Guidebook
Your Guide to B2B Online Communities: The What, Why, and How
Chapter 1
CX as the Key to B2B Success
Understanding the Elusive B2B Buyer
Understanding the elusive B2B buyer is crucial in today’s market, where consumers wield unprecedented power. With information readily available, the buyer’s journey is increasingly controlled by consumers rather than brands. Research by Gartner highlights this shift, indicating that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a sales experience without representatives. This heightened empowerment of B2B customers, compounded by the involvement of multiple stakeholders in the decision-making process, requires strategic approaches to engage and decode their preferences. Establishing a central hub for data sourcing, extraction, and analysis emerges as a key tactic in navigating this complex landscape.
Meaningful Engagement Is Your Largest Source of Capital
Industry reports emphasize the importance of meaningful engagement with companies, yet many struggle to achieve it. According to report by Gallup, only 29% of B2B customers are fully engaged. This statistic is alarming, especially considering that almost all B2B businesses, spanning industries like manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and law, face the risk of losing business not due to product quality or pricing, but because of their failure to engage core consumers effectively. Engaging the B2B buyer should no longer be solely the responsibility of marketers; it must be prioritized throughout the organization as a crucial initiative for driving growth and acquiring customers.
Prioritizing CX as a Key Competitive Differentiator
In the complex B2B buying process, multiple touchpoints and stakeholders influence the final sale. Brands must stand out as transparent sources of information amidst this complexity. Experts suggest that, akin to industry leaders like Amazon and Apple, B2B sectors are increasingly judged by their ability to deliver top-notch customer experiences.
Chapter 2
Creating a Line of Communication
Reimagine Your Customer Relationship
Rethink your customer relationship as your primary source of predictive data. Your online community offers an opportunity to form a customer advisory board that benefits both you and your customers. Cultivating a strong consumer relationship characterized by transparency, deep customer understanding, and centralized data collection is your most potent business intelligence and growth tool. Despite common perceptions about B2B customers, they share similar emotional needs and desires for acknowledgment as B2C customers; they crave being heard. As Gallup suggests, “Only through customer conversations can B2B leaders uncover what customers truly think.” Your customers can become your strongest brand advocates—but only if you’re attentive and receptive.
Creating Your Customizable B2B Advisory Board
While many B2B organizations recognize the importance of becoming more customer-centered, few know how to effectively achieve this goal. Our top Fortune 500 clients leverage their B2B online communities to foster genuine customer engagement, learning, and growth. For instance, a leading technology company utilizes its community of IT professionals for technical support and collaborative problem-solving, while insurance agencies regularly engage with physicians.
The Key to B2B Online Community Success
The active involvement of primary stakeholders in the online community is paramount to its success. The overall effectiveness of your community hinges on the engagement of all departments in its development and maintenance. Just as your marketing organization relies on support from product, engineering, and C-suite executives, your online community requires holistic backing from your entire team. This internal commitment is not only crucial for the vitality of your community but also for the substantial business growth that stems from Voice of the Customer (VOC) initiatives.
Recruitment: The Key to Unlocking Desired Insights
Effective recruitment is a pivotal factor in determining the success of your desired insights. While this step may seem daunting for many B2B clients, it can be streamlined by following a few simple steps.
Generating Interest in Joining
To pique interest in joining, we recommend leveraging multiple outlets such as email distribution lists, links in weekly email updates, internal client intranet, and internal HR pamphlets, among others. Proper recruitment is vital for ensuring the long-term success, strength, and health of your community. Utilizing various common customer communication channels is key to reaching and engaging a diverse audience.
Ideal Community Size
A common concern among our B2B clients is the ability to gather a sufficiently large community to glean insights. However, current best practices suggest that communities ranging from 500 to 2000 active members can yield rich data comparable to larger communities. Therefore, the focus should not solely be on size but rather on the quality of recruitment efforts.
Frequency of Recruitment
Once the community is up and running, it’s essential to maintain its vitality through regular recruitment efforts. For B2B audiences, frequent refreshes are necessary, with many clients opting for quarterly recruitments. Notably, a leading technology company has successfully implemented a “refer a colleague” campaign, while another organization has seen success with an “invite a friend” initiative, both contributing to the ongoing recruitment of new members.
