digital experiences are – and increasingly expect that these same capabilities are used by their commercial partners to assist with undertaking business tasks from discovery through to service and commercial outcome fulfilment.
Unfortunately for many, the experience of doing business with corporates is very much sub-par when compared to the innovation delivered in the B2C world. This disparity cannot continue – brands cannot expect B2B users to struggle with poor digital experiences, this second-tier outcome increasingly damages brand, introduces operational friction and frustration with commercial undertaking fulfilment.
It’s no surprise that the same innovations that have revolutionised the B2C world are now considered mandatory in the B2B arena, these include:
Hyper Personalisation
The B2B segment is perfect for localisation and personalisation since all B2B users’ behavioural details are explicit, rather than the more guesswork-based implicit personalisation we typically see in the B2C world. The explicit customer data is delivered and collated via typical B2B activities, including completion of forms, digital property registration, log-in activities, and the associated platform “User Profile” means that personalisation is easier to implement, more immediately meaningful and very much more accurate. This key customer data is the perfect insight repository from which to craft frictionless, assistive, and experience-rich interactions that make life easier for your valuable business partners.
This seamless business experience ultimately enhances your brand and speaks to delivering value to your partner, supplier, and prospect partner ecosystem.
B2B personalisation tactics frequently include:
Frictionless, guided and predictively assisted business partner onboarding
Automation of key account notifications
Automation and delivery of targeted commercial notifications
One stop login to business platforms
Personalised messaging on public and private business focused digital properties.
Personalised access to resources, pricing, social proof, testimonials, case studies, product or service proof-points, methodologies, and relationship contact details to simplify asset discovery, service delivery and business task completion.
Predictive business task assistance based on known user data points.
Auto-personalisation leverages AI and Machine Learning to remove manual, rules-based personalisation – utilising pattern matching, dynamic segmentation, and existing business rules to deliver a superior B2B experience.
A Cookie-Less Experience
Many agencies and industry analysts suggest we are rapidly moving towards a “cookie-less” digital environment. A cookie-less digital experience refers to online interactions that do not utilise cookies to track user behaviour, preferences, or identity. In a cookie-less experience, other methods must be employed to personalise content and track user engagement.
Without cookies, websites rely more on first-party data provided directly by the users, such as information entered into forms, interactive tools or chosen preferences within a site.
This becomes central to a B2B personalisation and localisation strategy, given B2B’s increased requirements around account and data aggregation and privacy as the digital world moves towards cookie-less experiences that still aim to be engaging and user-friendly while respecting users' privacy preferences.
Chatbots, Enterprise Virtual Assistants and AI powered search
Search has been undertaken using the same process “forever” – users type in key terms and hope that the results are meaningful and accurate – unfortunately, we all know that search is a very common pain point and that users struggle to find the content, processes, contacts, and business content they need.
Generative AI and Enterprise Virtual Assistants are redefining how search works, without question. Search is increasingly conversational, with Generative AI specifically trained on corporate information resources able to anticipate user requests, interact with users in real time with significantly more helpful outcomes and deliver meaningful assistance to search queries.
All in a two-way conversational model, that learns about user preferences, profiles, and user needs in real time, and then remembers those data points for future interactions. Inevitably, business will introduce Generative AI based chatbots for real-time B2B customer support as a first line of response – to not do so is to ignore the single greatest digital innovation in history. This technology is already redefining how we search, and what we expect a search experience to deliver.
Introducing this technology and considering even newer advances like AI powered voice search, is a real opportunity to get ahead of the curve, right now.
Content localisation
Content localisation involves adapting content to suit the cultural, linguistic, and other localised needs of specific markets or regions. This process extends beyond translation, encompassing everything from language nuances and idioms to cultural norms and local regulations. Localisation plays a key role in delivering a relevant, business-centric, and culturally sensitive digital experience.
Interactive, AI driven ABM (Account Based Marketing)
Understanding who is on your site, why and whether they are part of an account-based bid team is becoming easier to implement. By integrating AI into ABM, businesses can collect and process data from various sources, including CRM systems, social media, website interactions, and online customer portal behaviour.
This data is then used to create a comprehensive profile of each target account, revealing valuable insights about their preferences, pain points, and behaviours. Introducing micro-transaction-based tools like solution selectors, calculators, self-managed profiling, and surveys can drive customer intelligence increases and provide additional datapoints for analysing B2B visitor behaviour, lead score and value of visit.
This would be a powerful use of Sitecore’s Customer Data Platform, which aggregates customer data from multiple sources and delivers insights around uplift opportunities.
Smart forms, frictionless onboarding, and interactive tools
Optimised forms and personalised, interactive tools are a powerful way to simplify doing business with you – from onboarding through to relationship management, interactive and dynamic electronic forms and tools that adapt to user input, offer clear advantages in terms of digital experience, including personalisation, predictive content and the simplification of business tasks – they also contribute valuable data-points for ongoing optimisation.
This means a better, seamless digital experience for your business partners, and an abundance of customer intelligence for ongoing optimisation and digital experience uplift.
Tech sustainability
As organisations actively pursue their net zero targets, forward-thinking B2B companies are increasingly looking to understand and minimise the carbon emissions impact of their technology and digital activities.
This applies to both the direct impact of the organisation’s digital activities but also the Scope 3 emissions generated in their digital supply chains. Reviewing hosting practices, introducing sustainable website design practices, optimising digital marketing campaigns to reduce wastage and even auditing website tagging practices are all examples of proactive approaches to improving tech sustainability for both B2C and B2B organisations.
There are dozens of ways that B2B experiences can be optimised – we focused above on the ones we believe will have an impact through a “short fuse – big bang” lens. By that we mean those things we can deliver that will have an immediate and visible impact on digital experience and ultimately on business conversion increases.
Other opportunities include marketing data-lake implementation, social media integration, video marketing and influencer activities, social proof and thought-leadership, content marketing, SEO activities, accessibility and data aggregation and security.