So it's been a while since I started a thread myself - but that's because it's been that busy leading to a record month in May. Beating our previous best month - March this year.
That left me with less time to write a full thread.
Now here's the thing with this forgotten buyer group - and those are "competing" off line businesses.
Sounds a bit vague right?
Well, we sell products that needed to be installed. Which is why many of our customers are handy guys. The DIY crowd.
But there are many more who want the products installed.
Which is something I don't want our biz to take on (at the moment)
There are companies who just do that though. Buy products and install them.
Volume for them is a lot lower in the parts that we sell, so we are competitive to the level where we can sell to them.
At a lower price than the manufacturer does (as they have to stick to their pricing structure), or at a lower price than the distributor. As they have a large overhead and matching margins.
And there's another reason they want to buy from us (and you, depending on what you sell). Which is convenience.
What's normal in ecommerce for consumers is far from normal for business buyers.
A lot of manufacturers and distributors have legacy systems an sites. And don't even have a means of buying on-line. And if they do, there are procedures to go through.
These are valuable customers as well, as they buy more often than regular consumers. So the LTV is higher.
Now, after that lengthy intro, here are some practical points:
1. Make sure your margins are high enough to give these customers a discount (compare to consumer pricing)
2. Set up a seperate customer pricing group in your ecommerce system so recurring orders come in at the right prices for the customer
3. Set up a link on your site with a call to action to ensure the buyers know you offer advantages to them (see example here: http://www.decksdirect.com/)
4. Actively target these prospects (facebook, scrape lists etc)
One thing to keep in mind: ecommerce is a numbers game. Make sure you have enough volume to get the price levels you need.
Alternatively, actively target these prospects (phoning a few or setting up an on-line form) to get an idea of the volumes they do and prices they pay. Then, talk to your supplier, armed with the demand data and volume, to negotiate the price you want.
Then go back to them and try to get them to buy from you. Rinse and repeat.
Do this well and you'll be adding serious additional volume and profit to your ecommerce business. And the best thing is, you only pay the acquisition cost once. After that, the margins are all yours.
Any questions? Let me know.
PS: having even small levels of sales coming from this group will increase the resell value of you business. Nice bonus if you ever want to sell.
Great point. If your products have b2b applications like this it's really worth dialing them in - this isn't the only "we looked at our sales, realised there was big money in supplying other businesses, and raised ourselves to new heights" story I've heard recently.