Chapter 3
Engagement Is Imperative
Our most successful B2B communities boast impressive activity rates, averaging at 85%, with participation rates soaring even higher at 90%. These figures exceed industry averages and underscore the rich engagement B2B communities experience from their customers. Contrary to any concerns about B2B customers’ willingness to actively engage with your brand beyond formal business communication, evidence suggests otherwise.
Engagement Studies: Niche Industry Advantage
Niche industries hold a unique advantage when it comes to engaging their private online communities. Unlike broad topics, industry-specific content tends to garner more traction, directly benefiting our B2B clients. For instance, our insurance clients provide insights on new changes in insurance laws, while healthcare customers curate content on topical subjects concerning the industry and emerging technologies. By creating a virtual “water cooler” environment, you encourage clients to discuss their most pressing concerns, providing invaluable insights into your business and products.
Activities in the B2B Online Community
The B2B online community serves as a platform for constructive feedback, driving visible action. Here, you can facilitate live chats, surveys, member forums, and foster bi-directional interaction with customers. Beyond data extraction, consider this space as a primary resource hub for your customers, where you can:
- Share thought leadership articles and insights
- Curate free-flowing ideas and discussions
- Connect and promote your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)
- Implement suggestion boxes for feedback
- Showcase videos from the CEO and department heads unveiling new products and features
Incentivizing Engagement
Guaranteed incentives are proven to drive high levels of engagement among both our B2B and B2C customers. This is especially crucial for busy B2B community members, who often require some form of monetary or informational incentive to participate actively. For example, the UPS community rewards its members with monetary incentives based on their engagement and activity levels. Other clients, such as those in the insurance sector facing legal restrictions on monetary incentives, offer alternative rewards like branded merchandise or points redeemable for internal perks like team pizza parties or work-from-home days. Here are a few incentive suggestions:
- Amazon gift cards
- Donations to charity on behalf of the community member
- Conference tickets
- Lunch with the CEO
- Exclusive access to news and insider information
Chapter 4
Forging and Cementing a Superior Customer Experience
The customer experience index rating for B2B companies often lags behind that of B2C companies. To change this, businesses must meet the evolving demands of their customers by providing highly customizable and unified experiences. The goal is to deliver seamless interactions across all touchpoints, tailored to each customer’s unique needs and preferences. By prioritizing personalization, efficiency, and consistency, B2B companies can elevate their customer experience and bridge the gap with B2C counterparts.
Mobile-First Approach to Online Community
With consumers now engaging with brands three times more on mobile than any other platform, mobile devices should no longer be an afterthought but an integral part of a brand’s offerings. Our online community is designed with mobile users in mind, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience on smartphones. The design seamlessly complements the desktop version, making it inviting and accessible for users who prefer to engage with the community on their phones. This mobile-first approach ensures that all users, regardless of device, can enjoy a consistent and user-friendly experience.
Elevating the Buyer's Journey
To create a winning customer experience, it’s crucial to intimately understand the entire customer journey and each individual touchpoint. This level of investment becomes less daunting when you have a direct avenue to continuously understand and communicate with your customer, weaving together information that continually enriches your understanding. Our clients frequently leverage live chats and video diary studies to gain insight into the emotional and unfiltered thoughts of their customers, ranging from website usability to new product features.
Chapter 5
Conclusion
Your brand must serve as a beacon to the customer as the best and most trustworthy source of product content and customer support on the market. A homogenized experience is only truly realized through direct and consistent interaction with the customer. The unpredictable nature of B2B is softened by having a real-time feedback loop with the customer—one that delivers insights and immediate return on investments.
A strong customer engagement initiative is the difference between a brand that is competitive and one that is innovative. Your online community is the place where you can learn, inform, and build better customer experiences while cultivating strong, loyal relationships. The investment of time, money, and resources will pay dividends in your ability to stay ahead of the market curve and keep your customers engaged, satisfied, and loyal.
